Episode 42, Part 1: Doug Door to Door

This week's episode begins with the Bluffscouts' weekly meeting.

In the library. With cardboard trees. And cardboard fire illuminated by flashlights. And a librarian that insists they be quiet any time they get above a whisper. So, I'm just going to have to ask why? It's a club that is supposed to be all about the outdoors. I would understand if they were doing it just this once because of a terrible storm, but Doug says they have meetings there every week. This is truly pathetic.

This week's meeting is about preparing for summer camp, which I can only assume will be held in a museum. But seriously, Mr. Dink pulls out a thoroughly depressing photo-album to prove a point. The photos show the scouts bailing water out of their canoes, Doug and Skeeter treading water surrounded by shards of canoe, and Doug and Skeeter carrying a canoe that's simply broken in half. The point is obvious. To raise money to get new canoes, the Bluffscouts are having a door-to-door fundraising drive. Doug is not pleased.

Looking at the goal, Doug wonders how they're going to make enough money. Skeeter reminds him of what they had to sell last year (!?), "crummy Booster Bars." Doug thinks it would be cool if they got to sell something people would actually want and then has an infomercial fantasy called Astounding Products where he's selling the Bluffscout Pocket Knife-a-majig.

It's not just a simple knife. Sure, it has a simple knife. It also has scissors. Standard yawn material. But check this out. It also has a water purification system.

On top of that, it also has a satellite dish, a solar-powered washer/dryer, and perhaps most impressive of all, a toothpick. The fantasy ends with the audience shoving fistfuls of cash in Doug's face (like most infomercials) while he closes his eyes and grins big. The fantasy fades out and he's of course acting out the grin. He admits that the product they're going to sell doesn't have to be that great, just as long as it wasn't Bluffscout Booster Bars.

Of course. Everyone groans and Skeeter points out that everyone hates those bars. Doug says he could only sell one bar last year (!?) to himself. Mr. Dink tells them to think positive. For each patrol to get their canoe, each person only has to sell one box of Booster Bars. That's only 25 bars.

Phil and Theda are no help at all. Phil says 25 is an awful lot and asks, "don't we still have the one we bought last year?" Theda tells him to ask Judy. Judy says she won't get caught up in Doug's "bourgeois capitalist money-making scam." Doug says it's for charity and she points out that buying a canoe for some kids is hardly charity. Before she leaves, she says the Booster Bars taste like cement and suggests selling them to the neighbors. Apparently Doug didn't understand when Mr. Dink called this a "door-to-door fundraising drive" that he's supposed to go around the neighborhood selling the shit to his neighbors.

The first neighbor he goes to is thankfully not Mr. Dink. It's some old woman that can't hear for shit. After a lot of confusion and yelling, she agrees to buy some. But then she asks if they are Bluffscout Booster Bars and Doug says they are. She yells her disgust, says they taste like cement, and slams the door in Doug's face.

The next guy says he's already got a Bluffscout Booster Bar.

"Best doorstop I ever had, too."

There's a quick montage of Doug getting doors slammed in his face. The first time he gets out a whole sentence and then yells that it makes a good doorstop after the door is slammed in his face. With each new house, he says less and less until the last one all he gets out is the "he" of hello. People really do hate these Bluffscout Booster Bars. Or kids. It's possible they just don't want to be bothered at home. All this rejection finally triggers a fantasy of what's going to happen since he's just not going to be able to sell 25 bars.

First, the other patrols are going to sell their bars and get their new canoes. They're not getting the canoes Mr. Dink showed them at the beginning either. They are getting this!

Yes! They sold so many Bluffscout Booster Bars they bought this big ass dragon boat. Oh, and they brought a guest with them to camp!

"HEY DOUG!"

Pathetic. The wake from the super-fast dragon sailboat hits them and knocks them out of their Booster Bar box. Skeeter says, "thanks a lot, Doug." Chalky adds, "yeah." It's all Doug fault. He was the only one of those three that didn't live up to the expectations.

After the fantasy, Doug sees Roger selling bars to the doorstop guy. Doug is confused and starts following him.

He watches while Roger sells some to the deaf old lady that first slammed the door in his face. She has no problem at all hearing Roger. Roger compliments everything he can. Her clothes. Her house. When he pulls out the Bluffscout Booster Bar, she tells him she just told another scout no because they taste like cement. Roger blocks her from going back in the house and tells her they have a new formula this year. He offers her a free sample and she likes it. She buys the rest of Roger's bars.

Walking away from the old lady's house, Roger spots Doug and asks him about his sales. Doug asks him how he's getting people to buy them. Roger says it's all about presentation. Porkchop and Stinky are doing their little arguing thing, and Stinky runs over to Roger, grabs the chocolate bar he's using for the free samples, and throws it at Porkchop. Doug picks it up.

Obviously. It is rather curious that Roger left the original wrapper on the chocolate bar. He wanted to get caught. Doug calls it cheating. Roger says he's not cheating. He's just doing his Bluffscout duty. He starts to go on a crazy rant about selling chocolate.

Maybe if he didn't have the long sleeve uniform with pants, he'd get enough sunlight on his skin to produce enough vitamin D so he could fix that horrible case of rickets. Anyway...

"It came to me! Like a vision! This wasn't just for me! I was selling this chocolate for every kid who ever has, or ever will, put on a Bluffscout uniform! I would be cheating, not only myself, not only the Bluffscouts, but humanity itself, if I didn't do everything I could to move this chocolate!" Doug is so inspired he's hallucinating by the end of it. The sun has faded away and fireworks are exploding around Roger.

Doug might be having a seizure. Roger tells him he has to decide if he wants to be a zero or a hero. He has a fantasy at some monument to the Bluffscouts where a really old Mr. Dink is acting as a tour guide to some really young Bluffscouts. After talking about how Doug turned the whole troop around with his chocolate sales, Mr. Dink calls Doug a hero and points out the statue.

Quite the heroic pose. In the Bluffscout history books, Doug is going to take credit for Roger's sleazy idea, and they're going to put a quote from the time before he stole the sleazy idea on the statue of him. Makes perfect sense...

After the fantasy, Doug decides to go with it. Porkchop disapproves and argues with him (dogs are so moral), but Doug decides to do it anyway, for the good of the troop. Since he's standing in front of Mr. Swirly's house, then guess who his first sucker is.

Mr. Swirly is not as immediately dismissive as everyone else, but he does point out that he's already got more chocolate than he knows what to do with. Good choice, Doug. Sell candy to a guy that owns a candy and ice cream factory.

After Doug tells him it's for a good cause, he reconsiders. He asks if it's tasty and Doug gives him a piece of Roger's chocolate. Mr. Swirly loves it and offers to buy the whole box. This makes Doug feel bad and he offers a real Booster Bar for a taste test. Mr. Swirly takes a bite and is horrified. He says it tastes like cement and demands to know who makes this junk.

HA! Mr. Swirly wants to fix this so they hop in his ice cream truck and drive to the factory. Fast. I'm pretty sure Mr. Swirly was speeding and probably ran a few stop signs and red lights. This is a candy emergency though...

They go in the factory and look around. It's all typical automated production line factory bullshit until Mr. Swirly spots the problem.

There's a cement truck in the factory and a system of buckets is carrying cement over a big vat of chocolate. The system is shaky so the cement spills out of the buckets into the chocolate. This has been going on for years apparently. Where's the quality control? This is just so absurd. It looks like there's construction going on at the factory when Mr. Swirly drives up, so there seems to be a reason for the cement truck to be there, but why would they ever set up this horribly inefficient and dangerous way of getting the cement to where it needed to be? Mr. Swirly is trying to kill everyone in Bluffington. It was bad enough when he fed everyone ice cream that had chocolate chips chopped up by the air conditioning fans, but this is just criminal. It's cool though because Doug's a hero.

Mr. Swirly recalled all of the cement bars and sent the Bluffscouts new cement-free bars to sell, which is a dick move. The Bluffscouts have a reputation for selling the shittiest bars because of this guy. They go door to door and get rudely rejected because they're selling chocolate bars filled with cement. Mr. Swirly should buy them some fucking canoes, and then some. Mr. Swirly is either an evil jackass, or a total incompetent. Either way, he should be in jail at this point.

At the end, all the people Roger scammed come back to get him at the library. They demand their money back, and they want to buy the new chocolate bars from an honest Bluffscout. So they line up and Roger gives them their money, they walk over to Doug and use that money to buy chocolate bars. It's an exercise in publicly shaming Roger for his scam. Maybe he learned his lesson, but probably not.