Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Episode 16, Part 2: Doug's on TV

This episode begins with a visit from Aunt Betty Anne. She works at a tv station in Bloatsburg and barely gets any time off, so a visit from her is pretty special!

She has great news! Doug's going to be on tv! Finally! After all of these fantasies about tv shows! This will be great! Doug's going to love this! See?

After the title animation, we go right to fantasy. It's great.

Fuck yes! It's a basic late night talk show format. The Doug Funnie Show even has a great announcer!

She doesn't even get a special wardrobe for this shit. I'd make a joke about how she got the job by sleeping with the star of the show, but I know that even in his fantasy he wouldn't make her do that. I'm actually almost surprised he wasn't the announcer for her late night talk show. He's just so pathetic.

Anyway, as his aunt said he was going to be on tv, not "I got you a show that's going to be named after you because YOU'RE THE HOST!" this fantasy is just more crazy to throw on the pile.

When Doug comes out of the fantasy, his aunt tells him what show he's going to be on. It's a little show called Cowpoke Pete's Kiddie Corral. That name should be enough to tell you that Doug is too old for it. It's a show for little kids, and Doug is a regular kid. Doug, of course, imagines what it's going to be like going on the show.

The host comes out and announces that this week, you'll get to see Doug Funnie! The biggest little baby in the world!

"AIN'T THAT RIGHT, FLAPJACK!"

Flapjack is that clown. Typical sidekick. Flapjack is a bit of a dick and he honks his stupid horn in Doug's face a few times. That shit's loud. And then for no explainable reason (other than "this is happening in Doug's mind"), Doug blows up like a balloon.

And floats up into the rafters, screaming like a baby. WHY!? Doug, until this point, your fantasy was totally believable. They probably would make an 11 year old put on a bonnet and diaper. They probably would make an 11 year old sit in a high chair. They probably would blow a stupid horn in an 11 year old's face. They will never be able to fill you up with helium in this manner. It is not possible.

So later Doug is telling Skeeter about the whole thing when Aunt Betty Anne intrudes and asks if Skeeter will go on the show with Doug. He makes up an excuse about having all of his teeth drilled that day, but Doug insists. Damn, Doug. Skeeter had the perfect excuse. It's somehow more polite to say you're getting all of your teeth drilled than to say you're simply too old for the show. Damn.

But Skeeter at least has a plan...even if it's just this lazy.

He apologizes to Doug for only being able to find one disguise. And boy, what a great disguise. Instead of looking like a kid that's just too old to be here, he's going for that creepy, old pedophile in the children's show audience look.

And what is this anyway? I thought Doug was going to be on tv. He's just sitting in the crowd. Well, Cowpoke Pete's Kiddie Corral has this thing where Pete throws his hat into the crowd and whoever catches it gets to come down and play Romper Roundup! The hat lands on Doug's head. The show is fixed. What a bunch of horse shit. The rest of the other kids should've yelled "shenanigans!"

As Doug is getting up, Skeeter reassures him that no one their age will be watching it. It's a kids' show. Well...people channel surf. And Roger and his friends happened to be channel surfing at that moment and they noticed Doug.


Roger gets up and puts a tape in the vcr.

To Doug's credit, this is almost as bad as the diaper thing. Look at that stupid little hat.

Pete asks for Doug's name, then disregards it entirely by giving him the great nickname Hoss. Anyway, Doug does the whole thing, which is tedious to describe, so here's some pictures of it.

Fake horse throws him into some mud.

Then there's a quick shot of him chasing a pig, but I didn't bother to get a screenshot of it because it doesn't show him catch it or anything. Then he hog ties Flapjack.

The end. Cowpoke Pete mentions some prizes and says all Romper Roundup contestants get a free tape of their performance! SWEET!

After the show, Aunt Betty Anne takes Doug and Skeeter to the Honkerburger for dinner. Pretty nice of her, but she's going to have to do a lot more than that to make up for this shit.

And guess who walks in.

He kindly informs Doug of his plan to show the entire school the video tomorrow. Then he exits the building after saying one last thing.

"If I were you, I'd bring a saddle to school tomorrow...cause the kids are gonna be riding you all day!"
Doug takes this literally. STEP RIGHT UP!

Best Roger alter-ego ever.

Damn right that's what he meant, Doug! DAMN RIGHT! There's no other possible meaning to it.
After this fantasy, Aunt Betty Anne sits down and asks if she's ever met Roger because he looks familiar. Oh well...

At school the next day, Roger is gathering people outside of the A/V room for the big premier. Doug walks up and begs him not to show it, and then Aunt Betty Anne runs up (violating school policy that visitors must sign in) and says she's glad Roger is there too!

You see, Roger was on the show last year and never got his copy of the tape! She brought it.

Roger says his stupid grandma made him do it because she still thinks he's two. What is with these stupid relatives?

After school, Doug and Roger get together for a special viewing of their tapes.

Stinky eventually walks up and fights with Porkchop over the bowl of popcorn that Doug clearly made just for Porkchop. Stupid cat. Oh, and the videos?

This is probably safe.

Wait...shouldn't there be 3 tapes? Cowboy Roger's official tape, the tape Roger recorded of Hoss' performance, and the official one Hoss got from the show? Who is holding back here?

So, Aunt Betty Anne should probably be fired right? She works on Kiddie Corral. They don't say what her job is, but she clearly doesn't understand kids at all. If it's her job to find the kid contestants, why does she let kids that are twice the standard audience age go on? Did she take a bribe from Roger's grandmother? This is a crazy old lonely woman that can't tell the difference between 5 year olds and 11 year olds. Why doesn't anyone tell her this? I can understand her family not wanting to hurt her feelings, but surely Cowpoke Pete said something about this to her later.

At least she's just a little proof that Doug's brand of crazy is genetic. At least some of his crazy is genetic.

1 comment:

  1. I kinda assume she was some sort of production coordinator for the show, but the reason why she bothered getting Doug on the show, I dunno. I often think of how when WGN in Chicago had on Bozo the Clown back in the day, it was said they had a waiting list going back 10 years for those that wanted to get their kids on the show. I guess if they had written that into this episode that Doug's family put him on that list for that long, it would've made some sense there.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bozo_Show

    This episode of course spoofed the type of programs that were once a stable of local TV until the end of the last century. This was the basic kiddie show that ran either weekdays or weekends depending on schedule, usually hosted by a guy playing a cowboy, clown or space cadet who did nothing but tell jokes, feature guest performances and show cartoons. Most viewers younger than me would never seen anything like this besides the one nod on the Simpsons for "Krusty the Klown".

    These types of shows eventually ended when programming tastes and politics changed dramatically to where we are today (where hardly anything kid-related airs on terrestrial airwaves), you're lucky if a local station in your town still does the news at all.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9WcmZPwuko
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGIfuTgI5KU
    http://66.231.15.194/captain11/index.cfm
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1PMd15iRo
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PegkGpgHBYk
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fFv_o6AWCI

    Wait...shouldn't there be 3 tapes? Cowboy Roger's official tape, the tape Roger recorded of Hoss' performance, and the official one Hoss got from the show? Who is holding back here?

    Who knows, either Roger destroyed the tape back at school or Doug didn't receive his copy back at the TV station previous, whatever. Clumsy writing.

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