Episode 46, Part 2: Doug Clobbers Patti

Doug starts this episode with a fantasy. He explains he's always wanted to be a winner. "To be the best. To be on top!" In this boxing fantasy, Doug is the best. He's the 67.5 pound champion "Fast-fist" Funnie. The crowd cheers for him. Doug has a problem though. His challenger is Patti Mayonnaise. The crowd boos her.

I feel like co-ed middle school boxing would be a huge hit on television. If any of you are tv producers looking for a new show, let's do this.

So anyway, the fight starts and Doug says, "Patti, do you think we could talk about this?" He doesn't want to fight the girl he secretly loves. She's throwing punches at him and he's dodging them without trouble. He turns to the ref to ask if they can call off the fight, but when he does so, he throws up his hands and accidentally hits Patti in the face.

She's not even trying to block or dodge this non-punch. Doug knocks her out with one effortless accident. Patti is a shitty boxer.

Or Porkchop is an amazing trainer.

After the fantasy, Doug explains that everything started with a game of bowling. We see Skeeter knock down one pin and celebrate the fact that he's finally on the board. Doug says, "keep this up and you be into double-digits in no time," and gives him a high-five. This may be setting the bar too high for Bluffington's future head astronaut.

As Doug is getting ready for his turn, he asks Patti what he would need to do to win this game. She looks at the scorecard where we see she has won 3 games already (and that was actually the first pin Skeeter has knocked down all day), and tells Doug he might have a chance if he gets strikes for the rest of the game. Challenge accepted.

And met. Doug starts throwing strikes and Patti keeps up with him until Doug's success starts to throw her off. She throws a gutter-ball and Doug finishes her off. Announcing the scores, Skeeter has no shame in loudly proclaiming that he rolled a 7. Patti rolled 128 and Doug beat her with 130. I guess Skeeter's attitude is somewhat commendable. He knows it's just a game that doesn't matter. So he only knocked down 7 pins in four games? Bowling clearly isn't his thing and it doesn't bother him. Unfortunately, winning is Patti's thing and she's very obviously upset that she lost one game. Doug and Skeeter don't pick up on this at all. Skeeter suggests that Doug buy them a victory shake at the Honkerburger, which is ridiculous since Patti is still the overall winner.

At the Honkerburger, Skeeter is telling Beebe about Doug's narrow victory because he's oblivious. Doug tries to downplay it, and Patti challenges him to a game of Moon Dog. "Loser buys the next shakes." Shakes after every game means kids in Bluffington are fatter than Doug is letting on.

Patti plays first and kicks ass. Doug compliments her playing and she responds by saying he has to score 99,000,000 to beat her. Challenge accepted.

And met. Sort of.

It's not actually 99,000,000, but then he only really needed 9,000,000 to win. Patti's 8th score is somehow higher than her 7th score. This game is weird and Doug's math tutor is maybe not so good with numbers. Also, she may have an addiction. Or this game sucks and she's the only one that plays it. Before Doug is even finished celebrating, Patti leaves and the crowd quickly disperses. Skeeter tells Doug that she said she had to leave, but she left money for the shake.

The next day at school, Doug sees Patti in the gym throwing free throws and missing every one. Chalky pops in to tell Doug she couldn't kick a straight ball at soccer practice either. Doug confronts her to ask if she's mad. She says she's not mad, just cursed. "It's like I lost my touch or something. I mean, I hardly lose at anything, especially to you. No offense." No, offense taken.

Doug suggests they play something else and throws a basketball right into the basket.

I think he did it to get back at her for her shitty attitude. Doug is a perfectly competent bowler and sometimes obsessive about video games. He's going to beat you sometimes, and blaming your loss on some bullshit curse diminishes his abilities. You can't be a dick and say, "no offense," and expect that to make it okay, especially when the person you're being a dick to is just trying to make you feel better. Anyway, Doug suggests they play Bonko-Ball (?) because she always creams him when they play that. She agrees, as long as he doesn't just let her win.

Doug wins, of course. Doug says, "Patti? It wasn't...I just...hehehe, good game?" She responds to this by angrily kicking the ball and stomping away like a child.

To be fair, she is still a child.

At lunch, Doug is telling Skeeter he wasn't actually trying to win. He says he hopes Patti doesn't think he was trying to make her look like a fool. He hopes she knows the truth. He hopes she knows he thinks she's the most wonderful person in the world. He has a fantasy. It's the basic beauty pageant set-up, but it's about the most wonderful person in the world, because that's a thing.

And Ms. Ho-Ho has a chance. The announcer opens the envelope and says, "and the winner is...Patti Mayo-wait! Hold on a minute! This is highly unusual! The winner is...the guy in the front row, 3 chairs from the left!" It's Doug.

He walks on stage, they give him his pimp-robe, and he presumably leaves with Ms. Ho-Ho to start a life of crime.

After the fantasy, Doug assumes Patti thinks he's the "most jerkiest person in the world." Skeeter says it's like Doug is charmed or something. He's never seen anyone as lucky as Doug. Skeeter tries to salt some of his lunch while he's talking but ends up spilling the whole shaker on his tray, and this gives Doug an idea. He reasons that if his luck ran out, Patti could cream him again. So they're off to the junkyard to find a mirror.

Skeeter is unsure of this plan. 7 years of bad luck is a long time. Doug says it's for a good cause before he smashes it. They head to the hardware store and set up 7 ladders.

Doug charges underneath all of them happily. Doug asks if that would be enough bad luck. Skeeter is unsure and suggests calling his grandma. "She could make you really unlucky!" Apparently Skeeter's grandmother knows a thing or two about giving yourself bad luck. This is her plan.

You can't see it, but he also has mashed potatoes in his pockets. The instructions also make him turn around three times while whistling "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." He does it and Skeeter asks if that was enough. Doug says, "I don't know. I guess we'll just have to wait and find out." Then he takes a step out of the washtub and this happens.

He falls on his ass in the tub and they both celebrate. The mashed potatoes worked!

After that, they went searching for Patti. Her dad told them she was at the bowling alley and then this happened on the way there.

Being clumsy is not the same as being unlucky. Stepping on a rake and riding your bike into the curb are just unfortunate accidents a more competent person would have avoided. If Doug was just unlucky, he would have been struck by lightening and killed the minute he stepped outside.
Actually, when he gets up from the bushes after his bike wreck, a car drives by and splashes mud on him. That's unlucky if you don't consider the possibility that the driver of that car was just deliberately being a dick.

At the bowling alley, Doug immediately challenges her to a game before dropping a ball on his foot. She accepts and starts throwing strikes. Doug throws what looks to be a gutter-ball, but it curves back and ends up being a strike. Patti gets another strike. Holding the ball behind his back, Doug turns away from the lane and lets the ball go. Another strike. Bowling is one of the easiest games to lose, and Doug is too incompetent to pull that off. Patti is sweating by the end of the game when Skeeter announces that she needs a strike to win. Doug decides it's time to finally talk to her about how meaningless this whole thing is.

"Listen, Patti. You know, it doesn't matter if you win or lose this thing. It's just a stupid game. This doesn't prove that I'm better than you or you're better than me."
"I know, Doug, but..."
"NO 'BUTS!" That last ball doesn't matter. Win or lose, I still think you're the most wonderful girl in the whole world."

Flattered, Patti finally agrees with Doug and casually throws the ball down the lane without looking. They start to walk away from the whole thing because she finally realizes it doesn't matter, but her ball knocks down all the pins.

She's as gracious in victory as she has been in defeat this entire episode. She has learned nothing.

Doug went about this all wrong. He thinks his winning streak is due to an abundance of good luck, but he's just wrong. His winning was making the girl he loves miserable, which in turn was making him miserable. It literally affects his appearance. You can see the anxiety in his face throughout most of this episode.

Those lines under his eyes are there any time he's commiserating about this situation. It would be good luck if he actually wanted to win. If we're to assume luck is an actual thing, then what Doug is experiencing is bad luck. It's bad luck that he's winning, bad luck that it makes Patti feel shitty, bad luck that Patti's shitty mood makes him feel shitty, and bad luck that he's in love with this awful person.

This episode is exactly what a romantic relationship between the two would be every month or so. She would win everything all the time, which is boring, until Doug accidentally wins something (game, argument, whatever) and she would get annoyed, give him a backhanded insult, and then mope for weeks until they were both so miserable that Doug ends up sacrificing a goat to some god in the hopes that it may take this horrible, abusive woman and make her be fun again. It would never be a healthy relationship. He can never outshine her even a little. She would never be able to be happy for Doug's successes, and then neither would Doug. At the beginning of the episode, he says he's always wanted to be a winner. He's always wanted to be the best. With her, he wants to be a loser.