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?

Episode 37, Part 1: Doug's Shock Therapy

Mr. Bone is in the hospital. It's the end of the day and Ms. Wingo is making the class make cards for him. Her only instruction to the class is "write 'get well soon, Mr. Bone' in your own words." Doug does this expertly.

Doug is using those right-handed scissors with his left hand, which is always awkward and difficult. The blades are backwards and the handles are usually shaped to fit your right hand. Jamming your left hand in there and cutting a straight line is a frustrating affair. It really is just much easier to train yourself to use scissors with your right hand. But Doug seems to be doing okay.

Anyway, Ms. Wingo also needs someone to take the cards to the hospital for her. I guess she has better things to do with her car. Or she has a phobia involving hospitals. Whatever. All the kids run out of the class when the bell rings except Doug. He is too focused on cutting that shoe to notice the bell rang or that Ms. Wingo asked for a volunteer. Being the only one left, he has accidentally volunteered. If he had run out with the rest of the class, Ms. Wingo would've been fucked.

Oh neat. It's a get well card tree. Mr. Bone will love that. Before going in, Doug has a fantasy about why Mr. Bone is in the hospital. Apparently no one at the school knows.

Ah, the eyes in the back of the head surgery! This is terrifying. Mr. Bone says now he can keep his eyes on you hooligans at all times. Then he laughs the evil laugh and the fantasy ends. Doug thinks he lives in a world of cartoonish villainy. It's normal to speculate about why someone would be in the hospital, but normal people keep it real. A car accident or corrective surgery or some sort of illness. Doug thinks it might be radical surgery where you have new eyes put onto the back of your head.

Doug opens the door and announces his presence to a weak, frail-looking Mr. Bone. When he speaks, it sounds like he's hardly there. Like he's just had surgery and he's waking up. Like he has malaria and he's minutes away from death. He says he's fine. "As fine as someone can be who's about to..."

Oh, it hasn't happened yet. Maybe he has appendicitis and he's about to have surgery to remove it. Doug hides the card tree behind his back and tells Mr. Bone he has something to cheer him up. Mr. Bone assumes he means the skateboard and takes it.

Drugged-up bliss. He's just so happy someone's given him a real get well present, instead of a lousy card tree. Suddenly a nurse comes in and tells him to say goodbye. It's time to remove that wart. Doug asks, "a wart?" "From his little pinky."

Nope. I don't know what's really going on here, but Mr. Bone is not staying in the hospital to have a wart removed. Or this is a mental hospital. Doug just happened to catch him when he was scheduled to have a wart removed, but the main reason he's there is for a nervous breakdown.

Mr. Bone curls up with the skateboard, telling the nurse he's not ready yet. Don't cut him yet! He screams as she rolls him out of the room. Yes, Mr. Bone is crazy and is getting the help he needs. Take a lesson, Doug.

The next day at school, Doug is telling Skeeter about the whole thing. He only cares about the skateboard. He doesn't give a shit about Mr. Bone's mental health. He says he's just going to ask for the skateboard back. As he's asking, "what's Mr. Bone going to do with a skateboard," Mr. Bone yells, "cowabunga!"

Escaped mental patient! Also, love you Team YO guy. Wish you showed up more.

Mr. Bone skates up to Doug and Skeeter and demands a high five from Doug. "Come on, man. Don't leave me hanging! Lay some skin on me! EXCELLENT!" Then he tells Doug to come to his office. He has something to show him.

He's already got several skateboards, a guitar and amp, a pinball machine. Crazy Mr. Bone works fast. When Doug opens the door, Mr. Bone pulls a rope he's rigged up to dump ping pong balls on his head. So now he's playing pranks too. The first thing he tells Doug is that he wants everyone to call him T-Bone, like they used to when he was younger. Then he thanks Doug for saving his life. He didn't think he was going to make it through the "wartectomy" because he thought no one cared about him. He said he had a vision as they were putting him to sleep. He dreamed he was gliding back into the wonderful land of childhood.

Mr. Bone did not grow up in Bluffington, apparently.

All the kids are happy to see young T-Bone, as of course he Benjamin Button'd as he skated out of the hospital, into the land of childhood, towards the kids. They chant "we love T-Bone" and end up carrying him away. He says they played for hours and hours, with no adults telling them what to do. When he awoke, he was a changed man. He shakes Doug's hand with an electric buzzer, laughs and says, "from now on, we're gonna be great pals!"

Back in class, Ms. Wingo is apparently teaching Bavarian history. She says, "and then, King Ludwig of Bavaria went insane." Right after she says this, T-Bone interrupts over the intercom saying school is dismissed. All the kids quickly run out of the room. Ms. Wingo protests, "but it's only 11:30." T-Bone tells her to lighten up, and calls her a stick in the mud.

So everyone just got out of school before lunch. It's awesome. It's everyone's dream! They have the rest of the day to do whatever. Go wherever! Nevermind.

We'll just stand in a circle outside the school tossing a ball back and forth. Seriously though, they do discuss what to do with the rest of the day. The first and only suggestion comes from Doug. Go to the Honkerburger. I guess that's exciting. It beats school anyway. T-Bone overhears them and gets excited. He wants to go too. The other kids are less than thrilled about this new development and disperse immediately. So it's just T-Bone and Doug. Chilling at the Honkerburger. Making jokes. Acting like a walrus.

Doug keeps asking himself, "why me?" T-Bone is thoroughly embarrassing too. After the whole walrus thing, he smears ice cream on his forehead and asks Doug to pull his finger.

As Doug gets to school the next day, he sees Skeeter, Beebe, Boomer and Roger walking away, a little wet. He asks them what's going on and finds out they have the day off again. Mr. Bone declared it Skateboard Day! Then he hears some maniacal laughing coming from inside the school. He decides it would be better to just go ahead and leave, but they beg him to just keep being T-Bone's friend. Make him happy and maybe they'll keep getting days off school. As if T-Bone isn't just going to get fired if he keeps this up.

Doug opens the door and gets shot with water. T-Bone laughs. Then he proposes that they go skateboarding down Suicide Mountain. Doug says that's only for really good skateboarders. Mr. Bone and all the students within ear shot peer pressure Doug into going.

I thought this was a fantasy at first. It has that kind of feel to it. I also expected Suicide Mountain to be just the nickname of some notoriously dangerous stretch of road, but it's the name of this skate park/ramp thing. Bluffington is a weird place.

At the top of the ramp, Doug tries to talk T-Bone out of the whole thing. "This isn't like your dream. This is a real, 75 foot drop!" I guess it's easy for him to tell the difference between another person's fantasies and reality. Doug then has a fantasy about "the cost of keeping Mr. Bone happy."

There's a bucket of ping pong balls that he dumps on Doug's head. I don't know who set that up for him, or why he's having breakfast with the Funnies. Then there's this. Best Man T-Bone plays another prank.

Of course Doug is marrying Patti in this fantasy. Instead of the ring, he's got spring snakes. Well played, Sir.

I don't know why Doug wasn't wearing his teeth, but T-Bone gives him the teeth, and Doug finds out they are just the wind-up chattering teeth. Old man T-Bone laughs and laughs and laughs.

After the fantasy, Doug finally tells T-bone he didn't mean to give him the skateboard. He was giving him a bunch of get well cards and he just took the skateboard. T-Bone says, "in other words, you hate me!" Whoa there, buddy. That's not what he said at all. Not even close. Right after T-Bone tells Doug, "you can keep you dumb old skateboard," he accidentally rolls down the ramp.

When Doug visits Mr. Bone in the hospital this time, he's brought flowers from the class. He's not holding his skateboard.

Beautiful.

Mr. Bone thanks Doug, again. He's turning over a new leaf, again. From this day on, you're going to see a new Mr. Bone. "A Mr. Bone ready to face the world with a renewed sense of what school children really need."

"Skateboards?"

"DISCIPLINE!"

So Mr. Bone is back to normal. Sort of.

He's standing on a box yelling at the students. Anyone late to class for even a second will have that noted on their permanent record. That's normal Mr. Bone, for sure. "Hey mister! Those shoes could use a good shine! And you missy! Those earrings don't match!" Fashion advice is not discipline. Mr. Bone is closer to normal, but he's still clearly insane. Doug ends the episode with a wink at the fourth wall. He knows.

Or he doesn't know. It's hard to say if Doug ever picked up on why Mr. Bone really went to the hospital in the first place. I don't think he did. It's pretty clear that Mr. Bone completely lost touch with reality and never got it back though. Really though, he's a middle-aged single yodeling assistant principal with no chance of ever being promoted...it's no surprise he got tired of his situation and snapped. This episode is called Doug's Shock Therapy and it's not because Mr. Bone used a hand buzzer on Doug once. Mr. Bone probably had to have some ECT while he was in the hospital.

It would be nice if Doug recognized the reality of the situation. Maybe see some parallels between his frequent fantasies and Mr. Bone's fantasy into the land of childhood. Maybe see a connection between his stagnant relationship with Patti and Mr. Bone's stagnant life. Maybe if he saw these similarities and then picked up on the reality of Mr. Bone's situation, he'd make some changes and get some help. But he won't. He can't. That's not how his mind works.

"And then, King Ludwig of Bavaria went insane." Indeed.

Episode 36, Part 2: Doug's Nightmare on Jumbo Street

Everyone is going to see The Abnormal. "Nothing can describe its horror! Nothing can stop its terror! THE ABNORMAL!" Skeeter says he heard that Skunky Beaumont was so scared when he saw the movie, he didn't blink for 3 whole days. And you know Skunky. Solid as a rock. Nothing scares him. Unfortunately for Doug and Skeeter...

...Roger sneaking up, putting his hands on their shoulders and saying, "boo" is enough to make them scream in terror. After Roger and his goons have a good laugh, everyone files into the theater. It's time for The Abnormal.

Inside the theater, Roger and the goons continue to try to scare everyone. They form a multi-armed silhouette on the screen, scare Connie (and Doug), so Roger can say she's the biggest scaredy cat in school. Well, obviously, if you just made her scream by casting a shadow on the screen. It's hardly something to brag about to scare the person that's easiest to scare. Roger's problem, aside from rickets, is that he doesn't challenge himself. Make the crazy kid do something crazy. Scare the girl that is easily scared. This is just lazy and unsatisfying. Anyway, the movie is starting.

Most of the theater is already a little scared. Everyone is hunched over because the anticipation is the only really scary part of any movie. As a dog, Porkchop does not have the mental capacity to understand anticipation, and so he is not scared by the movie starting. He's just enjoying his gummy bunnies. Relaxing.

The movie begins and we only see a few scenes of it. A doctor and a police officer (presumably) are inspecting a building that has been destroyed. The doctor asks what could have done it, and the other guy gets really specific about it being a shape shifter from another planet here to collect humans for its zoo back home. The doctor asks how he knows all these things and the guy's all, "because, Doctor, I am...ABNORMAL!" Then his shadows shifts into something else and the doctor screams. The next scene has a nurse checking the doctor's blood pressure and she says, "doctor, your blood pressure is...ABNORMAL!"

So, The Abnormal is basically The Thing, but he landed in a city and is collecting humans to put in the zoo. He's got a doctor and a nurse now. Job well done, I say.

Roger complains that you never actually get to see the monster, only its shadow. His friend tells him you have to wait until the end. How did Roger not know this is how horror movies are supposed to work? Someone needs to brush up on his movie cliches.

The next scene is finally where the monster is revealed. I think this scene is a reference to the 1953 War of the Worlds. Some man and some woman see a farmhouse where the alien ship has just crashed and the guy says he's going in after the Abnormal. While inside, he gets distracted by a cat and the Abnormal has a chance to sneak up on him, and we're finally going to see the monster but then...

Connie.

I feel it is necessary to mention that there are frequent shots of the kids in the theater being scared by their anticipation of the monster. Porkchop however is reading a comic book or licking a sucker. Dogs couldn't technically watch movies projected on film anyway.

Doug says he couldn't stop thinking about the monster. "It was the scariest thing I had ever seen, and I didn't even see it!" He has his first nightmare about it. He's riding bikes with Skeeter when he warns him about the shape shifter. Right after Skeeter points out that it was just a movie, this happens.

His handlebars transform into arms. The shape shifting alien has taken the form of a bicycle! The weirdest thing happens though, as the alien-bike throws Skeeter off a cliff.

If you'll notice, the alien-bike has thrown itself off the cliff as well. The arms do come back, and the alien's shadow shifts into the shadow from the movie and it chases Doug around.


The next day, Doug asks Mr. Dink about nightmares. Mr. Dink says he used to have them all the time. They were about his fear of heights. He fell off a tree when he was a kid and started having nightmares about falling all the time. Finally he went back to the tree, climbed it, fell again, hit his head and hasn't had a dream since. And that explains everything you ever need to know about Mr. Dink. Seriously.

So Doug takes Mr. Dink's advice and decides to go see the movie again. Unfortunately, as he gets to the end where the monster is revealed, he again averts his eyes.

Hiding behind a box of gummy bunnies has to be the most pathetic thing ever. There are two kids sitting behind Doug that are younger than him, wearing The Abnormal t-shirts and loving every second of the movie. Outside Doug overhears them talking about how it's even better seeing the monster for the seventh time. Doug is utterly humiliated.

He has another nightmare.

So now the movie theater has been taken over by The Abnormal! Actually, everything seems to have been taken over by the Abnormal.

Even Porkchop.

The Abnormal Porkchop actually speaks here, giving a Johnny Carson/The Shining reference before Doug wakes up, screaming at his dog. For the rest of the night, he can't sleep.

So, for now at least, we can add insomnia to the list of contributors to Doug's psychosis. Doug really thinks he's playing cards with his dog all night.

At the mall, everyone is talking about the monster. Excitedly. Everyone's talk makes Doug feel like a loser, since he's apparently the only one that didn't see it. Even Connie says she was shocked because she was expecting it to look more like a giant lobster. Why, Connie? Are lobsters known for their shape shifting abilities? The shadow never looked anything like a lobster. Connie, this is why you're not allowed to speak very often.

Skeeter asks if Doug thought the monster was awesomely horrible or good queasy nauseous. Doug says, "both," leaving everyone dumbfounded as he walks away. Fair enough. It was a shitty question anyway.

Doug goes back to the theater, finding that today is the last day they'll be showing The Abnormal. Tomorrow, they're starting a Smash Adams movie called The Sting of the Asp. Doug doesn't want to wait for the movie to be released on vhs, so he decides to take this last chance to see it. As it comes to the scene with the reveal, Doug says, "ok Porkchop. Whatever I do, don't let me shut my eyes. Got it?"

Tying his hands down might work, but what about the eyelids, Porkchop?

Good. Finally. It's finally time to see this monster that's been causing all these crazy nightmares and keeping Doug awake.

...that's it? Doug is surprised by how stupid it is. He also points out the zipper in the back of the suit.

Fucking pathetic. This is supposed the be the scariest movie of all time. Skunky Beaumont didn't blink for three whole days! They can't even hide a zipper?

That night, Doug has another dream about the monster, only this time he points out that the Abnormal's zipper is showing. He unzips the suit and what's inside?

Hollywood is evil.

The next day, Doug is laughing and telling everyone in the park about the zipper. Apparently no one else noticed it because they also got too scared to look at the screen while the monster was there. Even Roger.

There is one last monster though.

Judy needs her beauty rest, and Doug is playing music too loud. Turn that shit off!

Doug really isn't that crazy in this episode. He learns to confront his fears. That's pretty good, I guess. Unfortunately, he paid to see a movie three times, and instead of realizing he just enjoyed it as it was intended to be enjoyed, he ruined the movie forever on the third viewing. It's hard to say whether he's better off. He'll never be able to enjoy that movie again, and he's out all the money he spent on tickets and gummy bunnies, because of course he bought gummy bunnies every time he saw the movie. He also bought tickets and gummy bunnies for his dog, who can't technically watch the movie, and probably has problems digesting the gummy bunnies. Overall, I give this episode a "Doug should not have done that."