I wonder what your opinions are on Grandpa Dave?

Personally, I felt that giving him Alzheimer's was quite a cop-out. When you think about it, he was really the least-expanded upon character from Arthur's family (and yet, we ALWAYS see him during the main titles); he was featured a little bit throughout the first season, and even had his own episode ("Grandpa Dave's Country Farm"), then afterwards, he pretty much disappeared, and was rarely, if ever, seen on the show itself. Fast forward several years and seasons later, and we have an episode where he has Alzheimer's.

Now, I'm all for explaining something like Alzheimer's to kids, and as a matter of fact, my own papaw succumbed to Alzheimer's in 2005 after a slow and steady decline for about six years, and my nana is presently slipping more and more into dementia as well, and it is a sad thing to have to deal with... still, the fact that Grandpa Dave has Alzheimer's rubs me the wrong way... it almost seemed like another example of the writers being out of ideas... almost like, hey, we haven't done anything with Grandpa Dave in a while, what can we do? Well, he's an old man, so let's give him Alzheimer's since we haven't talked about that yet.

I think it would have been nice if we had a little more of Grandpa Dave throughout the series, he seemed like a rather fun character, we saw how much Arthur and D.W. always enjoyed their little vacation stays with him on his farm, and he seems like a really fan grandfather.

Does anyone besides me wonder just how exactly Arthur knows so much about what all goes on at Muffy's slumber parties? 

Love it! One of my favorites too, it's a riot of an episode, and the whole chain of reactions was really funny too, though too bad Arthur couldn't show any backbone and add to it as well since Buster ate his cookies.

One thing I dislike about this episode is how un-realistic it is... I mean seriously, do you think there are actual restaurants and establishments that prepare food just for people with specific food allergies? I mean one think I've loved about this series is that the stories and situations are pretty real and believable... this is a bit more far-fetched, kind of like "Prunella Sees the Light", do movie theaters really offer SAP headphones for the blind?

And why does Binky just suddenly have peanut allergies? He ate a LOT of peanut butter prior to this episode... but then again, in one episode he says his favorite thing is macaroni and cheese, then later he says he hates macaroni and cheese, so... eh.

I didn't really regularly watch PFB, so I'm not entirely sure, but, that sounds like an interesting follow-up episode to "April 9th". Even though Mr. Morris can still be seen in the background as an extra even after that episode (matter of fact, he was the one who mopped up Francine's vomit in "Vomitrocious").

Well then, why couldn't they play "Love Notes for Muffy"?

But anyway, Drtooth over at MC really had a point with "Buster's Secret Admirer", that it seems like Bitzi is a little TOO obsessed, almost incestuously, over her own son... I'm sure she's probably that way because she's a divorcee, and Buster is all she has in the world, but still, I mean, the way she smothers him is going to cause some major problems for him when he gets older... he's probably going to have a lot of social and developmental problems as a teen and young adult, because he won't be emotionally or mentally mature enough to go through life without his mommy.

Not that I would know anything about that or anything, but still... yeah... Buster's going to have some problems when he grows up because of Bitzi's smothering and hovering.

Bitzi and Mrs. Walters are two prime examples of helicopter mothers.

Has anyone ever heard a voice from Arthur in other cartoons? The former Cinar produced a number of kid stuff back in the day, and it seems like inevitably, you'd hear some of the same voices in just about all of their programs. Most notably, you can hear Bruce Dinsmore's Binky voice coming out of other characters like Tubby from Little Lulu and Horace from Wimzie's House. But of course, you can hear other voices in both too. For instance...

Wimzie's House
Sonja Ball voiced Wimzie, who sounds very similar to Mrs. Read, but much higher obviously.
Holly G. Frankel voiced Loulou, and similarly, sounds like a higher Fern.
Jane Woods voiced Yaya, although she doesn't voice any regular character from Arthur, but she seems to voice a lot of one-shot characters like Muffy's hairstylist from "Francine's Bad Hair Day", the waitress from "Arthur's Family Vacation", among others.

The Little Lulu Show
Jane Woods was the second voice of Lulu (Tracey Ullman was the first), and the first voice of Iggy (think Lulu with a sore throat)
Michael Caloz was the first voice for Annie, who sounded just like D.W.
Vanessa Lengies was the second voice for Annie, though I don't remember if she sounded anything like Emily or not.
Michael Yarmush was one of the Westside Boys, who basically sounded like Arthur with a sore throat (think Arthur as the evil wizard chanting "DOR-A WIN-I-FRED! DOR-A WIN-I-FRED!").
Ricky Mabe (one of the Tibbles at one point) voiced Willy.
Justin Bradley (Arthur from Season Six) voiced Eddie.
There was an episode that dealt with Lulu and Annie getting a package mixed up with Tubby and Iggy, one of the items was a skeleton that needed to be delivered to a university for medical studies, and I believe the professor was voiced by the same actor who voiced Mr. Pricejones from "Return of the King"