We have headed to Season 15 (and 16) and the last time we did these seasons like this, they were the 2nd to last of the marathon, well not this time. oh my. You can read that post here
This is season 15, episode 8a.
The Cold Opening: Bailey, Muffy's Butler, talks about how he enjoys working for Muffy. (Apparently, he's lost it) He does say it's not easy to work for her, but it's never dull.
The Episode: Muffy gets a doll that seems to be a knock-off of American Girl, it comes with books that encourages people to start book clubs and Muffy decides to start her own book club. She sends a book to Arthur, Francine, Alan (the Brain) , and has Bailey join her too. (She just drafted people into her club like a mad man) They found the house has library but with mostly fake books. (When you want to look good but not that good) The library also has a fake fire place.
Anyway when it comes up, the book has mixed reviews with the others not liking the book. Then Muffy finds out book clubs switch books each week, so that means Alan gets to suggest a book. Muffy decides the best idea is to not read the book. Anyway, the next book club, Muffy can't bluff her way through fake the book. When Arthur fakes up what happens and they catch her.
This is how you hold a book/ Copyright WGBH
Muffy gets mad and Francine, Alan, and Arthur decide to quit her book club. (revolt) She tries to get others to join but this is a failure. I also have to laugh at her father being surprised they have library. Muffy admits her books are not very good, since they sold mostly to sale dolls.
In the fake library, Muffy finds the book Francine wanted to read and reads it. She seems to enjoy it. She has a weird dream (an "Arthur" hallmark) and I'm disturbed. The next day, she decides to rejoin the book club and things seem to have gone better.
Muffy learns that mass manufactured books that are meant to sell toys exists, and she learned to give other things a chance. Yay! The library joke was strange but funny. This wasn't a bad episode it got it's message out clearly.
More after the Jump
Now to season 16 with episode 10a, we've covered 10 b already, that link is up there. This is "So Funny, I forgot to Laugh"
The Cold Opening: Sue Ellen is writing in her diary, she writes that she got a special gift from her Tibetan pen pal, Tenzin. (So this show takes place in a different world) He sent her a yak wool sweater. She loved the big thick sweater, the sweater now makes her think of how mean people can be.
The Episode: It's a cold winter day, Sue Ellen shows off her sweater and shows warm and comfy. The sweater is big on her but she assures Arthur that will get smaller in the wash. This episode is interesting because it starts with Arthur saying the sweater makes her look like a sheepdog, and she laughs along with it. (Can he do that in this world? I have questions, yes we get to do this joke once,yay!) The episode will make you notice because Arthur decides to take his one joke and run it into the ground. Sue Ellen seems to become more annoyed by it as it goes on.
This is an episode about bullying but not in the straight forward typical way you see an episode go, this is more unintentional bullying. That's the message of the episode as I see they are trying do portray it. The next day, Arthur seems to not let the joke die and does a weird drawing of Sue Ellen as sheep dog. She tells him to stop.
Later, Arthur is pulled aside by the teacher and told that he's accused of bullying Sue Ellen. Mr. Ratburn tells him that when you continue to tease someone after they tell you to stop, it's bullying. Arthur also has to write a letter of apology. (Wait , hold on, wait, is he? oh no wait) Buster says she did tell him stop. He writes his letter that includes "... I thought you could take joke, but I guess I was wrong... I never felt I had to tell the teacher about it, maybe you are just overreacting" (Oh no he did oh no)
Is Arthur drinking Limeade? / Copyright WGBH
Sue Ellen shows the letter to Francine and Muffy who decide they won't talk to Arthur until he writes a better letter. He decides to talk to Sue Ellen and screws up again. It gets worse, Arthur in anger, decides to take a picture of a sheep dog head and her body and put them together then email it to her. (Oh no no no no) Sue Ellen sees it and cries.
The episode ties back to the opening. The next day, Arthur does feel bad about the email and he really doesn't get to speak to Sue Ellen. Arthur ends up eating with Binky and his friends, and Arthur's friends get mad at him because she wants to switch classes. He also notices that she decided to donate her sweater. At This moment Arthur has flashbacks of stuff we saw earlier and feels bad.
He admits that he was wrong and he's sorry that he didn't understand and that he doesn't want her to leave the class.
I've looked at what said about this episode to kind of gauge it. It's not a beloved episode, apparently. (This is different normally do these posts in a bubble without the idea of outside input affecting anything) The idea that Arthur was out of character, it makes some sense ; but my own thought which is that using Arthur they were going with the idea that Arthur normally doesn't go too far, but he unintentionally did here. The idea they must have been trying to show is that sometimes a person can go too far with out knowing it, that he thought his joke was being enjoyed and even Sue Ellen laughed the first time, but then he ran it too long and after she said stop he kept on going. It's human and the show was trying to show that could happen with people who normally don't. It might have been writing Twitter culture.
It might be just a mess of an episode but it's hard to tell, maybe I see what they were going for and picking Arthur makes it more noticeable versus say anyone else, (maybe Buster) they were trying to show that sometimes anyone can accidently bully some one. (That also depends on if you agree with that statement, that's a hard one)
So, I'm not going to say it's an awful episode, not the greatest one, but I hope I understood what they were trying to do.
That's it for now, tune next time when The Brain starts bullying people on twitter dot com over books being too corporate.
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