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.

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 angrily kicks 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 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.

Despite being told multiple times not to touch Arthur's model plane, D.W. deliberately disobeys him. 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 D.W. has said, and exclaims in a shocked voice, "What?"

The two of them run outside to survey the damage. When Arthur sees his plane destroyed on the ground, 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, 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 read the instructions, and says it's not her fault if he made a plane that doesn't fly. Arthur's having finally had enough of D.W. In anger, Arthur furiously shouts and angrily punches D.W., who falls to the ground and begins to cry with tears, loudly enough for their parents to hear. A few minutes after D.W. runs into the house in tears, Jane calls for Arthur to come in the house while using his full name, and he realizes that he's in trouble saying "Uh-oh — middle name."

When Arthur enters, he sees David applying 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.

Jane tells Arthur to apologize to D.W. for being aggressive, but he refuses because she destroyed his plane, which took him a week to build, and then claims D.W. should apologize to him, since he repeatedly warned her not to touch it, and her failure to comply resulted in the destruction of all his hard work. As David passes by holding D.W. in his arms, she bitterly says to Arthur, "You're bad!"

Arthur and his parents go into the living room to further discuss what happened. Because Arthur refuses to own up to his actions, David openly scolds Arthur and punishes him for what he did by telling him that he can't watch TV for a whole week. Arthur thinks that's unfair, and that his parents are not even acknowledging what D.W. did to his model plane. Jane 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, 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 very 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, Arthur finally apologizes to D.W. in the hallway 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 tells 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. This is mentioned again in “Tales of Grotesquely Grim Bunny.”
 * 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.
 * Arthur's Fist has become an internet meme that grewed up and circled the internet, but the network that runs the show includes a reaction image featuring a screen capture of the protagonist Arthur holding a clinched fist, which is often accompanied by captions describing various infuriating or frustrating circumstances. The image is taken from the Arthur Punches D.W. scene, notable for inspiring a 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 a model plane that looked identical to the one he was working on in this episode. It also ended up broken because of D.W.; however, this time, Arthur dropped the plane in shock at hearing D.W. saying a swear word (as she was asking Arthur what it meant).