Arthur's Family Feud

"Arthur's Family Feud" is the first half of the tenth episode of season 5. It originally aired on November 6th, 2000, along with "Muffy Gets Mature".

Summary
Arthur and D.W. tell conflicting and imaginative versions of what exactly happened to Dad's perfect soufflé, and Mom and Dad try to sort things out.

Plot
At the beginning of the episode, Dave is hard at work, sweating over his cooking, and looking worried. The timer finally goes off, and Dave feels excited. He hasteningly escorts Jane into the kitchen proclaiming that at she's about to see the most beautiful, most glorious creation ever cooked, the David L. Read Super Soufflé. He opens the kitchen door and screams in horror while seeing Pal licking the soufflé off the floor and Arthur and D.W.; startled over their parents arrival immediately start pointing fingers and begin accusing each other of knocking the soufflé off the table. Jane angrily orders Arthur and D.W into the living room so they can try to explain what happened.

Arthur and D.W still refuse to cooperate, continuing to pin the blame on each other. Finally, Dave interrupts and decides to punish them both by restricting them from TV for two months. When the argument over who did it and that one side should be punished and not the other flares up again, Dave interrupts and increases the punishment time to three months. The kids find this unfair and Jane tries to get Dave to calm down but he increases the punishment again to four months until he gives up. D.W angrily accuses Arthur of making Dad upset.

Jane then decides that until they can cool down and are ready to discuss this problem properly, she sends the kids off to their rooms. Arthur and D.W. wonder if this will supersede their previous plans of D.W. going to the petting zoo with the Tibbles and Arthur going to the new Bionic Bunny Arcade. Jane replies with "We'll just have to wait and see".

In Arthur's room, Arthur grumbles about his predicament. Of course he still KNOWS it's all D.W.'s fault -- he'll probably be blamed for everything she does for the rest of his life. He has a fantasy where he is standing in a bedroom with D.W. surrounded by Crazy Bus paraphernalia.

He asks D.W. where she got so much Crazy Bus stuff.

Suddenly the door bursts open and police swarm in. Finally, they've caught the "Crazy Bus Thief" red-handed! They grab hold of Arthur and drag him away. Apparently D.W. had set everything up in his room to make it appear as if he were the culprit.

The horror isn't over yet however. Arthur further imagines himself in jail as a result of this bust. He's sitting on a bench playing the harmonica. D.W. comes in to visit him, informing him Mom and Dad wouldn't come, they were too ashamed. Arthur proclaims his innocence but D.W. ignores him. Since he's in for 15 years, she thought he might like a little music to help pass the time. She pushes a cassette player over to him, switching it on to play the Crazy Bus song. Arthur screams and D.W. leaves laughing.

Meanwhile, D.W. is lying on her bed wailing. Suddenly something clatters on her window and she goes to look. It's the Tibbles wanting to know if she is going to the petting zoo with them later. She doesn't know, at the moment she's being punished for something Arthur did. Tommy and Timmy can understand that, they frequently get blamed for each others wrongdoings. Predictably they begin to argue over who gets the blame most often. They end up rolling around on the ground wrestling. D.W. wonders if this is the way she and Arthur will be forever. She has a fantasy imagining them both as elderly folk in wheelchairs residing in a nursing home. They're arguing loudly and crashing their wheelchairs into each other.

D.W. and Arthur go into the hallway at the same time. Arthur says he's been thinking and he's decided it's time to do the right thing. D.W. agrees -- he should admit he's guilty. Arthur yells that no, she's the one that needs to confess.

Jane, working on the computer hears them and mutters they'll just have to get to the bottom of this. She sets them down at the table. Dad's there as well. They will get to do the things they want to do if they can discuss this problem out and reach some sort of solution. Mom and Dad will listen to each side in turn. If Arthur and D.W wanted, they could draw illustrations to help explain what they want to express and they were not going to interrupt each other.

After the inevitable argument over who will go first, they flip a coin (D.W.'s idea) and Arthur wins. He starts drawing. As Arthur explains what happened, We see the usual stick figure drawings playing out Arthur's story. Now it's D.W.'s turn. She exclaims that she is surprised they aren't all asleep as that's what usually happens when people listen to fairy tales! D.W. worries that her drawing ability will impede the credibility of her explanation. It's decreed she may use props instead, and she scurries off to her room to get them.

It takes a while (Arthur even claims that the arcade would be closed by the time she was ready), but she had to get the perfect items to represent everyone involved. She plunks down a hideous troll doll as Arthur, D.W. herself is represented by a Princess Bunny doll and Pal is represented by Mary Moo Cow which Arthur objects too, because it's not even the correct gender. Things get underway objections aside. The figures come to life and act out D.W.'s description of events. Arthur immediately begins to object to the story, Mom pulls out a referee whistle and blows it, silencing the pair of them.

Jane questions D.W further and asks if she actually saw the soufflé fall. D.W said no. Then Dave notes that Arthur and D.W said they were both in the kitchen when the mishap happened. Jane decides to look under the table and sees that both D.W. and Arthur are wearing socks. She explains that it's slippery in the kitchen in only socks. Both kids think about this fact.

They then realize maybe no one is to blame; yet they could both have some responsibility in this situation. A fantasy reveals that they were indeed running and that in the process D.W was running and did slide into the table (like Arthur said) and that since Arthur was right behind her he pushed her into the table (like D.W said) and the force of the impact knocked the soufflé off the table and onto the floor. D.W. then says that maybe they both made the soufflé fall.

They both apologize hastily, and rush off hoping they aren't too late for their previous engagements. Mom looks at Dad, but he just shrugs.

Arthur and D.W. come downstairs to tell their parents they're headed out. Dad's sitting on the couch eating ice cream and watching cooking on TV. Both kids note how depressed Dad is. Maybe there is something they could do to help...

Arthur and D.W. go to the kitchen and decide to start to work trying to cook a soufflé to replace the one they destroyed. D.W. is in charge of separating egg whites which she concludes to mean the shells. They begin to argue about that and the correct pronunciation of "soufflé". Dad hears them fighting again and wanders in to see what's going on now. D.W. tries to explain that they are making him a "Shoe-fay". It doesn't sink in at first, but then he realizes what they're saying. He gets very excited and suggests that they get started. Then, he starts bustling around the kitchen, while confiding that nutmeg is his secret ingredient.

Later, the family is seated around the table with a puffy little soufflé set in the middle. Mom is impressed, it's the most beautiful thing he's ever cooked. "No, it isn't", he corrects, sounding a little fatalistic, before smiling and saying, "It's the most beautiful thing THEY'VE ever made".

With that they all stab the soufflé with their forks to deflate it, and the episode ends.

Characters

 * Arthur Read
 * D.W. Read
 * David Read
 * Jane Read
 * The Tibbles
 * Pal

Trivia

 * This is the last episode where Arthur is voiced by Michael Yarmush, not counting Arthur's Perfect Christmas.
 * This episode is made into a song on Arthur's Third CD (called Two Sides of the Story)
 * The policeman says "Book em, Charlie" that might be a parody of Steve McGarret's famous line "Book em, Dano"