The Last of Mary Moo Cow

Summary
When D.W.'s favorite show is canceled, she starts a petition to try to force her show to go back on the air.

Plot
At 3:30, Arthur resets all of the clocks to say it's 4:00 instead and he sits down to watch Dark Bunny. D.W. comes in and tells him that 3:30 is her T.V. time and he claims it's 4:00, not 3:30. However, she doesn't buy it and sits down to watch Mary Moo Cow. Arthur explains that it's not best to come between D.W. and Mary Moo Cow and proceeds to show instances of this. At the store she rushes her mom, in the sandbox she stops playing immediately, and runs inside, and even the television repair man is rushed until she grabs the screw herself and quickly fixes it. Arthur then says D.W. would probably go crazy if she didn't have Mary Moo Cow to watch; or rather, even crazier. Within seconds the Mary Moo Cow theme restarts, and Arthur shouts, "What are you waiting for? Quick! Go to the title card!"

The Last of Mary Moo Cow

One day, D.W. begins screaming throughout the house and everyone comes to see what happened. D.W. says that Mary Moo Cow is coming to Elwood City, and an announcer says that she is coming on Thursday at Mill Creek Mall and Friday at Petey Pete's Pizzeria. Mary says she could hardly wait. D.W. then goes into a fantasy of Mary and herself as they sing to each other before flying to Mary's barn. After the fantasy, D.W. chooses a dress and says that she will stay with Mary during summer and with her family for the rest of the year, while Arthur is in school. Arthur says that they won't put her in the show, to which D.W. says Mary surely will. Mrs. Read points out that a lot of kids are going to be there to see Mary. But D.W. already knows this, mentioning that this is why she doesn't want anybody to know she is related to Arthur. After she leaves, Arthur and Buster cheer and begin to watch Dark Bunny!

At the Mill Creek Mall, they observe a string of children all walking away in tears. D.W. tries to comfort them saying "Mary can't take everybody." Finally, they reach the door, where Mom apologizes and tells D.W. that Mary Moo Cow's visit to the Mill Creek Mall was cancelled.

Meanwhile, back at the house Arthur and Buster are about to watch Dark Bunny, but the intro gets interrupted when D.W. forcefully changing the channel to the Mary Moo Cow Show. After Buster and Arthur question this, D.W. soon chimes in with a harsh voice of explanation. She also steals their popcorn, to their surprise. Then Mary announces that this is their final episode, and Buster and Arthur cheer that Mary Moo Cow is cancelled.

That night, Jane and David try to comfort D.W. as Jane explains that cancellation eventually happens to all television shows. While David reminds her that she owns a few of the VHS tapes too. D.W. asks her parents if they were going to punish Arthur, but David leaves with the parting advice of "Think of all the other fun things you can do now at 3:30!" In her fantasy, D.W. is sitting at the TV, flipping channels but all she finds is static. She walks outside, and we see that everything now has a sad face. The inanimate objects around her explain to her that things would not be the same now that Mary Moo Cow has been cancelled and that the only TV show to watch would be Dark Bunny, to their disgust.

The next day, Arthur plops down in the chair in front of the television with a bowl of popcorn, hoping to watch Dark Bunny. However, D.W. comes up and explains, "Mom says that I get to keep this time until I recover from my trauma!" Arthur comes out with his usual response—he starts screaming for Mom. The program that's replaced Mary Moo Cow is the first edition of Stock Market Today; which discusses financial matters. D.W's imaginary friend Nadine tries to get her to let Arthur watch television considering how boring this show is anyway, but D.W. claims it's still her time even if the new show isn't that great and that "If D.W couldn't watch Mary Moo Cow, Arthur couldn't watch Dark Bunny." Even when Nadine tries dressing up as Mary Moo Cow to cheer D.W. up, it doesn't work

Eventually, the new show gives D.W an idea: When the anchorwoman mentions a historic building saved from demolition because "concerned citizens obtained five hundred signatures on a petition.", she makes a petition to bring back the show by getting her friends from preschool, sets up a booth to charge people 5 cents to sign the petition and even tries to enlist the help of Arthur to sign. However, he quickly decides not to since he is not a fan of Mary Moo Cow and D.W. instead gets Baby Kate to sign with her chocolatey handprint. D.W. mails the petition, and has a fantasy sequence about Mary Moo Cow and her child actor sidekicks being freed from jail and claiming D.W. has brought them cheer. Sometime afterward a response arrives in the mail. D.W. wants to know what it says. The letter thanks D.W. for the petition, and contains an invitation to visit the studios of Channel 12. Arthur believes that D.W's petition didn't work since the show was still cancelled.

D.W.'s parents take her to the studios of Channel 12, where they explain that Mary's barn is part of a set, and this where it is filmed. Inside, while Stock Market Today runs its next episode, a tour guide leads D.W and her family on a tour of the studios and points out where Mary Moo Cow always filmed her soft puppet shows. D.W is offered a Moo Cow soft puppet to add to her collection; but isn't very interested. She gets to what she believes is the point of her visit and wishes to see Mary, but she doesn't when the tour guide tells her that Mary was very busy and loses it. She cries out that she already had some of the stuff that the tour guide gave her and then runs off to try and find Mary.

D.W then finds the dressing room that Mary Moo Cow used and looks around to find Mary; which is all decorated in cow-print fabric. Suddenly she hears somebody come in. It is not who D.W expects; its the woman who has been doing the Stock Market Today program who replaces the Mary Moo Cow dressing room sign with a "Patty Jones" sign. She talks to D.W. with  lots of interest. Initially, D.W believes that the woman was responsible for taking Mary Moo Cow off the air by asking Patty "What have you done with Mary?" Patty tells D.W that life works exactly the way that D.W is experiencing it — that sometimes people need a change, and that Mary Moo Cow would return to TV someday. Once Mary did come back on TV, D.W would have the pleasure of knowing that her efforts with the petition helped.

It's at this point that Mom, Dad, and the studio tour guide enter the dressing room. David tries to lay down the law by telling D.W that "You don't just barge into people's dressing rooms." Patty Jones doesn't seem to mind, though. They begin to leave, and Patty says goodbye in Mary Moo Cow's voice by accident, to D.W.'s delight, switching back to her normal voice immediately afterwards. They then go home as Patty sings to the tune of "Frère Jaques", "Oh D.W., Oh D.W., I love you, Yes I do." "Mary," D.W. dreamily says, happy she got to meet the woman who played Mary Moo Cow.

Later at home, D.W. enjoys Stock Market Today for a while, but then relinquishes control of the remote to a surprised Arthur, telling him that she'll catch Mary some other time. Pleased, Arthur settles in to finally watch Dark Bunny and changes the channel just in time to hear an announcer state that Dark Bunny has been cancelled in favor of reruns of Mary Moo Cow. This, of course, does not go well with Arthur, and the episode finishes with him screaming at the television while Pal eats Popcorn.

Major

 * Arthur Read
 * D.W. Read
 * Jane Read
 * David Read
 * Mary Moo Cow

Minor

 * Buster Baxter
 * Unknown Female Adult Rabbit (Number 4)
 * Maria lookalike
 * Timmy and Tommy Tibble
 * Nadine

Cameo

 * Unknown Male Adult Rabbit (Number 3)
 * Unknown Male Rabbit
 * James MacDonald
 * Sarah
 * Maryann
 * Liam
 * Kate Read
 * Pal

Trivia

 * With the coins that D.W. collected, they come in a variety of the colors gold, silver, and brown, meaning these are the type of coins that Elwood City uses.
 * Arthur's address is revealed to be 562 Main Street.
 * Arthur breaks the fourth wall in this episode by shouting out loud "Well, what are you waiting for? Quick! Go to the title card!" This happened at the end of the opening seconds before the Title Card actually came, which is the Super Sister title card.
 * Running Gag:D.W. stealing Arthur and Busters bowl of popcorn for herself.
 * Dark Bunny was replaced with reruns of Mary Moo Cow, despite the fact that they air on different channels as shown in That's a Baby Show!. And then later on, Dark Bunny was apparently uncanceled, as it appears in subsequent episodes. Perhaps Dark Bunny's cancellation was temporary.
 * Mary's identity is revealed to be a certain Patty Jones who's voiced by Heidi Floss.

Episode connections

 * The same kids would appear singing about soup with Mary in "Sue Ellen Gets Her Goose Cooked."
 * Arthur wanting to hurry up and go to the title card is similar to what Fern does in the intro of "Fern's Slumber Party."

Errors

 * When Patty Jones is putting on makeup, her mouth is on top of the powder puff.

Production notes

 * In the "And Now a Word from Us Kids" segment (retitled "And Now a Word from Us Zoomers" for this episode), Caroline and Kenny from Zoom take the viewers behind the scenes of Zoom. Also, there is no Arthur drawing in the "Now Back to Arthur" bumper for this episode as Caroline says "And now back to Zoom" by mistake before correcting herself.