Episode 37, Part 2: Doug is Hamburger Boy

"At exactly 5:32 AM last Monday, the sun came up. The first place it hit was the top of Bluffco Industries, the highest point in Bluffington."

"It raced into town along Cooper's Road. Shot down Main St. Took a right at the corner of Vine and Jumbo. And at 5:34 and 45 seconds exactly, after 9 solid months of waiting, the first day of summer vacation reached 21 Jumbo St."

Is this really what Doug was doing at 5:34 in the morning on the first Monday in a long time that he didn't have to wake up early? I appreciate Doug's poetic attempt to describe the beginning of summer break. He's weirdly specific though, and it's either OCD or the idea that if he makes it detailed enough, he'll actually believe his own writing.

This is what Doug and Skeeter are doing on the first day of summer. They found an Action Marty burial ground. Skeeter has dug a hole a couple of feet deep in the Funnie's yard, and Doug is sifting through the dirt, because they might miss something as large as an action figure if they don't sift through the dirt. Arguably, this is a good start to the summer. Who doesn't like digging holes and pretending the trash you find is gold? Seriously.

As you can see, Mr. Dink has popped up behind them and wants to talk to Doug about something. Alone. Buzz off, Skeeter. Later...

In Mr. Dink's house, he pulls a lever on the side of the fireplace that reveals a hiding space for the book you see in the above picture. He hands it to Doug who turns a few pages and asks...

"A cookbook, Mr. Dink?"

No! Obviously! It's pictures of a guy in a fucking hamburger costume. How is that a cookbook? I know you've seen a cookbook before, Doug.

Mr. Dink goes on to explain that he has been Hamburger Boy for the first week of every summer since he was Doug's age. Even as an old man, he's getting into this 40+ year old hamburger costume and parading around. It's a huge secret that presumably only Mrs. Dink knows about. I guess no one else ever bothered to ask (because really, who cares?).

Doug says he can't believe Mr. Dink was the guy waving cars into the Honkerburger every summer, and he has a very specific memory about it where this happens.

And the kids inside laugh.

But it's hard to place when this memory happened. Doug hasn't aged since he moved to Bluffington. He did become friends with Skeeter on his first day in Bluffington, so it's possible that they moved there during the first week of last summer and they had a good laugh and then blah blah blah, here we are. But the way Doug talks about it now makes it seem like he thinks he's lived his entire life in Bluffington. "I never had any idea that all that time I was laughing at Mr. Dink."

It doesn't help that Mr. Dink just showed him a scrapbook of photos of Hamburger Boy and he thought it was a cookbook. All this time, you've been laughing your ass off at Hamburger Boy, but here are some pictures and suddenly you have amnesia. Or you're a cannibal. Take your pick.

Unfortunately, this summer, Mr. Dink has to go away on business and can't be Hamburger Boy and Doug..."you've been like a son to me." He needs someone to fill in for him.

Yeah, who's laughing now, amnesiac?

In his room, Doug tells Porkchop he's "involved in a major suit. Only for one week." He won't even tell his dog! Mr. Dink makes him swear to keep the secret.

I'm just going to go ahead and say this suit looks like the most uncomfortable thing ever. It's very short. Lower the top bun and Doug has no room for his head.

This is the beginning of the Hamburger Boy festivities. Like Santa or the Easter Bunny, parents line up with their kids for terrific photo opportunities.

It is completely baffling that this is a thing people actually do with their kids. Is anyone surprised when the kid is terrified? It's a talking hamburger sitting on a grill. What are kids supposed to think after years of telling them to avoid strangers when you plop them down in the lap of a total stranger in a psychotic costume?

After this little whiny douche, Skeeter puts Dale in Doug's lap. Dale immediately just starts calling him Doug. Skeeter says that's Hamburger Boy, not Doug and then Doug gets to overhear a conversation between Skeeter and Patti about himself.

Probably something a little unethical about this. Patti asks him where Doug is anyway. "I thought you guys were going penny-diving in the school fountain today." I fucking love Doug and Skeeter's summer activities. Skeeter says that Porkchop doesn't even know where Doug is. This implies that he actually went to Porkchop and asked. Pretty sad, if you think about it.

Patti eventually does find Doug on Friday while he's on break. He's sitting in the Honkerburger enjoying the feeling of not having small children on his lap. She asks him where he's been and his answer is "oh, yeah...well..." Then he notices the huge line outside waiting for Hamburger Boy and runs off. Before he escapes, she asks him if he would like to go to the picnic tomorrow with her and Skeeter, at Lucky Duck Lake. He stops dead in his tracks, turns around and says, "why sure, Patti" while hearts burst around his head.

Unfortunately he forgot he has to be Hamburger Boy at the picnic tomorrow. He decides he's going to try both and figures out his Hamburger Boy schedule to the exact second. For example, after giving out the award for underwater freeze tag, aka "how 7 children died at the Hamburger Boy Picnic," he would have exactly eight minutes and thirty second before he had to give out the watermelon float ribbons, whatever that is. So he gives the award to the kid that didn't drown playing underwater freeze tag, and runs off.

He catches up with Patti, Skeeter, Dale, and Porkchop and Dale immediately starts calling him burger. He's with them for exactly twelve seconds before he hears a gunshot and asks, "what was that?" Skeeter guesses it was just the start of one of the races. Doug runs off to put the suit back on. I suppose he forgot to calculate how long it takes to change out of the suit when he planned the day down to the second.

He runs by the contestants of whatever race it was and does the bare minimum of his job by sticking a ribbon to one of them and goes to change back when he realizes he's lost his pants.

How did he lose his pants?

Dale is the worst person ever. Well, he can't just go running after him in his underwear. It's not as bad as going balls out, but people are still going to frown on chasing a small child in your underwear. Before he gets a chance to put the burger suit back on, Patti spots him. He hides behind some bushes.

She says they saved him a space in their canoe. When he shows reluctance to join them, she asks, "what's the matter?" He says, "I just remembered something I have to do." He runs off, somehow hiding the fact that he's not wearing pants, and she walks away confused.

He puts the Hamburger Boy suit back on and tracks down Dale. Dale is sitting in the playground, under a sort of cage inaccessible to a guy in a giant burger costume. Dale taunts Doug. Dale is the worst person ever. Then some other asshole kid drops ice cream into the eye-hole of the suit, which causes Doug to walk backwards where he trips in a hole some girl dug in the sand, and he lands at the bottom of the slide. Several kids take the opportunity to slide down and bounce off Hamburger Boy.

Kids are the worst people ever.

Dale starts taunting him again and Doug chases him, finally catching him and having a tug-of-war with the pants. Porkchop sees this and decides to intervene on Dale's behalf.

In the canoe, Skeeter says he thinks Doug hates him. Patti says he doesn't, but she thinks she knows what he's been doing all this time. Then they see Porkchop chasing Hamburger Boy. The chase causes the most ridiculous chain reaction ever. First, Al stands up in the canoe to see the chase, causing it to tip over.

Patti sees this and jumps into action to save them.

Al swims over to Skeeter and tries to climb into the canoe, but tips it over too.

Patti pulls moo up by the hair.

And Skeeter and Al, showing that they are incapable of learning a lesson, try to climb in another canoe and tip it over.

Doug sees his friends (and those two unnamed background characters) drowning in the lake and swims out to save them in what is apparently a suit that floats, instead of soaking up water and drowning whoever is wearing it.

For some reason, Porkchop followed Hamburger Boy out into the lake, and then needs to be saved too.

On shore, Doug quickly grabs his pants and runs off into the woods before anyone can say anything to him. Before Doug shows up, the news vans have already arrived and are interviewing people about the accident. When he shows up, Skeeter asks him where he was, and he says, "oh, I was..."

Then Patti says, "You don't need to say it, Doug. I figured out your secret."
"Uh...secret?"
"Why you were gone all the time. But don't worry, I won't tell anybody."
"You guessed, huh?"
"It was pretty obvious. You shouldn't be embarrassed about it though. A lot of people don't know how to swim."

How ridiculously wrong can you be? How did she come to this conclusion? Doug is strangely absent all week. Can't swim! He missed penny-diving in the school fountain. Can't swim! He didn't want to get in your fucking canoe. Can't swim!

Hamburger Boy dominates the news. There's a little footage of him running into the woods. The narrator asks who was he, where did he come from, and why was he carrying those pants. Mr. Dink is proud. Patti turns off her tv, then says, "hmmm, I wonder. Nah, couldn't be."

So, Patti apparently thinks, for just a second, that maybe Doug was Hamburger Boy, but then rejects the idea as ridiculous.

But unless Doug is outside her house, being a peeping tom, he's just making this part up for his journal. He's insulting both of them too. First, Patti is apparently too dumb to figure out something so obvious. Second, he believes her opinion of him is so low that she couldn't figure it out because it doesn't make sense to her that he can swim and wear a burger costume.

There's a lot of weird shit going on in this episode. There's the false memory/amnesia thing, and the weird hints that maybe Patti and Skeeter are dating. She's always hanging out with Skeeter. She's with him in line for Dale to meeter Hamburger Boy. She invites Doug to join them at the picnic. She invites Doug to join them on the canoe. She invites Doug to be their third wheel. It makes the whole episode feel like Doug noticed what was going on and made up excuses to avoid the situation, and the best excuse he could think of was that he had to put on a hamburger costume and save six kids from drowning, which also doesn't make sense.

Al and Moo are supposed to be smart. Al tips over their canoe. Patti swims to save Moo, but is incapable of swimming him ashore. Al, like a kid that just can't learn that fire burns, tips over another canoe, which he swam to instead of swimming ashore. Then with Skeeter's help, he tips over another canoe. Al is smarter than this. Skeeter isn't, but Al certainly is. All of the kids are capable of treading water apparently, but none of them are able to swim ashore. They need the giant floating hamburger to grab onto. Who knows how much of this is Doug's imagination or exaggeration?