Mr. Moseby Driving Lesson / PRNDL

About

Mr. Moseby Driving Lesson or PRNDL refers to a scene from the Disney Channel original series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody in which the character Mr. Moseby (played by actor Phill Lewis) tries to teach London Tipton (Brenda Song) how to drive, during which she calls the automatic gear shift "the PRNDL." The scene originally aired in June 2005 but was popularized on Tumblr, YouTube and Reddit in the following years, sparking image macros, memes, comic strips and other memetic content based on the scene throughout the 2010s and 2020s.

Origin

On June 6th, 2005, the episode "Cody Goes to Camp" from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody series aired on television.^[1] In a particular scene, Mr. Moseby is teaching London Tipton how to drive but she is not familiar with a car's features and calls the automatic gear shift "the PRNDL," which actually stands for the letters designating Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Low. The earliest online mention of the scene was uploaded on July 17th, 2007, by YouTube^[2] user @xDEATHNASTYx, which amassed more than 5.3 million views and 202,000 likes in 17 years (seen below).

Spread

A few years later, on August 26th, 2014, 9GAG user @ahmednaim99^[3] posted a strip of the scene (shown below, left), which amassed over 25,000 upvotes and 380 comments in a decade. On August 10th, X^[4] user @introvertsmemes posted the image of a gear shift paired with the caption "because of London Tipton I will forever call this the prndl." The post (shown below, right) amassed more than 2,000 likes and 1,200 retweets in a decade.

On July 27th, 2023, actress and TikToker^[5] @mayanlopez recreated the scene alongside actor Phill Lewis. The video (shown below), amassed more than 9 million plays and 1.3 million likes in almost a year.

Related Memes

It's The Law

It's The Law refers to a memorable quote uttered by Mr. Moseby moments after the "PRNDL" scene. The quote is used alongside a frame from the show depicting Moseby’s character shouting, “It’s the law” as a reaction image and exploitable image macro.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References