Buttercup builds a creepy looking sculpture that everyone in her class makes fun of, including her sisters, snd then when it gets thrown in the dumpster truck it gets hit by lightning, and turns into a giant monster. Buttercup and the girls stop it, but she is also proud of her sculpture because it made a huge mess after she made it, even though everyone made fun of it.
However, can we talk about that ending scene where Buttercup is kind of feeling down on herself, and her dad is actually there to comfort her, and tell her that it’s okay? I really liked that because it seemed like we didn’t get those individual moments of comfort on the show in Buttercup centrics with her dad and her sisters because the writers seemed to love making her suffer in them, whether she was actually right or wrong, and whether the punishment for being in the wrong was actually fair or not.
Not that I think Buttercup was this horribly abused, neglected, and unloved child by her dad and her sisters on the whole either because she wasn’t. Her characterization and her treatment by her family in “Moral Decay” after they found out about her crimes in the episode made me feel pretty uncomfortable, but that was a one time thing in which everyone in the Utonium family was written to be so painfully and ridiculously OOC in that awful segment in order to force Buttercup into the role of the villain and punish her in an exceedingly harsh way for cheap shock value. Since a far better version of the tooth fairy story for the girls exists in the DC PPG comics called “Holy Molar,” and since “Moral Decay” is never mentioned or referenced in the series ever again, almost everyone in the fandom pretends that awful segment never happened, too. It’s better to just replace it with the “Holy Molar” issue from the comic books because it’s way more entertaining and in-character than “Moral Decay” with Mojo as the main villain instead of Buttercup.
He didn’t have the same pep-talks with Buttercup when she was feeling down in the series in her centrics that he had with her sisters, but there were signs that Professor Utonium genuinely loved and valued her individually as his daughter here and there, too. There were little moments where Buttercup went to him for advice, and, of her sisters, she was usually the most unafraid of them to point it out when she thought he wasn’t being himself.
In “PowerProf.,” Professor Utonium affectionately pinched Buttercup cheeks and called her a bunch of adorably embarrassing pet names, such as “Butterbear,” when they were fighting crime together because he was so impressed by how much of a badass his cute little tomboy was.
In “A Very Special Blossom,” it was revealed that Professor Utonium kept Buttercup’s Father’s Day gift to him of boxing gloves made out of socks and shoe string her Father’s Day present from the previous year.
In “Knock It Off,” he knew that “girl power” wasn’t something that his little tomboy normally said when they were watching the news, which made him suspicious that she and her sisters were lying to him when they said they found the time to go save other cities, countries, and states, implying that they actually do spend a lot of time talking to each other and hanging out.
Buttercup actually went to her dad for advice in “Pee Pee Gees,” and he took the time to stop working out to talk to her, even if he answered her questions in as clinically awkwardly as possible because he found the whole topic of bed-wetting.
In “Coupe’d’etat,” while all three of the girls get upset when Professor Utonium has a mid-life crisis, changes his image, and starts hanging out with the talking robot he tricked out his car to be more than he does with them, Buttercup actually seems to be the most annoyed and hurt by the whole thing out of the three of them. She’s actually the most willing of the three of them to call their dad out for being ridiculous by tricking out car, changing his whole image, and inadvertently making her and her sisters feel unloved by hanging out with his car more than her and her sisters, which makes him feel guilty.
Professor Utonium and Buttercup were also revealed to bond with each other by blowing up stuff together in his lab with her in the Powerzine magazine.
Professor Utonium never told Buttercup he didn’t love her, or that he loved her sisters more than her in the classic series either. He never refused to get her medical attention when she needed it, or outright endangered her life. Professor Utonium never excluded her from family outings.
Part of it, I think is that Professor Utonium knew that Buttercup didn’t really feel as comfortable being all emotionally vulnerable and sentimental as her sisters because she liked to be “the tough one,” so he let her.
However, Buttercup definitely did tend to get the short end of the stick in her centrics, and sometimes it seemed like no one was there to emotionally support her when she was down, including her family. I really wanted more scenes like this between Buttercup and her dad in her centric episodes, particularly in ones where she wasn’t really doing anything wrong, and could have used emotional support because she was feeling insecure, such as “Cover Up” and “Nuthin’ Special.” She actually got that emotional support here from her dad when she was feeling bad about her clay monster coming to life, even though it wasn’t her fault at all. That emotional support from family and friends was something that I felt we didn’t get enough of in the classic PPG Buttercup centric episodes of the cartoon nearly enough, great as it usually was most of the time.
