Arthur's Big Hit

Summary
Arthur wonders if it's ever okay to hit someone. Sometimes you just get so mad, you wanna...pow! Arthur experiences considerable confusion, and finally clarity, as he finds himself on both ends of the hitting question.

Plot
The episode starts in a boxing arena with Francine as the referee, and Arthur vs. D.W. set to duke it out in the ring. Buster is in Arthur's corner, while Nadine is in D.W.'s. Arthur and D.W. have their mouthpieces put in and the fight is just about to start when Arthur sees another D.W. also apparently sitting in the crowd, and then finds out that the one in the ring with him is actually Binky Barnes in a D.W. costume. Binky says he figured Arthur would rather fight someone his own size. The real D.W. laughs while Binky chases Arthur.

When Arthur was building a model plane, which broke the sound barrier, D.W. thinks the set, which is still mostly in pieces in its container, is a broken game. Arthur angrily shuns D.W. out of his room. The next day as Arthur is putting together the plane, D.W. accidentally spills one of his paint bottles and runs out of sight.

A couple of days later, D.W. was still playing with the plane while the paint was drying, which makes Arthur wanting to repaint, The next day, Arthur completes the plane and fantasizes about receiving a blue ribbon for it and perhaps getting to fly the real thing.

Despite the attempts for Arthur to redirect her sister not to touch the plane, D.W deliberately doesn’t listen, She holds it up and pretends to fly it around the room, then allows the plane to fall out the window, under the mistaken assumption it will actually fly. The model crashes to the ground, and D.W finds Arthur to tell him he made the plane all wrong since it doesn't fly. Arthur is about to reply that there's nothing wrong with the plane, only to stop short when he realizes the implications of what DW had said, and exclaims in a shocked voice, "What?"

The two of them run outside to survey the damage. When Arthur sees his model airplane was broken, he gasps and picks up one of the broken pieces, shocked, angry and devastated. D.W tells Arthur she can't understand why, if the plane broke the sound barrier, falling out of a window would break it.

Arthur loses his temper and scolds D.W. that he told her not to touch his model plane, but D.W. doesn't acknowledge how angry he is, and continues going on about how Arthur obviously made the plane wrong since it didn't fly. She asks him if he even followed the instructions, and says it's not her fault if he made a plane that doesn't fly. Arthur then yells at D.W. saying "I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH IT!!!". Furious, Arthur the violent punches D.W. in the arm, causing her to fall to the ground and cry hard with tears, loudly enough for their parents to hear. A few minutes after D.W. runs into the house in tears, Arthur’s mother calls him to come inside while using his full name, Arthur Timothy Read, who realizes that he's in trouble saying "Uh-oh — middle name."

When Arthur enters, he sees his father trying to apply ice to the spot on D.W.'s arm where Arthur furiously punched her. She asks him if they'll amputate her arm. He says no, but makes sure to correct her when she says the word wrong initially; she asks again, this time using the right word, and he says no. She cries when he puts it on her wound; when he asks what's wrong, she calmly explains that the ice is kind of cold.

Arthur’s mother tells Arthur to apologize to his sister for being ugly, and Arthur refuses to apologize, and that dw should apologize to him and then he told his mother that he told D.W a billion times not to touch his model plane, Arthur’s father brings D.W. upstairs in his arms, telling Arthur that he is bad.

Because of the incident, Arthur is forbidden from watching television for a whole week. Arthur thinks the punishment was unfair and that his parents are not even acknowledging what D.W did to his model plane. Arthur’s mother tells him they will deal with what D.W did, but what he did was wrong too and didn't solve his problem. Still, Arthur disagrees that he overreacted by being brutal to D.W. and claims she deserved it.

The next day at school, the Tough Customers hear about the case and triple dog dare Binky to hit the next person that walks by (which happened to be Arthur) to prove that he is tough, still.

Binky refuses to hit Arthur, so he avoids looking at Arthur for the rest of the school day so that way he wouldn't hit him. Arthur discusses it with his friends, and Francine asks him why he wouldn't apologize to his younger sister for being a little less violent, in which his friends proceed to pry into his business and blackmail him.

After second recess, he discusses it with Fern, and she tells him that D.W. is "just a little girl," and that most kids her age don't exactly know how to compare models with actual things; but he compares what she has said about D.W. to "a tornado being just a little wind."

After school, right by The Sugar Bowl, Arthur runs towards Binky and the Tough Customers and tells Binky that he dropped his pen when he ran out of school "kind of sideways." So Binky is told to hit Arthur, which he does, making Arthur feel hurt and humiliated.

When Arthur is home and getting an ice pack from his father, he learns that Binky kind of did him a favor by showing that it was very wrong for him to hit D.W. because her feelings were deliberately hurt, and it was also selfish of him to use his loss as an excuse to never apologize.

Now knowing that hitting her was not the right way to solve his problem, in the hallway, Arthur apologizes to D.W. for hitting her, and she apologizes to him for wrecking his plane. She asks him what kind of plane doesn't fly, and he tells her "a model plane". D.W., now having learned her lesson, responds by saying that she didn't know and that she was a child, after all, and to give her a break.

The next day, Binky tries to tell Arthur he is sorry, who has learned his lesson, and Arthur thanks him for making him understand how bad he wanted to make D.W. feel the same way he did to teach her a lesson. Then Molly invites Arthur to join the Tough Customers, but Binky dissolves the club and tells them that making someone to do something they don't want to do is really, really wrong. Binky decided to found a new club with no aggression, and will "clobber" anyone who breaks that new rule.

Major

 * Arthur Read
 * D.W. Read
 * David Read
 * Jane Read
 * Binky Barnes
 * Molly MacDonald
 * Rattles
 * 4th Grade Male Dog

Minor

 * Buster Baxter
 * Francine Frensky
 * Muffy Crosswire
 * Fern Walters
 * Sue Ellen Armstrong
 * Nigel Ratburn

Cameo

 * George Lundgren
 * The Brain
 * Nadine Flumberghast
 * Bionic Bunny
 * 4th Grade Female Aardvark
 * James MacDonald
 * Amanda Hulser
 * Billy
 * Maria Pappas
 * Edwin
 * Laverne Frensky
 * Mrs. Barnes
 * Mrs. Powers
 * Alex
 * Luke
 * Helen
 * Jack Weasel
 * Steve
 * 3rd Grade Male Rabbit
 * Coach Bumpus
 * Kenny
 * 3rd Grade Female Aardvark
 * 3rd Grade Female Aardvark (Number 2)
 * Beulah McInnerny
 * 3rd Grade Male Rat
 * Otis
 * Nancy
 * Patrick
 * Brian

Trivia

 * Arthur's middle name is revealed to be Timothy.
 * Both Arthur and D.W. were hit on the left arm.
 * During the week in which Arthur makes his plane, he wears more different outfits than he's usually seen wearing in most of the series.

Episode connections

 * Arthur saying that Binky is "huge" is a reference to "Bully for Binky."
 * In the later episode, "Bleep," Arthur was working on an identical model plane as the one he was in this episode. It also ended up breaking because of D.W., except this time Arthur dropped the plane in shock when hearing D.W. saying a swear word (as she was asking Arthur what it meant).