I think about Piper's role in Broken Armed and Dangerous a lot.
By the time Season 5 rolls around, we've seen Piper start to mature, and her character is at a point once described by her actor as "less screaming, more scheming"; and it's true.
Piper seems to have mellowed out a bit and is growing up in front of our eyes. She's gone to JAM Sessions, dropped her older brother off at school, pursued creative interests like animatics and yet-to-be-revealed musical theater, tried to get a boyfriend, and from what was fascinatingly depicted in Car Trek, she's now bearing the brunt of family responsibilities as well.
In Broken Armed and Dangerous, at first, she's doing typical Piper things, like looking for boys with broken arms. Henry isn't even on her radar, but while she is dismissive as par for the course, she's also more observant of him than usual:
The delivery isn't unkind at all. It's soft, in fact, and almost caring in an "I'm looking out for you" kind of way. This doesn't scream bratty little sister at all; they're in the same school building, and in this interaction, they're almost peers.
I also (side tangent) want to talk about Piper's outfit a little. In earlier seasons, she is dressed very Little Girl™, she's got skirts and bows and graphic tees. By the end of the show, Piper is the trendiest middle schooler I've ever laid eyes on. Gonna assume her influencer life informs a lot of her style in S5. Anyway, this outfit is almost caught in between Little Piper and slightly less little Big Piper. Here she is, close, but not quite 13:
She has these cute, kiddy short overalls, fun, animal print pink sweater and long, knee-high schoolgirl socks, but the outfit is dressed up with curled hair, subtle makeup and some rockin' combat boots. Piper is in the middle of her transformation, breaking out of the periphery and bursting onto the scene (literally), about to take on the rest of her life. Even Henry, the main character, is on the sidelines here. But I digress.
Anyway, shortly after Piper lets Henry through with confidence, you can see the wheels start to turn when his fake arm gets accidentally pulled off:
Piper is the first person to spring to action here, and she starts off unsure, but quite honestly starts to look angry by the end. Henry can't even look her in the eye. I think he's so far gone with stress and depression at this point that he's just dissociating.
The dialogue for this gif is them talking over each other, but effectively, these are their lines:
Piper: Why were you wearing a fake arm?! What are you hiding? What's wrong with you?
Henry (a lot of stuttering): No, Piper, I'm not doing a-, I wasn't hiding anything!
Piper, multiple times in the series, has asked Henry, "what's wrong with you?", but never with such heightened emotion. The "what are you hiding," seems very charged as well, like she's trying to put a million pieces together. Where was Henry during Balloons of Doom? Or Car Trek? What was her perspective of these situations where she was seemingly alone? And Henry's instinct is to start to say, "I'm not doing anything wrong." If this were a teen show, the whole family would be asking if he was on drugs. I wonder what his parents and sister have probed him about these past four years.
Anyway, the last part that caught my attention was that you can hear Piper start to hyperventilate, she's figured it out long before Melvin says it out loud.
It's bookended by comedy, but there's a lot of turmoil and anger in Piper's reaction before her brain short circuits. I think she's grateful to have the Playground Pooper excuse to fall back on, but if you ask me, this was probably where the cracks turned into fissures. This is where resentment and confusion and being left on the outside of the world's biggest secret come to a head for our brave girl, who has saved Kid Danger's life and identity more than once by now. Even if she doesn't fully believe it, for me, this is where realization starts to kick in.
It makes sense that by the time Sister Twister rolls around a few months later, Piper is fully ready to join the action. In her heart of hearts, she already knows.
Just look at her cute little Rosie the Riveter headband. She can do it!
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