A Date With The Health Inspector
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| The Boondocks episode | |||
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| "A Date With The Health Inspector" | |||
 Gin Rummy (left) and Riley |
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| Episode no.: | 5 | ||
| Prod. code: | 106 | ||
| Airdate: | December 5, 2005 | ||
| Writer(s): | Rodney Barnes Aaron McGruder |
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| Director: | Joe Horne | ||
| Guest star(s): | Samuel L. Jackson Charles Q. Murphy Terry Crews |
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"A Date with the Health Inspector" is the fifth episode of the Adult Swim animated television series The Boondocks. It originally aired on December 5, 2005.
[edit] Plot
The episode begins within Tom Dubois having a dream about him being anally raped in prison after he loses his grip on a bar of soap in the prison shower. He scrambles to catch it but it squirts from his grip and slides toward the drain. Tom is shown weeping as the rest of the showering inmates start to jeer. A particularly large and muscular prisoner, the self-proclaimed "health inspector", tells him to pick up the soap. Tom very reluctantly complies, bending over as an ominous grin spreads across the face of the health inspector behind him. Tom wakes up in a panic, drenched with sweat. He also wakes up his wife Sara, who rolls over and says, "Dropped the soap again?"
Huey reveals that Tom had revolved his entire life around his fear of being sent to prison and anally raped. Flashbacks show Tom refusing to help his friend steal merchandise at a department store, declining to smoke marijuana in high school, deleting MP3 files from his wife's computer, and driving the speed limit to the annoyance of an elderly woman who shouts "You drive like an old bitch!" as she speeds by him.
Arrested for fitting the description of the "Xbox Killer", Tom uses his prison phone call to get in touch with Huey. Riley answers, however, and bursts into laughter at the thought of the excessively scrupulous Tom DuBois being arrested. He advises him not to drop the soap and hangs up. Fortunately, Tom is able to call back and speak to Huey, explaining his situation and begging him to find the real killer before 9:00 that evening, because at nine, Tom is to be transported from holding to "real jail" for the weekend and the earliest he could be released would be Monday.
Huey decides to enlist the help of Ed Wuncler III, who eagerly agrees to help. They also ally with Ed's friend, Gin Rummy, a fellow Iraq war soldier and psychopath. Huey, Riley, Ed, and Rummy go to the street where the murder occurred. Ed and Rummy run out of the car and start kicking in random doors and firing their guns around, yelling at the residents and roughing up passers-by. Finding no information on the killings, they return to their SUV where Huey and Riley are waiting. It turns out that the boys were able to attain the killer's name, address, and description from several people whom they interviewed who claimed that the alleged killer had been bragging about his crime. The boys even had MapQuest directions to the murderer's residence and a sketch drawing based on the witness' descriptions.
The four drive away, but Ed and Rummy decide to take a brief detour to a gas station for a drink. Ed and Rummy hand Riley two cases of beer to take out to the car, prompting the Arabian clerk behind the counter to friendlily insist that they pay for it first. At this point, Ed and Rummy draw their guns and claim that the clerk has a weapon. A police officer, who had been perusing a magazine, anxiously draws his gun and tries to get a handle on the situation. Ed and Rummy insist to the officer that the clerk has a weapon and the clerk continues to assert that he's not holding one. The cop starts to shake uneasily, unsure of who to believe. Huey pleads with the officer, firmly contending that the clerk doesn't have a gun, but Rummy shouts him down. Ed then coerces the police officer into aiding him by pointing one of his guns at the officer and asking, "Who's side you on?" Rummy then gives the petrified clerk to the count of three to hand over his weapon, but the chance is blown and Rummy opens fire.
The sound of gunfire gets the attention of the clerk's co-workers, who come out from the back room and start firing their own guns. Rummy and Ed take cover and Huey reprimands Rummy for deviating from the original plan of finding the Xbox Killer. Eventually the smoke clears, and the clerk and his co-workers are taken away in handcuffs while Ed and Rummy are hailed as terrorism-fighting heroes by the gathered crowd.
Meanwhile, time runs out for Tom, who is led outside from his cell only to discover that he is being released. Apparently, the Xbox killer struck again and was arrested, thereby vindicating Tom. Had Ed and Rummy not detoured from their original course, they could have stopped the second killing. The next day's newspaper headline read "War Heroes Thwart Terror Cell," referring to Ed and Rummy's robbery of the gas station.
[edit] Trivia
- When Wuncler, Riley, and Huey go to Rummy's house to enlist his help, Rummy is cooking breakfast. When Rummy asks the other three whether they want something to eat, Wuncler states "let me get some links with them grits, I'm hungrier than a motherfucker!" This is a reference to a conversation between A-Wax (played by MC Eight) and Chauncy (played by Clifton Powell) in Menace II Society.
- The character Gin Rummy is a representational persona and homage to the actor Samuel L. Jackson who provides his voice. Rummy-as-character draws many obvious and not-so-obvious parallels to past characters of Jackson's from movies such as Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown.
- Ed Wuncler III says, "Freddy ain't dead", which references the Curtis Mayfield song "Freddy's Dead". This song is heard in a previous Boondocks episode, "Guess Hoe's Coming to Dinner" at the appearance of "A Pimp Named Slickback".
- The exchange between Gin Rummy and the officer (Freddy) about how he "won't die in vain" is a direct quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which Lancelot is talking to his patsy after he is struck by an arrow.
[edit] Metaphor for the Iraq War
- The expedition to search for the Xbox Killer, who is the real threat to public safety, is likened to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. However, this quest is sidetracked by a completely unrelated detour to the Iraqi store, for no coherent purpose. This is analogous to a viewpoint that the war in Iraq is a diversion from the manhunt for bin Laden.
- Huey's retort that he attained information simply by talking to people references the argument from some Iraq War strategy critics that the U.S. was using unnecessary force in dealing with Iraq, thereby causing needless harm and expenditures.
- Initially, the gas station clerk, who bears physical resemblance to Saddam Hussein, refers to Ed Wuncler III (George W. Bush) and Gin Rummy (Donald Rumsfeld) as "close friends and allies". The United States supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).
- The clerk says to Ed Wuncler III, "Your father helped me build this store." George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush's father, was Vice-President under Ronald Reagan when the United States was supporting Iraq. This is hinted at earlier in the episode when the overhang over the gas pumps bear an insignia with the letter "W", possibly short for "Wuncler".
- Ed Wuncler III and Gin Rummy claim that the clerk has a weapon when it's obvious he doesn't. The presumption that Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction" was the pretext for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found.
- The police officer could be considered symbolic of the American people, the American military, or the U.N. The police officer doesn't believe the clerk is a threat initially, saying, "I don't see a weapon!" However, Ed Wuncler III angrily questions his loyalty and goes so far as to point a gun at him, shouting, "Whose side you on?" This line perhaps parallels George W. Bush's statement, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Sure enough, the policeman back pedals, saying, "I think I see the gun now!"
- During the robbery, Gin Rummy tells the police officer that he won't "die in vain". In a 2004 prime time press conference, George W. Bush said, "And one of the things that's very important, Judy, as far as I'm concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that."
- Gin Rummy insinuates that the clerk (Hussein) is posing a direct threat to the officer (the American people), saying, "This motherfucker got a gun pointed at you! You wanna die?" Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraq's perceived threat to the United States was arguably greatly exaggerated.
- At one point, the clerk says, "You're thinking about the Korean shop north of here!" He is referring to North Korea. Another popular criticism of the Iraq War is that Iraq did not have nuclear capabilities, while Kim Jong Il in North Korea did.
- During the robbery, Gin Rummy incredulously says, "I didn't think they'd actually shoot back at us!" In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld predicted that the Iraqis would welcome the Americans as liberators.
- Ed Wuncler's quote, "Bring it on, bitch!" is directly paraphrasing a George W. Bush quote, made in the summer of 2003 in reference to Iraqi attacks on American soldiers. Bush said, "There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on."
- The unlawful arrest, severe mistreatment of, and forced confession of Tom Dubois could be a reference to the anti-French attitudes that plagued the United States during most of the Iraq war. The French were used as a scapegoat, originally due to the fact that they did not support the war in Iraq, and secondarily because of their extremely high Muslim immigrant population, making the country ripe for prejudice. Both Tom and the French were victims in that they were unjustly treated for no cause other than being "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
- Gin Rummy's quote, "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence", is a direct quote by Donald Rumsfeld, referring to Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction. Rummy's quote, "That was an unknown unknown," is also a reference to a quote from Donald Rumsfeld: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know."
- The "Xbox killer", who the group was initially pursuing, could be taken as a reference to Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, or to the Bin Laden family and the Saudi royal family in Saudi Arabia. Many criticize the Iraq War as an unrelated diversion from the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden and the War on Terror. Huey Freeman, the voice of reason, says, "Need I remind you this has nothing to do with our original plan?" Huey's appeals to reason are repeatedly ignored, however. In the car, Huey angrily affirms that they are literally "down the street from the killer," similar to how Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq are geographically close.
- After the altercation, the people outside the gas station hail Ed Wuncler and Gin Rummy as heroes, chanting "USA!" This parallels the support still enjoyed by the troops actually in combat, regardless of the way the Bush administration planned, marketed, and executed the war.
