I had this vague memory of a Doug episode about drugs from the ABC One Saturday Morning version of the show, and amazingly it was on YouTube (but probably not for long). I feel weirdly compelled to review it, so please enjoy this “liveblog” of this cartoon from fifteen years ago:
00:12: OK I guess they’re not really drugs per se, just not for minors, my bad
00:55: Zombat is a cool fake name
02:30: The plot point of the kids not being interested in Nic Nacs until they’re explicitly told they’re not for kids is actually kinda clever
02:46: WHY IS DOUG WEARING A WIG oh it’s some other guy
04:18: I don’t remember Mr. Dink being such an upstanding role model in the Nickelodeon version of the show… I thought his whole deal was that he gave Doug bad advice most of the time? Also please note here that the Nic Nac Yak hasn’t actually been introduced to the public yet…
05:40: Skunky Beaumont is one of the few things that dates the show. Why was/is the Stoner-ish Cool Kid such a prevalent archetype in kids’ cartoons?
07:16: Candygate/MAYOR TOOK CANDY FROM BABIES is a great gag
07:39: Years later I can finally appreciate the Watergate and Ted Koppel allusions
08:16: Damn that liberal media and their “gotcha” questions
10:25: The Nic Nac Yak appears in Doug’s fantasy even though he hasn’t actually appeared in any ads yet. I SURE HOPE SOMEONE GOT FIRED FOR THAT BLUNDER.
10:35: There was rarely if ever a scene without Doug in it in the Nickelodeon version, which is why this scene at the Dink household feels off to me
00:49 (part 2): Note this roller coaster isn’t part of a fantasy. They were expecting people to ask about nicoglutinous monopexterate. (By the way, according to Google and Bing this is the first time “nicoglutinous monopexterate” has ever been written on the internet. Welcome, future search engine users!)
01:47: I like this “Sally” character. Forget Patti, I’m a Doug X Sally shipper now <3
01:52: For the most part I don’t think the guy they got to replace Billy West as the voice of Doug is doing a bad job, EXCEPT for when he says “angle”
02:05: There’s a restaurant called MUNCHEES in an anti-drug episode. Way to stick it to the man, background artist
02:11: “World Wide Web terminal” is another thing that dates the show
02:30: I dig this abstract GUI
04:08: PATTI NO :^O
04:25: In the suspiciously few scenes he was in at the beginning, Skeeter was just as anti-Nic Nacs as Doug was (plus there was that episode where he went to college and complained about how everybody smoked), but apparently Doug has such a low opinion of his best friend that he has no problem imagining him as an addict. Et tu, Doug?
05:56: In this scene, Mr. Dink comes up with the idea for Twitter a decade before Jack Dorsey
06:20: Mr. Dink pretends not to know Porkchop’s name because he’s a huge jerk
06:30: I literally thought he was going to say Bluffington Post
07:25: All Doug had to do was look up the definition of a word and suddenly he’s Bob Woodward
08:48: Seriously where did Skeeter go???