Project Yancey: Doug and Patti Sittin' in a Tree

Breaking News!  I'm breaking my rules, my life does not seem exciting enough to warrant me to be able to use every Doug episode (and some episodes are kind of boring), so instead of going in line I will just find episodes I feel like doing, and will do them in this order.  So I'm going to start on a high note, with the episode where Doug and Patti may have gone on a date.  Enjoy.

You know it!

The episode starts with Doug eating his lunch alone, and Patti sitting next to him and asking him if he would like to go see a movie with her this Friday.  As it takes a while to get the point across to Doug that the movie will just be with the two of them, everybody around them seems to notice and watch the pivotal moment at hand.  And all these people call attention to Doug that it just may be a date no later than Patti takes her leave, and since we know Doug quite well, he doesn't like the attention.  Curious about the fact Patti never specifically said it was a date (even though it obviously was) Doug turns to his good buddies Chaulky and Skeeter for what signs to look for to see if it is a date.  The criteria they come by are the following, does she dress up to meet him, does she let him buy her ticket, and if all else fails, does she let him hold her hand (cue the Beatles)?  After learning how to tell if it is a date, Doug's next issue is what is he to do on this date?  Since Doug has an awesome taste in movies, all of the dates in the movies he owns either end in kung fu, or are completely unrealistic.  This is when Doug decides he was going to get his ideas from asking about and then stalking Judy on her date that night.  By doing this Doug learns a couple things every man should know, you should speak with a goofy accent, use big words, and and lastly you need to steal your kisses (optional).  Now is the time to put this new knowledge to work, and by that the obvious conclusion is that he invited Skeeter over to help him simulate the date using a dating book and Porkchop as Patti.  He shouldn't have chosen to do this at his house though, because its not long before his entire family finds out about it and makes a huge deal about it.  Eventually, Doug goes on his (potential) date, and his walk is met with a lot of his acquaintances lining the streets with comments to him.  No more than 10 seconds after seeing Patti, he already starts to get conflicting signals about the date, first he sees Patti dressed up, good sign, but then she ignores the fact he bought two tickets and buys her own.  So it all comes down to the hand holding.  Unfortunately only paying half-attention to the masterpiece on screen in which a crocodile is in love with a rich lady, Doug fails to find a chance to try to hold Patti's hand.  So now the night is nearly over and Doug starts walking Patti home and they discuss the movie.  During this Doug accidentally(?) grabs her hand and they both clearly like it but continue to walk back to her house in awkward silence.  Doug decides to find out once and for all, and asks Patti if it was a "whatever" and she really doesn't know if it was a "you know", but it clearly was.  And then they start slowly moving towards each other and it looks like they are gonna kiss!  But then Patti goes inside and keeps Doug wondering, but with a good feeling that it was a date.  A little down the road Doug gets confronted by all the boys from his school, it seems they are going to make fun of him, but they instead ask for a few pointers.  They want girls, and Doug's got girls, kids money.

Word spreads fast I see!

First allow me to link to this video if you did not grasp how awkward Doug's walk back to Patti's house was.  If this episode has a moral, and that I'm getting it right, it must be that the dating game sucks and is vague and you just need to suck it up and get used to it.  Right?  I've never been a fan of the whole dating scene in high school and college, I don't think I've ever got the hang of it completely, and likely never will.  I've tried to do everything under the sun, I've been the nice guy, I've been the crazy guy, I've been the shy guy, I've been the straight forward guy, I've been the former-friend-turned-romantic-interest, I've been Mr. Right Now, but I've never been anything of any note.  This may be that I haven't particularly played any of these roles very well, because I haven't been dealing with the right girls, or maybe it is just because I am not a lucky person.  But you know what, to hell with it.  One day my bad luck will run out and by some miracle, I will find some girl who is just as strange and messed up as I am, or maybe she won't be anything like that and she will be incredibly well adjusted (unlike me) and it will somehow work out, or maybe she will just be a regular person like the rest of us and everything will be moderately exciting but go well.  See, this is where I probably go wrong, I don't know or care what I want, I just want it.  I also want to waste your time by having all you readers out there read this.  So I am going to go watch some British teen dramas or something ridiculous of that sort to see if I can have an epiphany (I wont), meanwhile you guys can realize you would have saved a lot of time if I just linked to this video at the beginning.  End unnecessary rant, cue REH!

Project Yancey: Episode 28: Doug's Got No Gift

Being the classy guy Doug is, he knows that Patti has a birthday coming up and he saved up his money for a few weeks to buy her gift.  He found himself at the mall and still didn't know what he was going to get her, that is until he chanced by the sports store and saw the Official Multi-Ultra-Maxi-Pro Tournament Beetball!  And he had enough money for it!  But this is when Doug shows that he is a regular guy after all, Skeeter, the true buddy that he is, spots Doug from the arcade and he just had to make sure Doug tried this new game Bag the Neematoad.  Doug shows himself to be quite skilled at this game (well he does have real life experience), add in a few words by Skeeter and Doug was instantly hooked on playing the game until he was able to get his name on the high score list.  I would like to thank the writers for this reference coming up because no child would ever be able to pick up on it, but Doug goes into a daydream where he is getting out of a limo to go into a concert hall to play Bag the Neematoad, which would seem really weird until you notice the background music is slightly reminiscent of Pinball Wizard by The Who, and it turns out the daydream is a direct homage/spoof of the Pinball Wizard scene from The Who's rock opera Tommy.  With a vision like that and a crowd cheering him on, it is no surprise that next thing he knows Doug has no money to pay for Patti's gift anymore (but he did get DF at number 49 on the high score list.)  Dejected by his idiocy, Doug sits on the side of the street like a goon, and the Dink's hear his plight and invite him to Mr. Dink's workshop to build a gift for Patti.  Although Doug's original idea to build a glider seems to hit a snag when he doesn't have neither the material nor the expertise to build it, he ends up deciding that he would be able to find a suitable gift in making a towel rack.  After the long night of work, Doug shows Skeeter his towel rack, and I don't know which got him more confused, trying to figure out what it was when he saw it, or why Doug would give Patti a towel rack.  It's fine for skeeter because it seems everyone else at the party shared the sentiment, with Roger even referring to it directly as a "monstrosity".  Per the norm life decides to throw some salt on Doug's wounds before his moment of judgement comes, as Patti opens everyone else's gifts to find she had received some cool beetball (for the record Chaulky got her the Official Multi-Ultra-Maxi-Pro Tournament Beetball so one of the two would have looked stupid anyways getting her the same gift).  After a few beetballs have been opened and Doug decides he would rather look like the ass who didn't give a present than the kid who gave a bad present, Patti opens the present and to everyone's surprise thinks it is great as she doesn't see it as a towel rack, but as a beetball caddy!  Oddly, Roger was the only one who did see it as the towel rack it was.  As the party is starting to clear out Patti takes Doug aside for a heartfelt moment as she tells him that his gift was her favorite, by some strange irony she asks him to initial it, I bet that was better than 49th on the Bag the Neematoad high scores.  So as Borat would say "Great Success!"

Hes a Pinball Wizard Bag the Neematoad Master

I sure have quite an experience with playing too much video games, but I have never let it get that out of hand.  When you are as dedicated to something as Doug is to making Patti his girl, you do not let anything get in your way, and if I was in Doug's position I sure as hell wouldn't have spent all my money on a game (I have too many as it is.)  But I will admit that Doug buying Patti a gift for her birthday like that would have been really ambitious, and perhaps making the gift was even more ambitious, so I probably wouldn't have done what he did for even more reasons than the fact that I probably am selfish.  But to get away from any weaknesses in my persona, I would like to point out more good parts of myself for those readers that are so inclined to know.  I guess what I'm trying to say was that Doug came dangerously close to breaking one of the major laws of being a gentleman, but did manage to save himself by doing something much more gentlemanly.  I sure as hell will use this episode as an example to myself if I shall ever find myself in the position where I do not have enough money to be a proper gentleman for the lovely lady that is accompanying me at that time.  But I find that highly unlikely, as even in the life of a broke college student spending a large majority of the year with no income, I have never found myself in a time where I would not be able to pay on a date or anything of that sort.  There have been times where I know I wouldn't have made a frivolous purchase for myself, but I sure as hell had enough money to pay for two people's dinners.  I guess to put a cap on this incoherent rant of mine I will make a declaration of my own.  They say a gentleman pays on the first date, I say only a total scrub doesn't pay on any date (there's always the golden arches, just kidding.)    

The Oriental version of a date with me... Except not really

Extra thought, I'm overdue in using this video so I'm gonna do it now.  If you didn't understand any part of my rambling earlier, please do not hesitate to let out a nice big "REH!"  Allow Super Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time to demonstrate.