Spelling Applebee's

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Drawn Together episode
“Spelling Applebee's”
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 3
Guest star(s)	David Cooley
Writer(s)	Jordan Young
Director	Frank Marino
Production no.	303
Original airdate	October 19, 2006
Episode chronology
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"Spelling Applebee's" is the twenty-fifth episode of the animated series Drawn Together.

Contents 1 Storyline 2 Notes and inside references 3 Animated cameos 4 Cultural references

[edit] Storyline

After gathering the housemates together, the producer announces that the household is to compete in a spelling bee for the chance to win a gift certificate to Applebee's. Foxxy immediately declares that she refuses to take part in any spelling bee, regardless of what is on the line. Toot teases Foxxy that the reason she won't compete is because she is illiterate. However, Foxxy then reveals that she used to be the best speller in all the land, winning championships year after year. However, after a violent racial incident at one particular bee caused her streak to end (Foxxy mistook the word "knickers" for a racial slur, causing a riot to break out), a disgraced Foxxy swore she'd never spell again. As she drowns her sorrows in a bar, Foxxy watches the Drawn Together gang compete against the Peanuts gang on television, a contest which goes quite badly for them. A bar patron recognizes Foxxy from her glory days as a champion speller, and asks her why she isn't at the bee. Foxxy restates her desire not to spell anymore, but the man convinces her she needs to face her problems and compete. Foxxy finally agrees with this, and arrives at the Drawn Together house just as the Peanuts gang is declared the winners. Foxxy tells the judges to give her one more word, which they do; when Foxxy spells it correctly, the housemates are suddenly declared the winners. As the group gather around Foxxy to congratulate her, Spanky Ham steps forward and introduces himself and says he wants to take Foxxy to the top.

Foxxy is delighted, and hits the spelling bee circuit once again. She does even better this time around, and before too long, the championships are rolling in once again. A statue is erected to commemorate Foxxy's achievements, but at the unveiling, a new challenger named Hadji calls Foxxy out and challenges her to a match. Foxxy is eager to compete, but Spanky steps in to stop the match from taking place. When Foxxy later confronts him about why he did this, Spanky admits the truth. The only reason Foxxy won all her spelling bees was because they were fixed. Spanky and the Spelling Bee Commission had conspired to give the world a "great black hope" by setting Foxxy up with easy opponents designed to make her look good. He tells Foxxy there is no way she's good enough to win a match fair and square, especially one against a foreigner. Foxxy appears to accept, but later goes behind Spanky's back and agrees to the match against Hadji. Spanky finds out and scolds her, repeatedly telling her she's not good enough. Foxxy decides that Spanky may be right, and runs away depressed. After she throws her motorcycle helmet at a statue of the Iwo Jima flag raising, Spanky in the sidecar informs her he's had a change of heart, and he is now convinced she can win. With renewed hope, Foxxy goes back into training, and shortly thereafter is shown facing off against Hadji. With the match on the line, Foxxy is given the word "knickers" to spell- the same word that caused her to lose her temper in the previous bee. Despite her anger, Foxxy manages to restrain herself and spell the word correctly, and is named the spelling champion of the world.

Meantime, Captain Hero wants to go to the supermarket, but announces he is afraid of a bully who he always runs into whenever he's there. Clara agrees to accompany him, and upon arriving, she discovers that the bully is actually a homeless man. She tells off the homeless man, an act which Hero finds decidedly arousing, causing him to begin seeing Clara in a new light. Throughout their whole grocery trip, Hero is unable to stop thinking about Clara, and he quickly realizes he has a crush on her. He gets her to agree to go out with him by kidnapping and killing her cat. However, their date does not go well, as Clara is upset that Hero chooses to make out with the waiter instead of conversing with her. As they walk home, Clara is annoyed, and Hero is sad that he appears to have failed in his attempt to win Clara's heart. However, on the way home, Hero inadvertently causes a car crash, an occurrence which turns Clara on to no end. Hero decides to take advantage of this, and keeps causing car crashes. In response, Clara agrees to keep seeing Hero. Just as his romantic feelings for Clara reach their peak, however, Hero notices that Clara never wants to stick around following her crash-inspired orgasms. He confronts Clara and says that she doesn't love him and is only using him for the car crashes; Clara's cool response lets him know he is right. He reverses his plans, and now goes around everywhere doing everything in his power to prevent crashes, which causes Clara to become extremely frustrated.

In honor of his work in preventing crashes, Hero is awarded on the steps of City Hall. Clara approaches him at the ceremony and tells him that she did love the crashes, but she misses having him to share them with. Hero seeks her out again, and the two make up. Hero goes back to work causing more crashes, which in turn causes Clara to get excited again. However, when she continues to resist his romantic moves toward her, Hero decides he's had enough, and the time has come to teach Clara a lesson once and for all. He instructs Clara to look in the direction of the crash he has just caused; Clara is horrified and heartbroken to discover the mangled, bloody remains of her closest friends, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Princess Ariel. As Clara weeps for her fallen friends, Hero looks in the direction of the camera and says, "And remember, kids, never mess with the emotions of a dangerous lunatic."

At the end of the episode, after she wins the spelling bee, Foxxy says, "This one's for all my knickers!" After she says this, many pairs of knickers begin ravaging the city; as the camera surveys the carnage, Clara can be heard moaning in ecstasy.

Musical Number: This episode features the largest number of songs of any Drawn Together episode to date. First, a depressed Captain Hero sings R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" as he walks through the wreckage he caused for Clara. The song "Holding Out for a Hero" plays during a montage of Hero trying to get back at Clara by preventing car crashes. The song was originally performed by Bonnie Tyler, though it appears here in a rerecorded version. It was previously alluded to in the episode "Captain Hero's Marriage Pact" (as one of Unusually Flexible Girl's tattoos), though it was not actually heard in that episode. Foxxy sings "No Easy Way Out", a song which originally appeared on the soundtrack of Rocky IV, during a training montage. Finally, "Fake Rocky Training Song" plays during another Foxxy montage. The song is a parody of the Rocky theme song, "Gonna Fly Now"; according to Spanky, they are forced to use a cheap knockoff because they are unable to afford the real song.

[edit] Notes and inside references

• This episode features the winner of the "Get Drawn In" contest run on Comedy Central's website during the summer, in which a fan was selected to be animated into an episode. The winner, whose name is given as Keith Franklin, appears in this episode as the waiter Captain Hero makes out with while on his date with Clara.

• The music playing at the beginning of this episode is the same piece used for the end credits of "Hot Tub" and as the background music for the Censored/Uncensored game on the Season One DVD; this is the first time it has been featured in an episode.

• During the episode's opening sequence, Captain Hero tries to steal Toot's food but is shocked by a force field around her. While he is being electrocuted, a baby can be seen in his womb.

• The shot of Clara's striptease in the opening titles changes yet again in this episode. The first two episodes of the season used the shot as it was originally animated prior to being censored by the network. In the first episode, the clip was shown unedited, and in the second, it was pixellated. In this and in all subsequent episodes, the original version of the clip is dropped entirely, and replaced with the censored version that appeared in "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine". [1]

• Ling-Ling is asked to spell the word "L" at the spelling bee, and is unable to do so. This continues the show's running gag of Ling-Ling's difficulty pronouncing the letter "L". A similar gag was made in "Super Nanny" when Ling-Ling reads an eye chart and says "R" for every letter when each letter is actually "L". This is just one of the many references to Engrish in the series.

• When Xandir cleans up the crime scene following the murder of Clara's cat, he wipes down the barrel of the gun instead of the handle. Typically, the handle would be wiped down to remove incriminating fingerprints.

• The Spelling Illustrated magazine cover that Foxxy appears on includes the word "unstopable," a misspelling of "unstoppable".

• James Arnold Taylor voices both the emcee of the spelling bee and the television announcer.

• This is the first Season 3 episode in which Spanky Ham is featured prominently and has more than one line. He had been largely written out of the first two shows due to a scheduling conflict with his voice actor Adam Carolla [2], speaking only a single line in each and making only a brief visual appearance.

• This episode marks the fifth time on Drawn Together that Ling-Ling appears in an episode with no spoken dialogue. Previous instances were "Dirty Pranking No. 2", "A Tale of Two Cows", "The Lemon-AIDS Walk", and "Alzheimer's That Ends Well".

• The elderly woman who says, "I'll have what she's having" upon observing Clara's orgasmic reaction to the first car crash is the same woman from "Clara's Dirty Little Secret" whom the Octopussoir helped with her groceries (whose name was given as Mrs. Baker); she was also seen as a restaurant patron in the episode "Super Nanny". The man standing next to her during this sequence is the old man whose car Wooldoor hijacked in "Captain Girl"; this man was also seen as an audience member in "The Drawn Together Clip Show".

• During the "No Easy Way Out" montage, Foxxy sings "Great Googly Moogly", then says "That ain't even in this episode." The line "Great Googly Moogly" and the clip playing in the background (Minstrel Foxxy dancing) during this line both come from the episode "Terms of Endearment".

• When asked about Clara's behavior in the episode, Executive Producer Bill Freiberger stated, "While Clara is sometimes misguided out of ignorance or naïveté she is also very often misguided because she is a selfish, spoiled princess (figuratively and literally). She was nice to Hero in the beginning (she took him to get food and help him stand up to the bully). But he was a horse's ass on the date and she had a very bad time with him. That basically made her realize that he wasn't someone whom she wanted to date. Then she accidentally discovers her fetish for car crashes and, although she's no longer interested in Hero in that way, she continues to use him because he's the only person who can satisfy her needs. All in all, I'd say she was fairly consistent within the episode and that this episode was consistent within the context of the series. That doesn't mean that Drawn Together is always consistent. We break the rules all the time. However, I think in this instance she was very much in character." [3]

[edit] Animated cameos

• At the beginning of the episode, the Drawn Together team is shown competing against the Peanuts gang. Visible in this scene are Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Sally Brown, Linus van Pelt, Lucy van Pelt, Schroeder, Marcie, and Snoopy. This is actually Charlie Brown's third appearance on the show. The first was in "Requiem for a Reality Show", when Foxxy had him masked and leashed like a dog. He was also seen lying face down on the beach in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II". Charlie Brown's voice here is provided by Tara Strong, who also voices Linus.

• The Disney princesses Snow White, Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, and Ariel from The Little Mermaid are all victims of the carriage crash Hero causes at the end of the episode. This is the second time Ariel appears in an episode (the first was in "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education"), and the first in which she actually speaks. The appearance of the princesses is an in-joke in that Clara's character is a collective parody of them. Clara's voice actor Tara Strong voices Ariel and Snow White in this sequence; Aurora is voiced by Cree Summer. Mulan is mentioned but not seen.

• Prior to removing his turban and Nehru jacket, Foxxy's nemesis, Hadji, appears to be the adult form of the character from Jonny Quest

[edit] Cultural references

• Foxxy's story in this episode is a general parody of the Rocky movie series, mainly Rocky III and Rocky IV. Spanky Ham plays Mickey to Foxxy's Rocky, while Foxxy's nemesis is based on Clubber Lang, the role played by Mr. T in Rocky III. Hadji's line, "I must break you," comes from Rocky IV, as does the song Foxxy sings at one point, "No Easy Way Out". Foxxy's bronze statue resembles that of Rocky's at the Rocky Steps in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

• The racial element of Foxxy's story is a partial parody of the movie Akeelah and the Bee.

• The plot of Princess Clara being sexually aroused by car crashes is a parody of the plot of J. G. Ballard's book Crash and the 1996 film.

• After she tells Hero if he wants her, he knows where to find her, Clara puts on a striped shirt, a hat, and glasses, and then disappears into the crowd, a reference to the title character from the Where's Waldo? book series.
  • Immediately after this, the camera pulls out and an image of a screaming alien appears, the same one that appears during the Foxxy montage earlier in the episode. This a reference to a famous internet prank in which the user has to find Waldo in a circus picture and click on him to win. Waldo is nowhere to be found, and after 20 seconds, Satan from The Exorcist appears accompanied by a loud scream. In this scene, however, right before the alien appears, if you pause the scene, Clara can be seen toward the top right of the screen.

• A holodeck is shown as it was depicted in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

• The scene where the Drawn Together team competes in the spelling bee against the Peanuts gang is a reference to the film A Boy Named Charlie Brown, whose plot centered around Charlie Brown competing in a spelling bee. The background music for this scene is the film's theme song, "Linus and Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi.

• In the flashback to her fall from glory, Foxxy gets upset when she mistakes the word "knickers" for a racial slur. This is a reference to the case of David Howard, who lost his job when an African-American colleague mistook his use of the word "niggardly" for a racial slur.

• When Foxxy Love yanks the Applebee's gift certificate away from Charlie Brown and causes him to fall on his rear, this refers to when Lucy van Pelt would yank the football away while Charlie Brown was trying to kick it in the comic strip Peanuts.

• When Clara has an orgasm following a car crash, an elderly woman standing nearby says, "I'll have what she's having." This is a reference to the scene in When Harry Met Sally when Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in a diner, causing another patron to make the same comment that the woman makes here.

• Clara answers her cell phone by saying, "Where you at?", a reference to the Boost Mobile marketing slogan. Boost Mobile sponsored Comedy Central's "Get Drawn In" contest, the winner of which was revealed earlier in the episode (see Notes and inside references, above).

• Foxxy is pictured on a magazine called Spelling Illustrated, a reference to Sports Illustrated. Her face is then depicted on a box of cereal called Wheats, a reference to Wheaties.

• When Captain Hero is trying to get his mind off Clara by trying on wedding dresses, he asks if one dress is "too Princess Di", to which Xandir responds that Hero is supposed to be forgetting about slutty princesses and car crashes, a reference to Diana's death in an auto accident in 1997.

• During his award ceremony, Hero imitates both Pac-Man and Flavor Flav.

• When Clara arrives at the crash to attend to her friends, Snow White says, "That's what we get for letting Mulan drive." This refers to the stereotype that Asians are poor drivers, which the show previously mocked in "Super Nanny" when Ling-Ling went to get his driver's license.

• Following Foxxy's final victory, she says she did it for her knickers. The scene then shifts to a variety of loose pants rioting in the streets. This is a reference to the phenomenon of sports fans engaging in excessive celebrations after their favorite team wins a championship, as well as to the racial stereotype of blacks instigating riots.

Preceded by Wooldoor Sockbat's Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!

Drawn Together episodes October 19, 2006

Succeeded by Unrestrainable Trainable