Arthur's Big Hit (Arthur)
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| "Arthur's Big Hit" | ||||||||||||||||
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 "I told you, NOT TO TOUCH IT!"
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Arthur's Big Hit is the second half of the first episode in the fourth season of Arthur, is the second episode of the fourth season of Arthur and is overall the one-hundred and thirty-second episode of the Arthur series. It and "D.W.'s Library Card" are the first digital ink and paint animation episodes.
Plot
Arthur ends up hitting D.W. out of rage and frustration after she breaks his model plane. Later, Binky is pressured by his gang members to hit Arthur the next time he sees him.
Why It Should Get Hit
- It's infamous for how mean-spirited it is in an otherwise heartwarming show, and how it fails to portray the message of not using violence against other people. Even if the episode had decent intentions, it doesn't work well for the following reasons.
- The episode tries too hard to make the viewer side with D.W., but due to how selfish and bratty she is, with her showing no remorse for bothering Arthur, viewers will likely side with Arthur instead. D.W. doesn't feel any remorse at all for breaking Arthur's plane, even when both of them apologize to each other near the end of the episode, in which D.W.'s apology, based on the tone of her voice, is insincere, as she demands him to give her a break, and uses being a child as an excuse.
- Like with most episodes of the series, D.W. is incredibly unsympathetic, as she annoyingly tortures Arthur throughout the entire episode. Not as bad as she was in "D.W.'s Very Bad Mood", but still annoying.
- In addition, she breaks Arthur's plane but still bothers him about how it "didn't fly", which causes him to punch her.
- Arthur's parents, David and Jane, are no better. For example, they don't seem to care about the fact that D.W. broke Arthur's plane and instead only care about D.W. getting hit, even when Arthur gets punched by Binky Barnes near the end of the episode, they don't seem to care and claim "that's how D.W. felt when you punched her", instead of pressing assault charges on Binky, which makes them MASSIVE hypocrites.
- Even though Arthur gets punished by his parents for punching D.W., D.W., on the other hand, receives almost no punishment for breaking Arthur's plane.
- While it's true that their parents did say that they would, "deal with what she did", when they announce his punishment, it is never revealed what D.W.'s punishment really is, and even then D.W. doesn't even seem to be affected by whatever it was, as shown by the insincerity of her apology to him.
- Arthur's friends, even Buster, who is appalled by D.W.'s behavior, and Binky, side against him, without letting him explain his side of the story. For instance, Francine proceeds to talk behind Arthur's back to Binky about the incident, and Fern uses D.W. being a "little girl" as an excuse, which aggravates him.
- "Why can't anyone see my side of this?"
- "Because you're wrong!"
- False advertising: The DVD cover shows Arthur getting ready to fight with D.W., but it isn't shown in the episode at all unless you count the opening scene, in which the "D.W." in the boxing ring is Binky in disguise, while the real D.W. is sitting in the audience.
- There's a rather infamous scene near the end of the episode, where D.W. walks into the kitchen with a freaking smile on her face, as she sees Arthur with a broken arm and says, "Yeah, I guess you're right." It's treated like a very cute scene, when in truth, it's extremely frustrating, as it's D.W. smuggling that Arthur got hurt, while she got off scot-free, with no punishment.
- Plot hole: At the beginning of the episode, Arthur gets pestered by D.W. multiple times over the plane, yet, he never even thinks about telling his parents and asking them to keep D.W. away from the plane. He also does not threaten D.W. with telling on her, if she refuses to listen, and he does not even think about writing a sign, or a note to warn D.W. not to touch the plane, and place that note underneath the plane so she could see it. It's somehow strange why Arthur never thought of doing those things.
- Hypocrisy: The moral this episode is trying to teach viewers is “Violence is never the answer”. Unfortunately, there are several problems with how this moral is conveyed. First off Arthur, the one who learns this lesson is only taught this through Binky as Binky hits Arthur, and Jane and David even approve of Binky’s hitting to point out to Arthur that it is similar to how Arthur felt, giving off the notion that it is okay inflict violence on people to teach them a lesson about not doing violence. The second problem is that D.W. ultimately learns that she should never have broken Arthur’s plane after he hit her as she fails to learn this beforehand from Arthur when he told her several times to not touch it and only learns about the plane’s importance to Arthur through being hit.
- Binky is pressured by his gang, to the point of forcing him to punch Arthur in one scene.
- What's worse about this is that much like D.W., Binky's gang also doesn't receive any comeuppance at all for forcing Binky to punch Arthur.
- Arthur does learn his lesson about not punching people, but only because Binky punched him, which goes against the "violence is wrong" message that the episode was going for.
- How can the tough customers just kick their leader out of their club? It’s not explained in the episode. Binky was in power to do what he does later in the episode, making this episode confusing to some people.
- Bad moral: Touching someone else's belongings and breaking them in the worst case is really bad.
- This episode started Michael Caloz's voice role as D.W. on a bad note, especially with the fact that D.W. is really unlikable in this episode.
Healing Qualities
- Despite Arthur's parents not feeling any form of sympathy towards their son when he gets punched, they at least had the decency to bandage it.
- Arthur and Binky are still likable characters.
- While it's still very mean-spirited for a friendly aardvark, seeing Arthur punch D.W. is justifiable and satisfying at the same time, especially for the horrible actions she did to the former throughout the entire series. Additionally, at least Binky felt bad and apologized for hitting Arthur, unlike D.W., who apologizes to Arthur, but in an insincere way.
- At least Arthur does learn his lesson about not punching people, even if does go against the "violence is wrong" message.
- It does teach a good moral about only using violence as an absolute last resort, even if the execution was horrible.
- The pre-title card was pretty funny, although that does not make up for the episode's flaws.
- Binky’s parts in general were good. Sure he may be a school bully, but this episode shows that he is against hitting people showing some good character development.
- Binky avoiding Arthur so that he can use that as an excuse for not hitting Arthur to his gang adds some good comedy to the episode.
- Good ending: Binky disbands the club and makes a new club with Arthur in it, where nobody hits anyone, and if anyone does, he will do the same back to them to bring them justice.
- "I told you NOT TO TOUCH IT!"
Gallery
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And it was at that moment that the episode went worse.
Reception
This episode was highly panned by critics and often included in lists for "top 10 worst episodes of the show" because of how unbalanced the hitting story is, and also, the fact that Arthur is mistreated throughout the entire episode. Many called it one of the worst, if not the worst, episodes of Arthur. The series creator, and the author of the books it's based on, Marc Brown, even admitted that he isn't a big fan of the episode. The episode currently sits at a 6.2/10 rating on IMDb.
Some people, however, like this episode, due to Binky's character development, and the fact that he had to hide from Arthur, so that he doesn’t have to hit him, and some people call it overhated nowadays.
The episode was the cause of most Arthur YouTube poops.
Videos
The Episode
Trivia
- The scene where Arthur says "I told you, NOT TO TOUCH IT!" became a famous internet meme, which also led to the creation of the "Arthur's fist" meme.
- This is the first episode when Arthur's middle name, "Timothy", is revealed.
- Arthur's plane model is broken again in the episode, "Bleep".
External links
Arthur's Big Hit at the Internet Movie Database
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