Episode 20, Part 1: Doug Battles the Rulemeister

Time for another Quailman episode! This one begins with Roger and his goons convincing Doug to put some polka-dotted underpants on the statue of the town founder for something he calls "school anniversary day."

Let's take a look at that statue...

What? So the school has a statue of the town founder, nude, holding a book that says "KNOW LEGE" on it? Who or what is lege? Bluffington is the perfect town for a mentally deranged boy to get all the "knowlege" he'll ever need.

Anyway, Doug is easily convinced and starts to slip the underpants over the statue's head when his friends walk up and, of course, wonder what the fuck he's doing.

They laugh at him when he says he's just helping out for school anniversary day. Damn Roger and his made-up bullshit!

Then the statue starts to fall and everyone (Roger included) quickly move to stop it when Mr. Bone catches them!

Mr. Bone gets out his big rule book to look up the punishment for tampering with school property. His rule book is surprisingly specific.

And that's rule 47? That was so important it was the 47th rule Mr. Bone thought of when he made his rule book? Wonderful.

So the punishment is detention. Saturday detention. For all of them, because they were all in and around the act of putting polka-dotted underwear on the statue. Highly unreasonable. They saved the fucking statue.

Everyone is pissed at Doug for ruining their weekend. Even Roger. Jackass.

Doug quickly occupies his time by wondering how Quailman would deal with all the silly, pointless rules that Mr. Bone has made up. And we begin this part of the episode with the excitement of checking the mail in the Thicket of Solitude.

I always figured Quailman would have a P.O. Box, so his secret hideout would be...you know...secret. But what's this!?

What a bunch of stupid garbage. According to Quailman, it looks like the Rulemeister is up to his old tricks again! He flies with Quaildog to the mall to investigate. After reading a poster that says "Obey the rules or else" inside the mall, he turns around and this is what's happening.

Apparently one of the rules is that you have to stand on your head at 3:00. That is silly and pointless!!!
Quailman: "Someone has to stand up to the Rulemeister and just say 'no' to silly and pointless rules."
Beebe: "Wow. What a super hero!" (perhaps Doug went through a Beebe phase and didn't tell his journal/us. It's odd that Patti isn't the one saying this)
"I'll take care of him. But first, time for some ice cold nourishment! Come, Quaildog!"

No urgency whatsoever. Everyone is being forced to stand on their head and do other stupid shit, but fuck that. I want some frozen cheese. Oh yeah...that's what he's eating. Frozen cheese. Is that a thing? Sounds awful.

Anyway, the clerk comes and gives Quailman his quailchange and starts hopping around like a jackass.

We have stumbled onto yet another rule. "When you give someone change, you have to hop up and down." Hmmm. Silly and pointless, indeed.

In the evil Rulemeister's lair, he takes note of the fact that Quailman is completely ignoring all of the rules. Perhaps this is why there was no immediate need to stop him. It's not affecting Quailman yet. Everyone else? Yeah. But fuck them. And fuck the rules. Well, it's time to punish everyone because of Quailman.

"My precious weekend blaster will speed up the Earth's rotation from Friday to Monday!"

Don't worry, nerds. The Rulemeister simply misspoke. His weekend blaster doesn't speed up the Earth's rotation. That wouldn't get rid of the weekend. That would add days and make them shorter. The weekend blaster speeds up the orbit, and there's a wacky shot demonstrating this.

Anyway, the weekend blaster works!

I guess when the Rulemeister used his weekend blaster to remove days from the year, everyone just agreed that it would be all the weekend days, instead of just having fewer 7-day weeks in the year. After all, that is what the Rulemeister wanted when he got rid of those days.

Back in the Thicket of Solitude, Quailman is checking his answering machine (full of messages from people he was supposed to hang out with over the weekend confused because they couldn't find the weekend) and his calendar which he went ahead and adjusted to fit the new format.

Well now it's time to do something about the Rulemeister! He was only affecting those who followed his silly and pointless rules before. Now he's taken the weekend away and Quailman was supposed to play golf with the mayor this weekend! Time for action! They sneak into his evil lair and surprise him.

He solves this problem by making up another rule and claiming they're breaking it!

Checkmate!

Well, two can play at that game. Quailman decides to finally read the rule book. He reads it backwards for some reason.

He found one that the Rulemeister was breaking. Rule #1,987,642
"All socks must match at all times, except on weekends."

Defeated, the Rulemeister allows Quailman to disable the weekend blaster.

Usuing the instruction manual, he discovers that he can use the machine to add a day to the week. He decides he must make the weekends longer.

Best day ever?

Back in reality (which of course faded out from the fantasy with Mr. Bone repeatedly trying to get Doug's attention, and Doug so wrapped up in the fantasy that he called Mr. Bone "Rulemeister"), Mr. Bone confiscates the comic and tells Doug he's breaking another rule by drawing in detention.

Doug thinks about what Quailman would do, and asks if the rules apply to everyone, even Mr. Bone. Well, of course they do!

Fucked. The other kids look up the punishment for breaking that rule and find that Mr. Bone will also have Saturday detention. He's practically crying because this means he'll miss his yodeling class until Doug suggests a new rule. No more Saturday detention. Mr. Bone agrees and says, "last one out's a rotten egg!"

Everyone else runs out too. Except Doug. Doug must pick up his comic and hallucinate.

It is important to note that Doug fails to recognize that he's done something wrong. Being gullible enough to fall for Roger's tricks is no excuse. He was vandalizing school property and he almost destroyed it. But none of that is his fault. It's all Mr. Bone and his silly and pointless rules. I'm guessing his rule book isn't as specific as mentioning polka-dotted underwear on the statue. Mr. Bone probably saw a group of kids almost destroy school property. Or he probably saw a bunch of kids save school property from a stupid vandal trying to put underwear on a statue. It's possible he only punished Doug, and Doug wrote in his journal that he punished everyone to make it seem like Mr. Bone is the bad guy here, instead of himself.

Also, kudos on making your super hero behave so selfishly. Bravo.