indefinite articles

This week: Exploring Doug’s wild imaginings through season one.

When placed before the mirror of ’90s pop culture, Doug is a hard program to place. Is this because Jim Jinkins created a unique rendition of pre-teen life that brought to the screen a distinct set of stories and quirks, or is it because his series turned out to be more formulaic than its fans would care to admit?

Content to let this question to loom over the Funnie household for the time being, the first season of Doug’s daily grind goes to great lengths to deliver one consistent message: The sixth grade is Hell.

“Dear Journal: It’s me again, Doug. Sorry I didn’t write yesterday. I was too busy having a nervous breakdown.”

Not the kind of Hell where philanderers are whipped by horned demons under the rain of eternal fire, but the kind of Hell where the hopelessly uncertain walk around wearing inside-out animal hides, left to wonder if the real punishment would be any worse than an eternity of discomfort. This malaise is the foundation of Doug Funnie’s psyche, which never fails to transmogrify something as innocuous as a haircut into a bona fide panic attack.

Doug imagines the horrific results of a haircut in “Doug Gets His Ears Lowered.”

Family television during the early ’90s was bound by two poles. On one end, The Wonder Years made a point of revisiting the moments of adolescence that would resonate with emotions, simultaneously raw and refined. On the other, Full House and its TGIF cohort lifted America’s family sitcom to new heights of laugh track bottom feeding, manufacturing characters and plotlines like Lucky Charms marshmallows.

The first thirteen episodes of Doug, each consisting of two standalone stories, draw from both approaches. Every segment begins with the most mundane of plot lines, then uses Doug’s obsessive fear of humiliation as the medium through which these experiences are rendered memorable. With only 11 minutes allotted to each story, character development and thoughtful dialogue are swept aside in favor of the visceral imagery of a very apprehensive imagination.

Doug takes liberties in imagining his neighbor’s anger in “Doug Needs Money.”

As the countless ways a guy can be a loser begin to add up, they beg the question: Was growing up ever this nerve-wracking? Sure, learning how to dance may be something many Doug fans struggle with to this day, but at a certain point even they are bound to grow tired of listening to a sixth-grader cower from the trifles of suburban life.

Doug is intimidated in the face of love in “Doug on the Wild Side.”

Fortunately, when Doug falls flat, it does so for only five forgettable seconds (this is usually the case when any character besides Doug, Judy or Skeeter is talking). When Doug shines, five seconds of greatness are indelibly etched in our minds. The greatest of these moments use the same palette of imagination to paint a scene — not of mortification, but of the kind of absurd hope in the face of embarrassment that only an eleven year old would take as tangible. In one episode, Doug shares an absurd fantasy in which he pictures himself the star of his own ventriloquist show, buoyed by an ability to say, “The doy dought the dasketdall!” In another story, Doug envisions himself cooking a grilled cheese sandwich for his crush, who responds with an inane yet life affirming, “Oh Doug, I’m SO IMPRESSED!” Insofar as these are generic sitcom moments, their delivery still manages to surprise and entertain with a tongue-in-cheek awareness of its own simplicity.

Doug’s no dummy, but he is one shitty ventriloquist.

Despite its gloomier tendencies, the show does find success in its 11-minute formula, playing the bizarre against the boring in a way that is both sincere and overblown. No matter what sparks Doug’s fear factor, each episode ultimately exposes the inanity of groupthink and promotes the age-old lesson self-acceptance without overstaying its welcome — and with Billy West at the mic, it does so in a way that makes it easy to forgive Doug for being such a spineless pansy.

Next time: All the colors of the rainbow in Bluffington…