A Tale of Two Cows

"A Tale of Two Cows"

"A Tale of Two Cows" is the seventeenth episode of the Drawn Together series.

Storyline

Template:Spoiler The housemates are distinctly unhappy upon learning that Wooldoor has been making excursions into the dangerous Live Action Forest, but they are even more upset when they discover what he brought back with him: a live action cow. They return Live Action Cow to the Forest, but Wooldoor feels he cannot live without her, and goes to get her back. When he reaches the forest, he is attacked by the most fearsome creature in the Live Action Forest, Live Action Squirrel With Big Balls. The housemates (who have followed Wooldoor there) are terrified, but just when all hope seems lost, Live Action Cow shows up and fends the squirrel off. The housemates, out of gratitude, decide to take the cow back home, but almost as soon as they get there, the cow begins foaming at the mouth. Foxxy informs Wooldoor that Live Action Cow has developed rabies, and Wooldoor will have to take the cow out back and shoot her.

Wooldoor takes the cow outside, but he is unable to finish the deed, so he fakes her death and returns to the house. The housemates discover what Wooldoor did when they see a news report that the cow has gone on a rampage, and is destroying town after town. After chasing her all over the countryside, the group finally finds Live Action Cow back at the Drawn Together house. Federal agents swarm the place, preparing to shoot the cow, but Wooldoor steps in front of the cow to keep her from being shot. The agents inform Wooldoor that they're prepared to kill him too if necessary, but just as they are about to shoot Wooldoor, Live Action Cow jumps in front of the bullet, saving Wooldoor's life. Wooldoor is saddened by Live Action Cow's death, but comes to terms with his grief through a montage of their times together.

Meanwhile, Toot is depressed and frustrated that she can't get anyone to escort her to her fat camp's ten year reunion. She retreats to the attic to comfort herself by gorging on cotton candy (which is actually the fiberglass insulation in the walls), but while she is there, she discovers the answer to her problems: a video game cheat manual which can make Xandir do anything she wants, including accompanying her to her reunion.

Toot arrives at the reunion with Xandir in tow, and much to the campers' envy and Xandir's confusion, they actually share something resembling a romantic experience together. However, just as Toot takes the stage with Xandir to be honored, the other campers find Toot's cheat book and expose her scam, leaving Toot mortified and Xandir upset. Toot becomes depressed once more and Xandir, taking pity, tries to comfort Toot by making her feel that at least part of their magical time was real and not just the result of the cheat book. This makes Toot very briefly happy before she challenges him to prove it. She promptly jumps on him, and in effect, rapes him. Afterward, Xandir tells Toot that he does like her, but he is still gay after all, and can't be with her romantically. She asks if he would be attracted to her if he weren't gay. Xandir says no, but he likes her as a friend, and slept with her out of pity. Toot says she'll take that, and promptly jumps on him again.

Musical Number: "A Moment Like This", sung by Toot during her romp with Xandir. The song was originally performed by Kelly Clarkson. Also, Brooke Ramel's "I Wanted You To Know" makes its third appearance in the series, this time playing during the montage where Wooldoor remembers Live Action Cow.

Trivia

File:Dt 210 cheat m4.jpg

Toot finds Xandir's cheatbook.

• When the cast is at the dinner table (complete with Sabbath candles), Captain Hero says grace by first speaking in Hebrew, waving his hands as women do in the Jewish blessing, then following with some words of Scientology. Traditionally males never light Sabbath candles, and Passover isn't mentioned, surely not in English. Thus the jumbled ancestral and sexual tendencies of Captain Hero, previously demonstrated at Little Orphan Hero and Super Nanny, are elegantly blended.

• The book's title, The Legend of Xandir, is a reference to The Legend of Zelda series. The controller attached to the cheat book is based on a Sony PlayStation DualShock controller; ironically, there have never been any Zelda games released for a Sony console.

• The first cheat Toot uses from the Xandir cheat book is an adaptation of the Konami Code, arguably the most famous video game cheat code. While the original code is defined as "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start", Toot uses a variant that ends "B, A, B, A, start". As the controller was for a Playstation, B and A had to be replaced (with Square and Triangle, respectively); despite this, Toot recited it with B and A.

• Wooldoor hiding Live Action Cow in the closet is a reference to Elliot hiding E.T. in the closet in E.T.: the Extra Terrestrial.

• Barney the Dinosaur is present at Toot's amputation scene, only colored blue instead of his usual purple.

• When Toot asks the housemates which of them is going to escort her to the reunion, they all immediately fade out of the scene, using the same special effects used on Star Trek: The Original Series when characters beamed into and out of a particular location using the transporter.

• When the group is about to take Live Action Cow back to the forest, Wooldoor tries to stop them by claiming that the others won't take her back because she will have his stink on her, referring to the urban legend that mother birds will reject their babies if they detect human scent on them.[1]

• When Toot thinks she might be confusing her memories with a Tom Cruise movie, the movie being parodied is Born on the Fourth of July.

• When the cast catches Wooldoor hiding Live Action Cow, there is live action manure all over the house. This is similar to some gross live action effects, which have been shown on some episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

• At one point, Foxxy says that live action and animation don't mix. Though many films over the years have combined live action and animation, Foxxy is most likely referring to the recent spate of live action films with CGI-rendered main characters, such as Scooby-Doo, Garfield, and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. The CGI effects in these films are widely perceived as being awkwardly rendered and poorly integrated into the film's live action sequences, creating an unrealistic, jarring effect.

• Live Action Squirrel with Big Balls is a photograph of a Cape Ground Squirrel that has been circulating for some time, often being marketed and printed on posters and greeting cards to promote sexual innuendo humor.

• The fight scene with Live Action Squirrel is a reference to numerous older science fiction/fantasy movies in which actors and larger animals/monsters could not be featured onscreen at the same time.

• The music used in the scene that Live Action Cow takes on Live Action Squirrel with Big Balls sounds similar to the fight theme from Star Trek: The Original Series conducted by Alexander Courage, though changed slightly in order to avoid having to pay royalties.

• The sound effects heard when Live Action Squirrel with Big Balls is chased off are similar to those heard in Hanna-Barbera cartoons when a character runs away.

• The live action shot of Foxxy's feet is the same one that appeared in Hot Tub, only the positions of the right and left feet are reversed. In both cases, though Foxxy is wearing boots in the scene, the live action feet are bare. The live action shot of her teeth is the same one that appeared in The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist during the close-up shot of her victory celebration.

• Captain Hero's line "Save yourselves!" was originally used in Hot Tub. In an interview on Comedy Central's website, Jess Harnell states that he always uses the line when signing autographs, believing it is a perfect summation of Captain Hero's character.

• The camp's name, Camp Really Fat David, is a pun on the presidential retreat Camp David.

• The camp reunion theme is "Enchantment Under the Seafood", a reference to Enchantment Under the Sea, the school dance in Back to the Future.

• The Jelly Donuts' ring leader at the fat camp who torments Toot, bears some resemblance to Little Lotta, a strong, overweight girl who is a spinoff from the Richie Rich comics series.

• Through the first half of the episode, everyone refers to Live Action Cow as male, but halfway through the episode, they suddenly start referring to the cow as female, with no explanation. (Live Action Cow must be considered female, however, since the photograph that the show uses is of a female cow with udders.)

• The scene where Live Action Cow develops rabies and Wooldoor is forced to take her out and shoot her is taken directly from Old Yeller.

• The scene where a flock of birds swarm the housemates is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

• After tanning the hide of the truck driver, Wooldoor wears his skin and poses as the driver to tell his family, "I love you". This is a reference to serial killer Ed Gein, who not only would take the skin of his victims and make furniture covering, but would wear it as if he were the victims themselves.

• This episode's title is a play on the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities, and possibly also a play on the "two cows" joke). The titular cows are Live Action Cow and Toot, who is compared to a cow in this episode and several others.

• At one point when Toot is in the attic, the "camera" goes upward, through the ceiling/attic floor. In the space between the ceiling and attic floor, you can see skeletons that appear to belong to Bart and Lisa Simpson; The Simpsons itself often uses a similar trick.

• In another Simpsons spoof, a scene showing the rabid Live Action Cow's rampage through the cartoon universe states that the Springfield within The Simpsons' continuity is in Connecticut, referencing the running gag that the show never reveals the true state.
  • Bart Simpson can also be seen hanging out a window when the news broadcast switches to the scene in Springfield, Connecticut. The house would appear to be the exact one belonging to the Simpson family themselves.

• Foxxy appears to have regained possession of the Foxxy 5 van. Previously, her battered bandmates had absconded with it after Foxxy ran them over and left them for dead in the garage in Captain Hero's Marriage Pact.

• This episode also makes fun of Bedrock from The Flintstones, the futuristic city from The Jetsons, and even Comedy Central's own South Park. ("I bet if we lived here, more people would watch," Spanky says, referring to South Park 's higher ratings.)

• When the cast in the Foxxy 5 van entered Bedrock and the futuristic city, two of the cast added a pun about each city's society. Clara commented that Bedrock was ruined because its citizens had too much of "a gay old time". This is the last line in the closing theme to The Flintstones. In Clara's point of view, the city was punished for being gay friendly. In the futuristic city, Captain Hero says, "We need to stop this crazy thing," a reference to the last line by George Jetson when he takes Astro for a walk and gets stuck on the speeding treadmill after Astro chases a cat.

• When the group is driving through Bedrock, you can see their feet under the van making it move, referring to how everyone "drove" in The Flintstones.

• When South Park is shown, everyone visible has been killed, except for Kenny McCormick. This is a reversal of a running gag on South Park in the early seasons, as Kenny was well known for dying in just about every episode.

• This is the second episode in which Ling-Ling has no speaking role, the first being Dirty Pranking No. 2.

• When the fat women use the cheat book to manipulate Xandir, they briefly turn him into a Mario Kart character.

• When the fat campers feast, the scene is a parody of the lowering of livestock into the Velociraptor pit in Jurassic Park; the goat resembles those from the now-defunct comic The Far Side.

• The emcee at Toot's reunion is based on Fat Albert, only he is wearing a blue shirt instead of Fat Albert's usual red.

• At the reunion, Xandir is wearing black pants pulled low enough to show his underwear, a bow tie around his neck, and no shirt -- the official "uniform" of sorts for Chippendale dancers.

• The scene of Toot standing on stage getting doused with blood is a reference to Carrie.

• When Live Action Cow saves Wooldoor by jumping in front of him in slow motion, the sound effect that plays is the one that was heard in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman whenever the title characters would perform their superhuman feats, usually also in slow motion.

• Toot bleeds red blood in this episode. Although she had occasionally bled red blood before, in previous episodes, she had usually bled gray or black (especially when she cut herself).

• Wooldoor's memories of Live Action Cow montage includes a number of references to previous episodes. In one shot, Wooldoor reenacts the Elian Gonzales photograph (which the show also used in Foxxy vs. the Board of Education) while wearing his hat and goggles from The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist. The shot of Wooldoor walking in crutches comes from Requiem for a Reality Show. Also appearing in the montage are the Sweetcake genocide of the Sockbats, Wooldoor's suicide, and Wooldoor's Dig Dug coffin escape (all from The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist- Part II), as well as another appearance of the oft-used "Monkey Man" shot. In each case, Live Action Cow is digitally inserted into the shot in an obviously artificial manner.

• Foxxy's refers to her child Timmy again, whom she had previously mentioned in Dirty Pranking No. 2, implying that she had to sell him on the black market. Here she claims that she had to shoot Timmy when it looked like he had rabies (though he was probably just brushing his teeth). Though it is probably just a joke on the part of the show, it is possible that Timmy survived the ordeal and was sold later, or that Foxxy has had more than one child called Timmy.

• After Xandir agrees to escort her to the reunion, Toot does the truffle shuffle in celebration. This is a reference to The Goonies.

• The news anchor who delivers the report about Live Action Cow's rampage looks exactly like the man who administered Ling-Ling's driving test in Super Nanny.

• In the last scene with Toot in bed with a traumatized Xandir, she says, "You felt almost as good inside me as I did inside you", another suggestion that Toot is a hermaphrodite.