Rodrick Rules

As the talent show approaches, Rowley decides to do a magic act with a first grader from his karate class named Scotty Douglas. Rodrick is excited to perform with his band, and since it’s their first time to play in front of a crowd, he hopes they will get noticed. However, Greg notices that Rodrick’s band has spent their last few practices playing with their new echo pedal instead of rehearsing. Greg invites Rowley to spend the night one Friday, but Mrs. Heffley insists that Greg and Rowley include Manny in their activities. Greg thinks his mother wants Manny to watch them for her, which means that Greg and Rowley can’t watch horror movies like they planned. Rowley keeps kicking a pillow across the room and yelling “Booh-yah!” as a joke, but Greg decides to play a prank and puts one of Mr. Heffley’s dumbbells under the pillow. When Rowley kicks it, he hurts his toe and Mrs. Heffley has to drive him home. Greg threatens to run away from home if Manny tells their mom what happened and how Greg was the one responsible for Rowley’s injury, but Manny is unbothered.

The next day, Manny tattles on Greg and tells Mrs. Heffley about what happened with the dumbbell. Greg’s mother calls Rowley’s parents and learns that Rowley’s big toe is broken, and now he can’t make the Talent Show tryouts with Scotty Douglas. Greg’s mother insists that Greg will be “HAPPY to fill in for Rowley at the tryouts” (187), despite his protests. Greg starts practicing with Scotty and learns that he will be Scotty’s assistant, and he will have to wear a sequin-covered costume. Greg is temporarily relieved when he and Scotty don’t make it into the talent show, but to his surprise, Rodrick and his band make the cut. Rodrick’s science teacher rejects his project idea because it doesn’t use the scientific method, and when Mr. Heffley says that Rodrick needs to skip the talent show and focus on school, Rodrick refuses. Rodrick believes that if he wins the talent show, he can drop out of school and start performing full-time.

On the night of the Talent Show, Greg wonders if it was a good idea to combine the elementary, middle, and high schools for the performances, because there are a lot of performances that take a long time. Rodrick’s band is the last to go, and although he asks Greg to record the performance, Greg refuses because Rodrick has been such a jerk to him. Mrs. Heffley records the show instead. Rodrick’s band doesn’t win, and when they watch the recording of their performance, they are horrified to see that “the camera was shaking around so much that you couldn’t even see anything” (202). When the recording of the Talent Show is shown on TV the next day, Rodrick and his band are completely overshadowed by Mrs. Heffley, who started dancing during their song and caught the attention of the person recording the performance. Rodrick is furious that he doesn’t have any good footage to send to record companies, and he blames Greg for refusing to film the performance in the first place. Greg and Rodrick fight, and although their parents separate them and send them to their rooms, Rodrick later tells Greg that his “secret [is] out” (205). Greg realizes that Rodrick has told all of his friends with younger siblings about the embarrassing thing that happened to Greg over the summer, and Greg decides to write the truth about what happened.

Greg explains how over the summer, he and Rodrick were staying with Grandpa when Rodrick stole Greg’s journal, but Greg managed to get it back and ran to hide in the bathroom of the Leisure Towers lobby. However, Greg accidentally hid in the women’s bathroom, and Rodrick saw the whole thing on Grandpa’s TV, which was still tuned in to the security camera footage in the lobby. At school the next day, Greg is shocked to discover that he has become “the most popular kid in school” (215), because the details of the story have been changed through its numerous retellings. The students believe that Greg infiltrated the girls’ locker room of the high school, and Greg basks in his newfound fame around school. Meanwhile, the video of Greg’s mom dancing at the Talent Show goes viral, and Rodrick’s band suddenly gets more attention than it planned for. Rodrick is humiliated, and Greg feels bad enough for Rodrick that he decides to help him work on his new Science Fair project.