I remember when I was a kid I used to watch it SO much. Rugrats, then Doug - it was a ritual for me. And each episode was a preview of the “older kid” lifestyle that awaited me in big bad middle school a few years down the road.
Now that I’m watching it again, it still feels applicable to my life. All the little social dramas, and the dilemmas, that Doug encountered, they’re still there - this show pulled off the whole teen drama thing in an incredibly lighthearted and yet still astoundingly effective way. Doug was a truly sympathetic character, and his life is a great parody/representation of being a young suburban kid.
Some things that are funny:
Doug’s voice seems so HIGH!
Those “imagination” scenes with the wh-wh-wh-wh sound and the screen fading into a fantasy sequence seem to happen way more than I remembered them as.
BeBe Bluff (who I had a crush on, along with Patti Mayonnaise and Doug’s older beatnik sister Judy) sounds like she was voiced by whoever did Bart Simpson.
Patti Mayonnaise has a southern accent which seems way more prominent now than it did when I was a kid.
The comically evil bully seems to be a Jewish stereotype (his name is Roger Klotz and he has a huge hook nose.)
Quail Man (Doug’s alter-ego) has a BELT on his head that is wrapped around, buckled, and then somehow comes back towards the audience in a perfect loop. How did that work?
Oh yeah, and another thing: the hand-drawn watorcolor animation is SO much more friendly and appealing to me than the cold, heartless, slick computer animation of every damn Nickelodeon cartoon now.
Quail Man! That’s one of my two chioces for a halloween costume I need to make this year. (The other one being a member of the Blue Hands Group from Firefly)
Also, let’s not forget Skeeter! meep meep! (It used to bug my friends how well I could do that sound)
And you remember Porkchop? I need to get a dog named after a kind of food.
I loved that show when I was younger. Remember the Beets? Oh-eee-ooooh, killer tofu!
Although for some reason I picked up this random detail from one episode that has stuck with me still: I guess Doug is freaked out about his parents seeing his bad report card in the mail, and near the climax of the episode, Doug’s dad is going through the day’s mail and he’s like “Bill, junk, bill… Bluffington School Notice!” The way he said it was sort of funny.
Anyway, whenever I’m going through the mail and saying the contents outloud, I tack “…Bluffington School Notice!” on the end of the list. No one ever gets it, and I doubt anyone ever will.
My favorite moment from the show that I can remember was when Doug was trying to learn how to be a ventriloquist. He read in a book to pronounce “b” sounds with his mouth closed, he should say them as “d” sounds. So “The boy bought the basketball” would be “The doy dought the dasketdall.” He then imagines himself doing his act on stage, and he simply walks out with his dummy, says “The doy dought the dasketdall!” in a simple cheery voice, and the audience cracks up laughing.
I also loved Doug back in the day – I was in high school but my baby sister was my excuse to watch it. I’ve still got a little Porkchop pencil sitting toy lying around somewhere. It moved off Nick and onto a network (ABC?) and I’m told it was watered down past the point of bearability then, but when I watched, it was a really enjoyable show.