Thursday, December 30, 2010

Episode 19, Part 2: Doug On His Own

This episode doesn't begin in the middle of a fantasy. Doug's parents are leaving with Mrs. Dink to chaperone Judy's school dance. They are leaving Doug home alone. Phil makes a big deal about the fact that a big storm is coming.

They give Doug a little bit of money and tell him to order a pizza, and then they leave. Mrs. Dink reminds him that Mr. Dink is right next door if anything goes wrong. This is how excited Doug is about the whole thing.

He can jump higher off the ground than a dog.

So then there's a short montage of things Doug and Porkchop do to celebrate having the house to themselves. First, it's a little Risky Business.

Please note that Doug actually had to take off his pants to do this. This wasn't something he did in the morning when he woke up, before he could be bothered to get dressed.

Since Porkchop has a small carton here, I'm going to assume Doug gave him the creamer to drink. Doug is a dick. Also, gross. Especially to let the dog drink straight out of the container. Throw that shit away.

This is just good fun.

And now it's time to order the pizza from Speedy Pizza.

He orders one with everything on it. Yeah...

While they wait for the shittiest pizza ever, Doug turns on the tv.

Probably a good choice for the first time he's home alone, during a storm.

The setup in the Freak Out Theatre movie is the same as this episode. The blue Doug character makes a comment about how great it is to have the house to himself, and then reveals that the dog's name is Cutlet. Get it?

Then suddenly there's a knock on the door. The blue Doug is hesitant to answer it because it might be that bandit. What bandit? Who knows? But it actually is the bandit. The bandit says he's from Express Telegram.
Then, impossibly, a gutter drain on the house taps the bandit on the shoulder and eats him.

It's just a movie, so whatever. But then Doug gets really into it. He starts freaking out, yelling at the blue Doug to get out of the house before it eats him too! And then...well...

Shit.

Shiiiiiiiit. He was doing so good too. He had only ordered a really shitty pizza and ruined a quart of half and half until now. Oh well. Time for the house to come alive.

At this point, it's hard to say if this is happening in the movie, or if Doug's imagination has taken over the plot of the movie and he's just imagining this is happening in the movie. Either is possible. Have you ever seen Death Bed?

Anyway, they're surrounded.

Doug calls on Porkchop, because he apparently has the tv remote.

The picture fades out to show Doug staring blankly from the couch.

This is Doug gasping for air, as he apparently stopped breathing during this freak out. Not a good sign.

He turns off the tv and then the pizza arrives.

Why are there two of them? This pizza place sucks. How incompetent! Doug says it took them over an hour. Terrible business. I would not tip or order from these stupid fuckers again.

Oh, but Doug is still freaked out by the movie, so like the crazy little shithead he is, he refuses to open the door for them. He makes them pass the pizza slice by slice through the mail slot.

This is gross as shit. You don't know where those delivery boys hands have been. And the mail slot on your front door can't be that clean, and even if it is, it's that Pledge kind of clean that you don't want to taste. This is also entirely unnecessary. It's good that he's cautious about strangers at the door, but once he knows it's the pizza guys, shouldn't he stop being such an unreasonable dick and just open the door?

Later, Skeeter calls to talk about how the power is out at his house. He's watching tv by candlelight. Even Doug points out how stupid that is. Then Skeeter complains about the commercials.

And then right after Doug says, "well, at least our phones are working," the phones go out.

Doug follows that up with, "what more can go wrong?" He says this in a way that implies a lot of stuff has gone wrong. The only thing that's gone wrong is he was an unreasonable dick to the busy pizza guys and he had a mild psychotic episode...

Well now the power is out.

Fuck. Doug grabs a flashlight to go down to the basement to reset the circuit breakers. Time for another psychotic freakout.

A coat and hat turn into Frankenstein's monster.

Then more stuff in the basement comes to life.

And more stuff...

They're all walking towards him, telling him to get out of their house while he still can! So naturally he grabs the monster version of the vacuum and hits the Frankenstein with it.

And this fades to...

Right. It's just ordinary stuff. Way to show that hat and probably break the vacuum, crazy asshole.

So he finds the circuit breaker and flips one switch and nothing happens. No big surprise there. But then he hears footsteps upstairs. Now would be a pretty reasonable time to freak out. The mysterious steps make their way over to the basement door. Doug freaks out, trips over something, drops the flashlight and gets trapped under some boxes. The basement door opens and a man starts coming down the stairs. He steps on a dog toy (a real dog toy. the kind that squeaks. the kind Porkchop would never play with), freaks out and falls into the laundry. Porkchop picks up the flashlight.

Of course. But seriously, what an asshole. Maybe during Doug's freak out in the basement, he just didn't hear Mr. Dink knock on the door or ring the doorbell. Entirely possible. But he did still creep through the house without calling out for Doug. It's creepy.

As it turns out, Mr. Dink is actually more scared of the storm than Doug is. He offers to stay with Doug if he's scared, but Doug declines until he realizes Mr. Dink is actually the one that's scared. So they start a fire in the fire place and make stupid shadow puppets.

There's one last crazy moment before the end. Porkchop is popping popcorn over the fire and it explodes.

They catch the popcorn in their mouths. Most of it is just wasted though. But seriously...Doug, this is not how popcorn works.

That's it though. I like that this episode is mostly Doug just being Doug. This does reveal that Doug has a sort of superiority complex as well. His interactions with others is proof of that. He criticizes the Speedy Pizza guys for their slowness based on one delivery. Who knows? It might be a really busy night, full of unreasonable dicks that refuse to answer the door and waste their time passing slices through a mail slot. He has a brief conversation with Skeeter, who is acting more ridiculous than Doug. As stupid as Doug is being, at least he's not complaining about the commercials in the tv programming he's imagining. And he may have attacked a coat rack with a vacuum, but at least he's not scared to be alone because of some lightning, unlike his adult neighbor!

Yeah, Doug's pretty badass, compared to the incompetent, slow, idiotic, scared wimps around him.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Episode 19, Part 1; Doug's Derby Dilemma


The beginning fantasy begins with a snake calmly taking a nap in the road. Everything starts to rumble and the snake gets scared. Then it gets the fuck out of the road to make room for what?

Oh, it's a race. There are two people in each car for reasons that are never explained.

So what's this episode about?

Oooh, first annual! Never heard of Mt. Saint Buster, but I bet it's awesome shit, especially for a downhill rally. And there's a special mystery prize? Sign me up!

Excited from the poster, all of the kids in Bluffington walk to city hall. Apparently that's where they have to sign up for the rally. Pretty fucking weird.

Oh, cool. Mayor Bob White is actually the one running the rally! So cool to see him doing stuff for the kids! He announces the prizes to baffling applause.

This is what second and third place get. Trophies of the mayor. Shitty prize. Roger criticizes them and guesses that first place gets an even bigger trophy of the mayor. He's wrong. What Mayor Bob White says next throws the town's children into a frenzy. First place gets the "top secret mystery grand prize!"

HOLY SHIT! A MYSTERY PRIZE! After seeing the other two prizes and how awesome they were, can you begin to imagine the excitement the kids are feeling? This is going to be great!

Pretty weird how the mayor is actually running the sign-ups too. Is he the only one that works in city hall or what? So up in that picture, Roger and Doug are arguing about who is going to win the prize, like you do. Doug wins the argument by laughing about his rickets and spitting on him.

At Doug's house, Doug and Skeeter are working on their rally car. Don't ask me why they are working together. It's never explained. Apparently people are allowed to partner up and make two-seaters. So they've drawn some potential models. My favorite is Doug's.

That's right. Doug plans to use the aerodynamic perfection of the avocado, which he has spelled "avacado."

Step 1: Nail toilet seat to a wooden crate.

After they finish making a big piece of shit, they fantasize about the mystery prize. Doug hopes it might be a 40 speed mountain bike.

What the fuck is that coming out of the middle of the handlebars? Who knows what Doug thinks he can do with a 40 speed bike, but what we do know is that he could've just as easily imagined it being a bike with a motor on it so he didn't have to pedal. Doug would rather shift through 40 gears and pedal. This is still better than Skeeter's idea.

"A whole new wardrobe." Really, Skeeter? This would be a terrible prize, especially if you just got 20 of the same outfit.

And Doug imagines another potential prize.

"A night on the town for two!" I like that they both imagine a prize that they will not split with the other. They could maybe share the 40 speed mountain bike. Doug isn't going to start dressing like Skeeter. And though there's two of them, Doug would take the prize and take out Patti, because free dinner for the guy that helped make the racer is stupid.

So, Roger comes along and tells them that Chalky and Beebe must've stolen their design because they have one that looks just like theirs! THE BASTARDS! The run off to see what's up, and Roger pulls out a screwdriver.

That doesn't look anything like Doug and Skeeter's. Security catches them.

Chalky and Beebe accuse them of trying to steal their plans! So she insists that the car engineers her father hired start over and security gets tighter so that no one can see their racer before the race! Good thinking.
So Doug and Skeeter go back and admire their fine work.

Look at this pathetic piece of shit. Why did they put those open cans on there to look like headlights? They serve no function. They aren't going to be able to steer. What is the broom for? Is that the brakes? Fuck. Doug and Skeeter are going to die if they try to race this down a mountain. No matter. It spontaneously falls apart and a sign saying "SUCKERS" pops out!

Damn, Roger. At least they weren't going down the mountain when this happened.

Mr. Dink lets them build a new one in his shed because he has very expensive, top of the line security.

This looks so much better than their first attempt. Still have the unnecessary headlights, but it looks like Roger did them a huge favor. Suddenly, the security system goes off and lets them know Patti is outside!

She just wants to borrow a hammer. Doug decides to let her in and then the process of opening the door begins. There are several layers of doors and when they finish opening, Patti isn't there.

Oh, she just used the unlocked side door. What a great security system. Really shows you how incompetent Doug, Skeeter and Mr. Dink are.

It's time to race. Here's where it's taking place.

Yeah, it's got loops and shit.

Poorchop is apparently a race official.


The race begins!

Beebe and Chalky take the lead quickly. With Doug and Skeeter in second, Roger gets up next to them and starts grinding his wheels against theirs. This triggers a quick, standard fantasy from Doug.

Roger starts to cut them off, but gets turned sideways and their racer cuts off the nose of his racer (his racer looks like his head, you'll see).

But still, way ahead, Chalky decides to go ahead and celebrate their win with some music.

Chalky is completely useless. Why is he a part of this team? Her dad hired the people that made the damn thing. Beebe is driving it. And that's not the fucking "play music button." Illogically, it's the airbag button. They could've just had no button at all. That would have made sense.

Fucked.

Doug and Skeeter notice that they need help and stop to free them. Then other people stop to help them.

The air bag keeps inflating and floats away.

Roger wins. Oh, and Porkchop gets to wave the checkered flag too!? Mayor Bob White must really be hurting for some fucking help. He had to plan and promote this stupid fucking thing all by himself. I wonder how much he paid Porkchop for the small amount of help he provided. So what was the top secret mystery prize that everyone went fucking nuts about? The winner gets to be "vice mayor" for a week!

This means he gets to write the mayors letters for him, apparently. I guess when you can't afford a secretary (because your town pays their taxes in beets and wishes), you just make up some stupid competition that will allow you to use child labor for a week.

We end illogically. Doug reads about a dog sled race.

I don't think any of this actually happened. There might have been an actual race announced by the mayor, but Doug didn't enter it. Possibly because his parents won't let him near any of the tools he needs to make a racer. Danger to himself and others sort of thing. Then at the end of the episode, after Doug has written out this fantasy where he got to make 2 racers and act honorably, he talks to his ukulele playing dog about entering a dog sled race.

It just makes more sense to dismiss this episode as entirely the fantasy of a crazy kid, than to accept that the mayor runs the entire town on his own, Beebe's dad hired engineers so she could win what would be, at best, a $20 prize, Patti didn't own a hammer and had to borrow one from Doug, the avocado model existed, Mt. Saint Buster has physically impossible roads, and air bags can keep filling up and fly away.