Episode 26, Part 1: Doug's Lost Weekend

In this opening fantasy, Doug is a fighter pilot chosen to save the people of some made up planet from the chipmunk people.

See? Ready to go!

The story begins with Doug and Skeeter at the mall. They are window-shopping a store called Computer Junkie, and decide to go in. Doug picks up a game and tv plot #209 happens.

He didn't even buy anything. His prize is a brand new Super Pretendo with the latest game, Spacemunks.

The game is unfortunately not called Spacemonks. It would be more interesting if Doug was killing monks in space, rather than chipmunks. Anyway, the game is supposed to be a Star Wars parody, and the entire game appears to be nothing more than flying a ship around, shooting nutcracker-shaped spaceships.

Doug and Skeeter get it hooked up and waste the rest of the night playing. Doug goes first, and immediately goes into fantasy mode.

Even though Skeeter is right there, he still imagines that Porkchop is his co-pilot. Look at him there, all cute in his little car seat. The three of them take turns (yes, of course Porkchop gets turns) until the screen in Doug's fantasy ship starts to malfunction.

"Doug?"

"Can you tell us the answer to the question?"

"Oh...uh..." Doug looks down at his book, looking for an answer. He finds the only bold word on the page and says, "the governor?"
"The governor clogs up the Noodle River?"

Roger laughs his ass off at Doug.

This causes a very quick fantasy, which again distracts Doug from Ms. Wingo's questions.

Rockets fly in and blow up Roger. The Super Pretendo is clearly exacerbating Doug's problems.
Ms. Wingo asks if he did his homework and he admits that he forgot. Then she reminds him about his report on silt that will be due on Monday.

At home, he's playing the game again, and right after his fantasy commander promotes him to Major, the commander's voice changes into a woman's.

Judy changed the channel, and it took a few lines of Shakespeare on Ice for Doug to be broken from his fantasy.

She's clearly getting joy from screwing with his mind.

Skeeter leaves and Doug decides to get started on his big report on silt. Sitting down in the kitchen, he starts hallucinating. Dripping water from the faucet sounds like lasers.

He turns it off and picks up what is apparently a magazine (or one of those picture-heavy books you can expect to find in elementary and middle school libraries) about silt.

But, oh shit...that changes too. A rocket flies out of the cover.

The rocket, followed by two more, flies around his head until he decides he should just go to sleep.

Finding that he is unable to sleep, he decides to play the game again. Until 5 am. The next day at school he is barely able to stay awake. Patti finds him outside after school and asks if he'd like to study with her at the library this weekend.

This is what he sees the entire time she's talking, and he agrees to meet her at the library later, but it really doesn't seem like he heard anything she said. He's way too tired and all he can think about is murdering chipmunks in space.

That conversation kicks off what Doug called his "lost weekend." He immediately went home and started playing Spacemunks. Eventually Skeeter came over and asked for a turn, but being the addict that he is, Doug kept saying "one more turn, and then you can play." His family looked in on him once, which is apparently the extent of their concern. They didn't say anything. They just look at him because...look at him. What a crazy kid.

Finally, Doug beat the game. He destroyed the mothership. There are no more chipmunks in space. Doug has murdered them all. Time to get to work on that silt report!

Nope. He's still stuck. All he has is "silt is." It's sad. He wakes up at 10 am, realizes he's late for school, grabs all of his shit and takes off. Outside of the school he has one more fantasy.

He's basically a homeless drug addict now. He wanders back into Computer Junkie to beg for one more game. The store throws him out, as that is what drug dealers do to the junkies that come to beg because they have no money.

After the fantasy he notices Mr. Bone is walking his way and he hides in a dumpster. Then Skeeter walks by to the throw away his juice box and Doug calls him into hiding as well.

Skeeter happily jumps into the dumpster, always excited to go on another adventure! Doug explains that he didn't do his report and Skeeter explains that it's Sunday. Ha!

Realizing he has another day, and remembering that he promised to meet Patti at the library, he takes off.

So, he was able to get his report done. And he got to study with Patti. But video games sure are bad. And his parents don't seem to give a shit about him. He determined to put the Super Pretendo away when he got home but someone else is addicted now.

This episode is just more proof that his parents aren't there. They show up just to gawk at the guy that is fantasizing about flying a spaceship around, murdering chipmunks. It is a kind of low point for Doug when Patti asks to study with him and all he can think about is the game. He isn't even excited about the study date. His obsession with the game brought on several visual hallucinations and at least one (possibly two) auditory hallucination. Doug could possibly be diagnosed with schizophrenia based on this episode alone. Instead, he just learned about silt.

By the way, silt is awesome. I'm pretty sure that's what Doug was going to say with his opening sentence. Also, can you imagine grading more than one paper about silt? Ms. Wingo is torturing herself. Think of all the strange ways 11 year old kids are going to reword the definition of silt so as to avoid accusations of plagiarism. And then what are they going to say about silt? It's not exactly a topic that can be stretched to much length without getting into dreadfully boring territory.