Yes, the pink guy is Larry. The weird looking pink guy finally has a name. Anyway, Roger throws the hat and it lands on Doug's pencil as he's drawing a picture of Quailman crossing the street. Not paying attention, Doug grabs the hat and holds it up so the owner can come claim it.
Larry assumes Doug is part of the teasing and gets pissed at him. At school, the kids have gathered around Doug and Larry right outside the bus. The bus driver should be fired. Letting students stand in the aisle and tease another student, and then fight right outside the bus...what is wrong with this person?
Doug is trying to calm Larry down when Larry hits him in the face.
Forced with no other choice, Doug hits him back and knocks him to the ground. The fight is over.
After the title screen, Doug has a fantasy. The setting is the roughest bar you've ever seen. People are fighting over nothing. One guy at the bar finishes his beer and then eats the mug. But then old One Punch walks in. The bar tender tells a guy wearing an eye patch to move. His stool is reserved for someone else. Who?
Old One Punch.
After the fantasy, something even more absurd is happening in reality.
Really? Doug beat up an AV nerd and these people are celebrating it this much? That's like killing a puppy and then shamelessly bragging about it in a job interview where you're begging that AV nerd you beat up to let you work at his company.
On the way home, Skeeter is impressed, but not so impressed that he's carrying Doug on his shoulders. Mr. Dink and Phil overhear them discussing the fight.
Phil immediately assumes the good dad role for once. He says, "show me a man who resorts to violence, and I'll show you a man who's run out of good ideas." Good advice. Mr. Dink takes the opposite route and encourages him. He says Doug should know how to defend himself and gives him advice. Then he asks Doug to give him his best shot. Doug punches him in the stomach. Seriously.
I don't know why neither of these adults asked for the details on this fight, especially the dad. He gives good advice, yeah, but he doesn't know that Larry punched him first, or that Larry is a weak AV nerd that didn't deserve a beating even if he did punch first.
Also, why didn't Phil already know about the fight? Doug got in a fight at school. It started on the school bus. Why didn't Mr. Bone get involved? Bluffington: 1st in beet sales. Last in schools.
Anyway, Theda calls out to Doug saying he has a phone call. It's Larry. He's still pissed, apparently. Doug tries to apologize, but Larry will have none of it. The next day at school, the AV nerds have done their worst.
"Pavid vermin" might be the weirdest insult ever. If I was Doug, I'd have that poster framed. The others are less interesting. There's also this...
That locker-puppet pops out and says, "Larry says Doug is a wimp." This sets off another fantasy where Doug reinvents the past. He's thinking about how Larry started the whole thing and he didn't even want to fight.
Oh shit, look at the AV nerd grow!
Giant Larry throws several punches which Doug blocks with his finger, then Doug throws one punch and the fantasy ends. That's right, Doug. That's just how it happened.
So Doug is pissed again. He goes to the AV room and tells Larry's friends (Elmo, Lincoln, and Brian) that he's looking for Larry. They hide in the AV room.
At lunch, Doug has cooled down again. He's back to where he just wants to clear everything up. Then the AV nerds strike again. As shitty as the school is about discipline, they are set up to have Mr. Bone deliver the daily lunch menu via televised announcement. Well, the AV nerds interrupt the announcement to announce that Doug Funnie is a phony. "A lousy, no-good, rotten, sucker-punching phony. And if he knows what's good for him, he'll stay away from the audio visual room."
Naturally, Doug heads straight to the audio visual room. Just to be clear, there are four AV nerds that just threatened Doug, and he decided to go straight for them. No hesitation. That should hurt their feelings more than getting knocked out by one punch. The prospect of a 4-on-1 fight is nothing, even to Doug, because they're just AV nerds. Sad.
Doug tells Skeeter to watch the door.
Again, where are the teachers? Where is Mr. Bone? What is wrong with this school?
Inside, Larry is hiding in the shittiest hiding spot of all time.
Is that even a hiding spot?
Yes, apparently it is. Doug walks right by. This is more pathetic than hiding behind a chair. Way to go, Doug.
Larry finally reveals himself and says, "ok, Doug. Beat me up if you have to."
"Have to? Larry, you made me look like a fool in front of everybody."
"Well, actually, it was my AV friends who did it, but...go ahead. Clobber me."
"Your friends? Why?"
"Well, they thought I made the AV club look stupid when you punched me. So they tried to make you fight again so I could...win? But I can't. So if you could just make it quick."
Now they're stuck where they both have to fight. If Larry doesn't fight, he'll be thrown out of the AV club. If Doug doesn't, everybody will think he's chicken.
He's hallucinating, Larry. YOU DON'T STAND A CHANCE! RUN!
Oh wait, what was the advice? "Show me a man who resorts to violence, and I'll show you a man who's run out of good ideas." Shit.
So Doug asks if Larry knows how they interrupted the announcement. He gets Skeeter to tell all the people waiting outside to go to the shop class to see the broadcast of the fight. There's not enough room in the AV room for everyone.
They put on a fake fight, and then cut out the video so they can stop pretending. The spectators can still hear the audio, but that's easier to fake.
Skeeter does a great job making fight sounds, even if it just sounds like Skeeter fighting himself in a garbage can. There is one problem though.
Only Skeeter could wrap his arms around himself this many times.
This episode is actually a bit of a relief. It is good proof that Doug really isn't violent. He's crazy with frequent delusions, and a tendency to revise history, but totally unprovoked violence doesn't appear to be a problem. He could still be a danger to himself and others though. Just wait until he starts driving and he has his first fantasy of being a racecar driver while he's driving.
My sincere apologies to all former AV club members that read this. I was never a part of your club, but I am sick of the the AV club nerd stereotype. Also, I need a job, and if your company is hiring, you should totally give me a job. I've got a great story about this one time, I found this puppy in a ditch....
A story for another time, perhaps.
I kinda like noticing an animation camera stand in the A/V room in this episode, wasn't sure they were into that sort of thing or not, but certainly a thing of the past given how things have gone digital these days.
ReplyDeleteDoug sure has a problem with just explaining the situation. All he needed to tell Larry was that the hat just came to him and he was simply looking for someone to claim it.
ReplyDeleteAnd Mr. Bone comes out of nowhere to stop Doug and Roger's fight yet he and the teachers are no where to be found here? Wow
To be fair, it isn't really clear when the fight actually happened. It might've been 15 or 20 minutes after school ended (ie. when most of the teachers and faculty had already gone home), at which the lack of intervention would be a little more understandable.
ReplyDeleteI love how, on so many of these kid shows, fights are these epic affairs that always end with somebody triumphantly winning (to the adoration of the rest of the school) and the other person being shamed for the rest of his school life. Usually, in real life, a fight is just this ridiculously clumsy brawl that ends either when a teacher intervenes or both kids are too exhausted to continue. In other words, there isn't even any real "winner" or "loser." The kids who actually witnessed the fight, meanwhile, will generally just shrug it off, go about their daily business and, at best, relegate the incident to some lunch table gossip the next day.