Foxxy vs. the Board of Education

Infobox Television episode
Title=Foxxy vs. the Board of Education
Series=Drawn Together
Season=2
Episode=2
Airdate=October 26, 2005
Writer= Elijah Aron


Caption = Foxxy meets the Board of Education.
Director= Raymie Muzquiz
Production = 202
Guests =
Prev=The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II
Next=Little Orphan Hero

"Foxxy vs. the Board of Education" is the ninth episode of the animated series "Drawn Together".

toryline

Spanky, an internet character, is suddenly downloaded with a virus one day. He goes to a doctor for assistance, but the doctor won't give him the life-saving medication because Spanky doesn't have health insurance. Xandir, trying to console Spanky, points out that if he were in the questing business like himself, he would have great health insurance which would even cover his wife and kids. Spanky immediately realizes that if he "gay marries" Xandir, he would automatically get the insurance he needs. Xandir has some doubts, but after Spanky takes him to an ice show and romantically proposes to him there, Xandir agrees, and the pair are promptly married. Clara, believing that "If gays get married, the institution of marriage will be destroyed! Societies will crumble! Rivers will run with blood! Nazis will once again ride dinosaurs!" - ironically, Clara is a known anti-Semite, as were Nazis - vows to put a stop to Spanky's scam. To this end, she summons the King of Insurance to have the pair busted. Once the King shows up, Clara challenges Spanky to prove he is gay by having gay sex with Xandir. Spanky is unable to do this, and the King cancels Spanky's health coverage. Spanky responds by making a passionate, if somewhat strange, speech, which moves the King to grant Spanky health insurance for life. Seeing the newfound respect Spanky and Xandir have for each other, Clara decides that perhaps she was wrong, and one gay marriage isn't going to destroy the world. At this point, she is devoured and the house — and presumably the entire world — is promptly besieged by Nazis riding dinosaurs.Meanwhile, the police discover that Foxxy Love has been solving crimes without a license, and consequentially refuse to arrest the criminals she captures. Foxxy decides to try to finish college to get the license, but has a difficult time with the SAT, discovering the test to be racially-biased (including one question asking what SPF sunblock one would wear while playing polo at the country club with her fellow Klan members). After realizing that Ling-Ling, being Asian, excels at standardized tests, Foxxy convinces him to take the test for her. Unfortunately, the test administrator realizes immediately that Ling-Ling, despite his disguise, is not a black woman. Ling-Ling is caught and is made an offer: fail the test for Foxxy, or have a goon come over and walk around the house without taking off his shoes. Ling-Ling fails the test, so Foxxy decides to solve the mystery of why black kids do so poorly on the SAT.

When she tries to snoop around, Foxxy is caught by the Board of Education, an anthropomorphic wooden board who is based on The Bill from "Schoolhouse Rock!". He explains that since there is no money in education, educators have conspired with manufacturers of bling to keep black kids from getting an education so they will continue to waste money on frivolities like spinner rims and car mounted DVD players. He tries to eliminate Foxxy by trapping her in a cave with a hideous monster, but Ling-Ling, wanting to atone for letting her down before, shows up to save Foxxy from it (unfortunately getting killed in the process). With help from Ling-Ling's ghost, Foxxy is able to uncover the Board's new secret weapon — grape-flavored mentholated pencils which would tempt black kids to eat them and distract their attention from their exams — and turn the Board of Education over to the police, who re-license her to solve crimes.

Musical number: "Board Of Education," as sung by the Board of Education to Foxxy while explaining his plan to keep black people dumb. Another song, "Fire the Load", an 80s style synth pop song filled with double entendres relating to anal sex, plays during the ice show and again over the end credits.

Notes and inside references

* A curious detail is that in this episode, Spanky goes to an actual doctor; in most cases, the show uses Wooldoor whenever a doctor is needed. Of course, Wooldoor presumably would not have refused Spanky treatment without health insurance, a major plot point of this episode.

* In the background of the wedding, the Genie can be seen, implying that he is no longer captured by Lord Slashstab, nor is he apparently still with Xandir. Assorted guests from Xandir's gay bash can be seen attending the wedding as well.

* The voice of Xandir and Spanky's Paper Baby is provided by Tara Strong. Despite Paper Baby's declaration that it will grow up to be an origami swan, it can later be seen crumpled up and stuck to Ling-Ling's buttocks along with various other pieces of refuse.

* This episode reveals that Foxxy's middle name is "Shaquafa". Though the test administrator pronounces it as "Shaquafafa", the name appears as "Shaquafa" on the envelope containing Foxxy's test scores. In "Captain Hero's Marriage Pact", Foxxy herself writes the name as "Shaquafa" on her lyric sheet.

* The Hebrew writing on the container of tablets the Orthodox Jew is putting in the well is the word Kosher, a label usually applied to food products to indicate to Jewish consumers that the product has been prepared in accordance with Jewish law.

* The term schwoogie is used again when Foxxy breaks into the Board of Education building and sets off the alarm. The strobe alarm shows a sign saying "Schvoogie Alarm", a phonetic spelling of the word. Foxxy had been called a schwoogie in two previous episodes: by Clara in "Hot Tub," and by Strawberry Sweetcake in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II."

* Though she screams a couple of times, Toot does not have any actual dialogue in this episode. Up till this point, this was the only instance where a housemate other than Ling-Ling appears in an episode with no speaking role. In "Breakfast Food Killer", neither Xandir or Clara have any lines of dialogue.

Animated cameos

* Visible in the hospital waiting room (between both visits) are a pregnant Powerpuff Girl Bubbles, Ariel the Little Mermaid being choked by a plastic six-pack ring, Bambi and his wounded mother, Rocky and Bullwinkle with Rocky stuck in Bullwinkle's anus, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird in a straitjacket asking for puffs (like a drug addict), and Joe Camel in an iron lung.

* Elroy Jetson is one of the children kidnapped by Hans the six-armed child molester.

* When Ling-Ling says he needs a new best friend, the show cuts to a scene of Ling-Ling killing his old best friend/captor Gash, a character who looks like Ash Ketchum from the "Pokémon" anime.

* In the sequence where a depressed Foxxy watches other famous animated mystery solvers in action, we see Josie from tv version of "Josie and the Pussycats" (voiced by Tara Strong) and Daphne Blake from Hanna-Barbera's "Scooby-Doo" series (voiced by Cree Summer). This is a dual in-joke; Foxxy's character is largely based on the Pussycats' Valerie Brown, while her story in this episode is modeled after a typical episode of "Scooby-Doo", complete with similar-sounding musical cues. The removal of a person's mask to reveal the villain's true identity was another "Scooby-Doo" trademark.

* In the scene where Ling-Ling disguises himself as Foxxy to take the test, the teacher does a student roll call. Just before the scene focuses on Ling-Ling, we see several students. One of them resembles Parappa, the titular character from the musical video game "PaRappa the Rapper". Next to him is a girl that resembles Hello Kitty. In the shot where we see Ling-Ling badly disguised as Foxxy, we see the feet of Totoro (from "My Neighbor Totoro"), and even though her face is not shown, a girl that resembles Usagi Tsukino, the protagonist from "Sailor Moon". In the extended DVD version, these characters can all be seen clearly from the front, along with Voltron, Astro Boy, and the No Face from "Spirited Away" - all of them badly disguised. The show would seem to be implying that all of the students in the class have hired Asians to take the test for them.

* The SAT teacher resembles the dogs in Disney's "DuckTales", "Darkwing Duck", and "Goof Troop".

Cultural references

* The title of this episode is a reference to the landmark Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education", which forced public schools in the United States to desegregate.

* Spanky proposes to Xandir at an Ice Capades-type arena show entitled "Queenie McHomoslurp in Analsville on Gay Ice Part Gay," a spoof of the stereotype that ice show patrons are primarily gay. Indeed, the audience is primarily comprised of gay couples.

* While frolicking around in the waste bin, Spanky and Xandir meet a character called Dumpy the Waste Man, a parody of Frosty the Snowman. When Dumpy comes to life, he shouts "KILL ME!" in place of Frosty's more cheerful "Happy birthday!"

* There are multiple references to "The Powerpuff Girls" in this episode.
** As previously mentioned, a pregnant Bubbles appears in the hospital waiting room. Although she doesn't speak here, her voice on "The Powerpuff Girls" was provided by Tara Strong, who voices Toot and Clara on "Drawn Together".
** The giant heart that appears on the Jumbotron right after Spanky proposes to Xandir is the same one that appears in the end credits of "The Powerpuff Girls".

* Hans the six-armed child molester is shown wearing a priest's collar, a reference to the Catholic Church molestation scandals. After the police let him go, he carries several children away with him, including Elroy Jetson. Hans's "monster god" costume is based on various Hindu deities, most prominently Vishnu and Kali.
** In the Season One DVD release, in the deleted scene introducing the cast, Foxxy unmasks a culprit who looks exactly like Hans before he is carried off by the police (although this character does not have six arms).

* Spanky distracts Princess Clara by pointing outside and saying, "Look! There's a Jew poisoning a well!" This is a reference to anti-Semitic rumors during the Black Death that Jews were poisoning wells with the plague. This was used as a justification for burning Jews during the plague when in reality it was a ploy by nobles to escape their debts (as the charging of interest on loans was considered usury and therefore a sin by most Christian authorities of the time, leaving banking one of the few professions open to Jews).

* The scene where Clara stands silhouetted against a red sky and proclaims defiantly, "As God is my witness, I'll put an end to this gay marriage, I swear!" is a parody of Scarlett O'Hara's "I'll never be hungry again" speech from "Gone with the Wind".

* The Board of Education's plan to keep blacks from passing the SATs by giving them grape-flavored mentholated pencils is a reference to a conspiracy theory regarding the popularity of mentholated cigarettes in the black community, causing some to speculate that they were created to do away with blacks. [http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/menthol.asp] Also, the grape flavor is part of a stereotype that blacks like grape soda.

* The floating ghost of Ling-Ling helping Foxxy is a reference to the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi helping Luke Skywalker in the original "Star Wars" trilogy.

* In the scene where Ling-Ling's ghost shows up to help Foxxy, he calls her Oprah, referring to Oprah Winfrey.

* Some of the pictures from Xandir and Spanky's fake honeymoon depict famous events and people, including V-J Day, Muhammad Ali/Sonny Liston, Kerri Strug, and Elián González.

* During one part of the sequence where Spanky tries to have gay sex with Xandir, the tops of Xandir's feet are covered in fur, much like a hobbit. It appears to be a visual joke created specifically for this episode, since he has been shown on numerous other occasions (including the rest of the sequence in question) with normal feet.

* The King of Insurance carries several items that contain visual references to real insurance companies. He carries a Blue Shield with a Blue Cross at the top of his staff. His medallion, featuring two hands held palms up, contains the Allstate logo, and his crown is a gray peak which resembles the Prudential mountain logo.

* In order for him to be able to get intimate with Xandir in front of the King of Insurance, Spanky tries to arouse himself by thinking of some of sexiest things he can bring to mind. One of the images he thinks of is David Hasselhoff from "Baywatch".

* Every time someone pulls a lever in this episode, a trap door opens and drops the victim into a pit with a Rancor Beast (which Ling-Ling calls a Zalganout beast) from "". After Ling-Ling defeats the beast, its keeper cries about the death of his charge just like in the movie - just before committing necrophilic sex with the corpse.

* In the ambulance, Spanky tells Xandir that he's as "kind as a three dollar bill". This is a play on the phrase "queer as a three dollar bill", a slang expression for homosexual.

* As mentioned above, the Board of Education is based on The Bill from "Schoolhouse Rock!". The train delivering the Board's secret weapon is the one from the "Schoolhouse Rock!" song "Conjunction Junction". Although Foxxy recognizes her enemy as "from the "Schoolhouse Rock!" gang," the Board is not a pre-existing character but a new character created for the show.