Arthur's Big Hit

Arthur's Big Hit is the second half of the first episode of Season 4. It first aired on September 6, 1999 with "D.W.'s Library Card."

Summary
D.W. breaks Arthur's model plane, so he punches her in the arm. Arthur doesn't see why his reaction was wrong until The Tough Customers pressure Binky to punch Arthur. He then realizes that hitting someone not only physically hurts, but can also hurt their feelings.

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 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.

After the episode title card, Arthur is building a scale model of the Bell X-1 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 kicks D.W. out of his room. The next day as Arthur is putting together the plane, D.W. spills one of his paint bottles and runs out of sight.

A few days later D.W. plays with the plane while its paint is drying, which forces Arthur 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.

After being told multiple times not to touch Arthur's model plane, D.W. disobeys. 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 that it will actually fly.

The model then crashes to the ground, so D.W. goes and tells Arthur that he made the plane all wrong since it doesn't fly at all, and Arthur's about to reply that he made it exactly right, only to stop short and exclaim in shock, "What?!"

So Arthur and D.W. go outside and when Arthur sees his plane destroyed, he gasps and picks up one of the broken pieces, shocked, angered, and devastated. D.W. says that if the plane broke the sound barrier, then falling out of a window shouldn't break it.

Arthur angrily tells D.W. that he warned her continuously not to touch his model, but D.W. keeps telling him that he made the plane wrong since it didn't fly, asks him if he even read the instructions, and that it's not her fault if he made a plane that doesn't fly.

Arthur gets extremely mad and he punches D.W. with his fist directly on her arm while screaming, "I TOLD YOU... NOT TO TOUCH IT!!!!!". D.W. cries loud enough for their parents to hear.

Jane yells for him to come in the house for his punishment while David heals D.W. with ice, but she cries when he puts it on her wound because it's cold.

Jane tells Arthur to apologize to D.W., but he refuses to because she destroyed his plane, which took him a week to build, and that she should apologize to him since he already told her millions of times not to touch his plane.

As David passes by holding D.W. in his arms, she bitterly says to Arthur, "You're BAD!". Then Arthur and his mom and dad go into the living room, Arthur sits in the time-out chair, and his parents sit on the sofa.

David tells Arthur that he is now grounded from watching TV for a week for what he just did. He thinks that his parents don't even care what D.W. did to him and his plane model, which Arthur found to be absolutely unfair. Jane tells him that they will deal with what D.W. did, but that what he did was wrong too. Arthur still disagrees.

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

Binky refuses to hit Arthur, so he avoids looking at Arthur for the rest of the school day so he wouldn't have to hit him. Arthur discusses it with his friends, and Francine asks him why he wouldn't apologize.

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 know how to compare models with actual things; but he compares what she's 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. So Binky is told to hit Arthur, which he does, making Arthur feel hurt and embarrassed.

When Arthur is home, he learns that Binky kind of did him a favor by showing that it was very mean for him to hit D.W. because her feelings were hurt. In the hallway, Arthur says he's sorry to D.W. for hitting her and she says she's sorry for wrecking his plane.

She asks him what kind of a plane doesn't fly, and he tells her, "A model plane." Now, D.W. has learned her lesson and she responds by saying that she didn't know and that she's just a child and to give her a break.

The next day, Binky apologizes to Arthur, who has learned his lesson, and Arthur thanks him. 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 wrong. Binky founds a new club with no violence, and will beat anyone who breaks that new rule.

Trivia

 * This episode was rated TV-Y-7 for Arthur punching D.W.
 * Arthur's middle name is revealed to be Timothy.
 * Both Arthur and D.W. got hit on the left arm.
 * During the week in which Arthur made his plane, he wore more different outfits than he's usually seen wearing in most of the series.
 * Arthur saying that Binky's huge is a reference to "Bully for Binky."
 * In the later episode "Bleep," Arthur was working on another model plane as a replacement for the one D.W. broke in this episode. But in that episode, D.W. said the curse word, which made him drop and break the second plane.