Twirly Whirly Flyers is the second episode of the first season of Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. In this episode, Kai-Lan and her animal friends play a game where they spin flowers in the sky.
In production order, it's the fifth episode of the first season.
Kai-Lan invents a game called Twirly Whirly Flyers. But then Tolee accidentally breaks the ants' bridge.
Summary[]
Kai-Lan is chasing a flower in the sky. While chasing that flower, she meets Ye-Ye picking apples from an apple tree. Then, a second green flower appears. Ye-Ye tells her that the flowers can twirl and fly. While chasing the green flower, Rintoo, Tolee, and Hoho get together, with Rintoo catching the flower. Kai-Lan comes up with an idea; a game about spinning the flowers, where they call "Twirly Whirly Flyers", named after the flowers, where she calls "twirly whirlies".
The four search for the flowers, Kai-Lan finds them on a rock, but they are too high for her. Kai-Lan then proceeds to call Lulu via her name and a song. Lulu arrives via a balloon on her horn, who then gets the three flowers down. Everyone then flies the flowers up in the sky, and then they land back down.
The flowers land on an ant's nest behind a bush. This, however, blocks out sunlight. The ants then come out, telling Kai-Lan and her friends that they were working on a bridge, but the flowers blocked their sunlight. They then get the flowers off the bush, and then they move away from the ant's bush, and then they whirl the flowers up in the atmosphere. Everyone then spins, however Tolee ends up steering himself into the ant's bush, where he accidentally breaks the Ants' bridge.
Panicking, Tolee hides with his hood on, feeling bad for himself. Tolee informs Kai-Lan that he didn't mean to break the bridge. Kai-Lan accidentally knocks over Ye-Ye's apple wheelbarrow, Ye-Ye then tells her that accidents happen and then they search for the apples. Kai-Lan gets a solution; "when you cause a problem, here's what you should do; first you say you're sorry and then you help to fix it too".
Tolee tells the ants that he's sorry for breaking the bridge. Everyone then proceeds to fix the bridge, finally finishing it. After fixing the bridge, the ants then join Kai-Lan's Twirly Whirly Flyers game, where they ride on the flowers. After flying up in the air, the ants parachute back down. Tolee then tells Kai-Lan that she really helped him today.
The "when you cause a problem" song was used again in Kai-Lan's Carnival.
Tolee is the one to cause the main problem. In this scenario, he accidentally breaks the ants' bridge, which makes this the first episode where the main problem involves someone else being affected directly.
Tolee is the troublemaker in this episode (not on purpose though).
A comparision showing the original versions and edited versions of both scenes.
Two scenes from this episode were edited and used in an Earth Day promo.
Goofs/Errors[]
During the start of the episode where Kai-Lan introduces herself, there are a few frames where the hearts on her shirt disappear.
When Kai-Lan and Tolee sing the "I Got It" song, Tolee sings by himself the first time, but on the repeat where Kai-Lan and Tolee sing together, no voice is heard from Tolee but his mouth moves a bit off-sync from Kai-Lan while she sings "when you cause a problem", and afterward on "here's what you should do", Tolee's voice comes back.
When Kai-Lan says "Let's find more red and green Twirly Whirlies!", Hoho's nose disappears.
Kai-Lan mispronounces the Chinese word for green throughout the entire episode. She uses the fourth tone for both words instead of the fourth for the first and the second for the second.
