Episode 11, Part 1; Doug's Cookin'

This episode begins and ends with strange fantasies Doug has about cooking. Doug is at school in home economics class when someone's cooking gets out of control and attacks Patti!

That's okay, because Doug and Porkchop (who really shouldn't be there because he's a dog. Ms. Wingo isn't being paid to teach your dog how to cook...) grab some armor and weapons and attack!

They are overtaken and the fantasy ends.
Then the real story begins with Ms. Wingo announcing that they will have a bake off tomorrow. The girls are excited...

The boys boo and complain...

Ms. Wingo says she has decided on partners for everyone and announces them. First up is Skeeter and Beebe. While everyone is whooping at this, and Roger is asking if they're going to bake a wedding cake (is there some romantic background that Doug has so far failed to tell us about?), Doug goes into fantasy land. He reasons that the bake off might be exciting because he can make an excellent grilled cheese sandwich. So naturally, his fantasy is that he's the host of yet another tv show.

He puts cheese between bread and cooks it to much applause.

Right, Doug. Everyone would be impressed that you were able to competently make a sandwich. Patti would be impressed the most. While he is posing with his masterpiece, his fantasy is interrupted...

And fade to reality, where Ms. Wingo has apparently been trying to get his attention for a minute or so...

Does no one ever think there's something wrong with Doug when he acts out his daydreams? Everyone daydreamed at school, but if any of your classmates frequently did it to this extent, it would've been pointed out. Anyway, Doug has been paired up with Patti, who doesn't seem too thrilled about this...

Doug quickly asks why she doesn't want to be his partner and she says it isn't him. It's just that she can't cook. Aww. She says the one time she's tried cooking she filled her whole house with smoke. Then, to Doug's joy, she suggests they get together that night to practice at his house. This also causes him to fret about what they could cook together.

Here's a wonderful moment as Doug flips through cookbooks for a recipe. Doug has taught porkchop how to use a stool, hold a glass, and turn on and off the water so he can get his own damn water when he's thirsty. Oh, and those cookbooks Doug is looking through?

Really fucking obsessed with cheese sandwiches. After looking through all four books and finding nothing, he asks Porkchop what to do. Surprisingly, Porkchop has a suggestion...

Of course. Go ask Mr. Dink. He'll have some cookbooks. Well, he does, but he spends the entire time showing Doug his very expensive automatic cooking machine that prepares whatever he wants. It's called Julia and talks like Julia Child. He asks the machine for a milkshake to demonstrate how awesome it is, but Julia points out he just had one and spits out a carrot for him instead. Doug takes the carrot and a cookbook and gets an idea.

He'll make a carrot cake with Patti. And that's when she shows up, apparently as soon as she finished with basketball practice.

She quickly demonstrates to Doug how useless she is as a cook. She just doesn't pay attention to what she's doing. First she pours the milk...

Then she pours too much flour...

Then Doug tells her to separate the eggs...

And finally she turns on the mixer before sticking it into the bowl, causing everything to go everywhere.

Shit, if she'd stop fucking around with that dirty basketball, she might be able to pay enough attention to do one thing right. Then something happens I don't know how to explain. Porkchop turns on the tv.

For no apparent reason, Porkchop walks into the kitchen and turns on the tv. Why doesn't he watch a tv in another room? Why doesn't he stay in the kitchen after he turns it on? Is Porkchop Doug's Tyler Durden and is this his way of making a move on Marla Singer? Whatever. Appropriately enough the tv stays on this loop of a man spinning some pizza dough exactly how Patti is spinning the basketball.

This is too obvious for even Doug to miss...

Of course. Just make a pizza. It combines Doug's love of cheese and bread with Patti's basketball skills.

The next day they make what looks like a standard pepperoni pizza. Patti continues spinning it after it has sauce and cheese on it. I don't know why.
Meanwhile, Beebe is barking orders at Skeeter, who passes out once their cake is in the oven. Roger (who was teamed up with Ms. Wingo) had 6 bananas for a pudding recipe that called for 8, and so he just subtracted two from everything. It turned into a goopy mess that Roger was going to throw away.
Doug and Patti pull their pizza out of the oven and as they're carrying it back to their work station, Roger is running with his failed pudding when his hat falls down into his face. There's no explanation for why Roger is suddenly running with his pudding, or why he doesn't just stop when his hat falls and covers his eyes. Roger is just too retarded. Anyway, he bumps into Doug and Patti and their pizza goes flying...

Fucking Roger. How can you even run with that horrible case of rickets?

Oh, it seems to be okay...

Fucked. Doug and Patti pick it up and leave the room defeated. But not before they put it down next to Head Astronaut Skeeter Valentine.

He comes running after them saying everyone loves the pizza they made.

Ms. Wingo asks them how they came up with something so original and delicious and Doug says "I guess you could say it was an accident." Roger gets no credit for his dumbass contribution.
And then Doug finishes up his journal entry with a snack.

He's just dipped a banana in a can of pizza sauce. This is hardly the same thing as what they made in class. Where's the bread, cheese and pepperoni? Where's the rest of the ingredients to the aborted banana pudding?
Like I said, this episode also ends with a fantasy. This time, Porkchop has caused a massive cooking disaster.


The fantasy at the beginning sort of makes sense after you know what happens. Doug has to save Patti from her terrible cooking. Very simple. He imagines he's some sort of knight. It doesn't make sense that in that fantasy, he fails and is over run by the mysterious blob from the oven. That's not how shit turned out in reality. He saved her and they got A's. This fantasy at the end is just weird and unwarranted. Is it a warning to everyone? Don't let your dog cook? It isn't framed up as a fantasy either. Are we supposed to take it as reality and the Funnie's house was totally ruined when Doug let the dog cook? Why can't Doug just write his stories in his journal without making up all this bullshit about an anthropomorphic dog getting glasses of water, impersonating neighbors, turning on tvs, and cooking shit? The more this type of thing appears in Doug's journal, the more inclined I am to believe that he believes it actually happened.
As for his relationship with Patti here, well...why didn't he take the opportunity to finally ask her out? He just helped her with the one thing she sucks at, and she said the two of them made a great team, and he was just like, "Yeah, we are." Wasted opportunity.