N.R.A.y RAY

Infobox Television episode
Title=N.R.A.y RAY
Series=Drawn Together
Season=3
Episode=5
Airdate= November 1, 2006
Writer= Craig DiGregorio


Caption = Ray-Ray gives Toot a room made out of cheese as a gift.
Director= Stephen Sandoval
Production = 305
Guests = Phil LaMarr as Ray-Ray
Prev=Unrestrainable Trainable
Next=Mexican't Buy Me Love

"N.R.A.y RAY" is the twenty-seventh episode of the animated television series "Drawn Together".

toryline

Captain Hero and Wooldoor return one night from a festive trip to the Museum of Tolerance to discover that the house has been robbed. After Hero panics about being vulnerable, Xandir tries to calm Hero down by reminding him that he has super powers and thus should be able to protect himself easily. Hero construes this advice to mean that he should purchase a gun. He promptly purchases a revolver out of a vending machine and begins keeping watch on the house, prepared to shoot anyone who might be threatening the housemates' safety. His itchy trigger finger finally gets the better of him, and one day he shoots and kills a squirrel on a telephone wire. Having harmed one of God's creatures in this way, Hero becomes consumed with a lust for blood and decides to take up hunting; however, he finds it too difficult to bag prey with conventional firearms and begins using assault weapons, which improves his luck considerably. Shortly after Hero returns home from an extremely successful hunting trip, Bambi shows up at his door with his mother's gunshot carcass. Hero tries to resist Bambi's tearful pleas, but in the end is convinced that using assault weapons to hunt deer is too unfair. He then rounds up all the world's assault weapons and gets rid of them by flushing them down the toilet. When he informs Bambi what he has done, Bambi responds by immediately telling all his deer friends the happy news: now that humans no longer have assault weapons to rely on, the deer can begin to seek their revenge. The deer quickly mobilize and head for the "Drawn Together" house.

Meanwhile, Foxxy sets out to discover the identity of the house's burglar, and follows a trail which leads her upstairs to the housemates' missing television as well as the thief who stole it - none other than her grandson Ray-Ray. Ray-Ray begs Foxxy not to turn him over to the police. Foxxy vows she won't let anything happen to Ray-Ray, and she shields him from the police by hiding him inside the walls of the house. The police arrive moments later, and finding Foxxy alone with the stolen television, assume she is the guilty party and arrest her. With his grandmother gone, and no one else aware of his presence, Ray-Ray is left all alone inside the house's walls. He begins spying on the housemates, and before too long finds himself falling head over heels in love with the fattest ass he's ever seen, the one belonging to Toot (playing on the stereotype of African-American men being attracted to women with large asses). He decides to try to show his love for Toot by giving her anything she wants. Toot begins writing her wishes in her diary (along with talking about her crush on a boy named Mike Jerowski), and Ray-Ray begins making them come true, leading Toot to believe her diary has magical wish-granting powers. While Toot is celebrating, Clara enters and ruins Toot's happy mood by insulting her about how she is fat, ugly, and has out-of-style hair. Toot cries and wishes she could have beautiful hair like Clara. That night, Ray-Ray rips the scalp off Clara's head and staples it to Toot's head. Toot shows off her new hair to her house mates (Spanky even thinks she has lost weight), but when a scalped Clara sees that Toot is the one responsible for her condition, she screams that she will complain to the Jew Producers and have Toot kicked off the show. Toot retaliates by writing in her diary that she wishes Clara could be the one not living in the house anymore. When she steps out of the shower shortly thereafter, Toot reaches for a towel and receives a gift she hadn't counted on: Clara's lifeless body hanging from the towel rack. Toot remorsefully declares she hadn't wanted her wish to be fulfilled this way, and decides the diary is evil; she then throws the diary in the fire and sets out to hide Clara's body. It is at this point that Ray-Ray finally makes his presence known, and steps out of his hiding place. Toot is at first horrified, but after Ray-Ray tells her how much he loves her, Toot realizes no one has ever told her that before, and decides she loves Ray-Ray too, and the two walk downstairs together.

The deer by now have shown up at the "Drawn Together" house en masse, intent on killing the housemates. Hero tries fending them off with his revolver, but finds it is simply not powerful enough to do the job. Toot and Ray-Ray emerge at the bottom of the stairs and see the deer attacking everyone. Ray-Ray panics and decides the best place to hide is Toot's fat ass, and promptly jumps inside. The other housemates follow Ray-Ray's lead, and within moments, the deer find themselves all alone except for Toot. They decide it's not worth the bother anymore, and over Bambi's objections (including his admission that he killed his mother himself), they leave. Toot is sad to find herself all alone again, until a new figure arrives at the house to pay her a visit: Mike Jerowski, the boy she has been crushing on.

Musical number: "I Wanted You to Know", sung by Toot. This marks the song's fourth appearance on "Drawn Together", though this is the first time it has been sung by a character in the show. Previous episodes had featured the song in its original recording by its composer Brooke Ramel.

Notes and inside references

* Although Ray-Ray had been previously mentioned in "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine" and "Captain Girl", this is the first episode in which he is shown on screen. Additionally, previous episodes had implied Ray-Ray to be Foxxy's son; however, he is mentioned here as being Foxxy's grandson. It is possible, however, that Foxxy has both a son and a grandson named Ray-Ray, as Foxxy does imply that Ray-Ray's father was another of her offspring to be seized by social services.

* Prior to the episode's airing, there were rumors circulating that Dave Chappelle would be guest starring in the episode as the voice of Ray-Ray, based largely on comments made by creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein in the web site commentary for the episode "Freaks & Greeks". As it turned out, the creators were being facetious; when the episode finally aired, Phil LaMarr provided the character's voice.

* Judge Fudge makes his third appearance on the show, and the first in which he plays an active role in the story, being the judge who presides over Foxxy's trial.

* The homeless woman whom Hero addresses as "Whitney Houston Man" is voiced by Cree Summer. The crying mother whom Hero yells at in the supermarket parking lot is voiced by Tara Strong.

* Mike Jerowski is voiced by series co-creator Matt Silverstein. In web site commentary for the episode, Silverstein states that Mike Jerowski is the name of his wife's ex-boyfriend. His design is the same as one of the frat boys in "Little Orphan Hero" and he was also featured in the episode "Super Nanny", more examples of the show recycling character artwork.
** Likewise, the teacher, Ms. Yudof (spelled phonetically), is named for co-creator Dave Jeser's wife by her maiden name. According to the commentary, she was a public school teacher, but quit her job in part due to nicknames given her by her students such as "bitch-ass Yudof." Mike Jerowski refers to her by this name in the episode.

* This is the second episode (the first being "The Other Cousin") that Toot displays a penile erection on the show, suggesting that she is intersexual. However, this is considered just a gag and not canon to the series.

Animated cameos

* Bambi, the title character from the 1942 Disney film, shows up at the door of the "Drawn Together" house claiming that Captain Hero killed his mother, a reference to the film's climactic event. This is the second time Bambi has appeared on the program; the first was in "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education", in which Bambi appears in the hospital waiting room, again with his wounded mother. In his previous appearance, Bambi did not speak; his voice here is provided by Tara Strong.

* Joe Camel makes a cameo appearance as one of the dead animals Captain Hero brings back to the "Drawn Together" house following his hunting trip. Like Bambi, this is Joe Camel's second appearance on the show; also like Bambi, Camel's first appearance was in the hospital scene in "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education".

* After Bambi leads all the deer back to the "Drawn Together" house to attack the housemates, Captain Hero begins shooting at them with his revolver; one of the deer killed during this sequence is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

*This is another episode to make references on Toot's age. While Toot occasionally even showed baby-like behaviour, she is often portrayed as rather elderly, most clearly in "Alzheimer that ends well", although it is not clear whether Toot was actually supposed to be depicted as old in that episode. In "N.R.A.y RAY", however, it is implied Toot is a teenager.

Cultural references

* Ray-Ray's story in this episode is based on the plot of the 1974 made-for-TV movie "Bad Ronald". In that movie, after a troubled young man named Ronald accidentally kills his neighbor's daughter, his mother protects him from the police by hiding him in the walls of the house. The mother ends up dying without ever telling anyone else Ronald is there. New tenants move in, not knowing of Ronald's presence. Ronald spies on the family and develops a fixation on one of the family's daughters; he then performs a series of bizarre acts in order to win her affection.

* In the episode's opening sequence, Hero refers to Wooldoor as Wooly Bully, referring to a 1960s hit song by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs.

* The footage of Captain Hero shooting ducks is animated to resemble the Nintendo Entertainment System video game "Duck Hunt". Wooldoor is dressed as the dog who appears in the game.

* Another video game reference occurs when Ling-Ling is shown playing "Dance Dance Revolution" with an unidentified child (whom he savagely attacks).

* As the police are leading Foxxy away, she shouts, "Power to the people!", a popular political slogan from the 1960s.

* Captain Hero buys a gun from a vending machine outside Wal-Mart, a reference to allegations that the store chain makes firearms too easy to obtain.

* When Captain Hero begins hunting with assault weapons, one of the guns he uses is a Needler from the "Halo" series of video games.
* When Captain Hero is out hunting with his assault weapons, he downs several ducks, then destroys two deer, a grizzly bear, an orca, a rabbit, several elephants and giraffes, a zombie, and an apatosaurus, before finally turning his attention to an AT-AT Imperial Walker (another reference to the "Star Wars" franchise in the series). The zombie is a reference to any number of zombie-hunting games such as "Resident Evil".

* Hero's attempt to rid the world of assault weapons is a parody of "", in which Superman tries to rid the world of all nuclear weapons. The scene where Hero gathers all the world's weapons in a gigantic net and carries them into outer space comes directly from the film.

* Ray-Ray describes Toot and himself as a fat, ugly white woman and a creepy black man, "Just like "Miami Vice", referring to the show's stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas.

* After Hero gets rid of all the world's assault weapons, he complains that the intro to his favorite television show just isn't the same. The show in question is "The A-Team", which used a simulated rapid-gunfire effect to make the show's title appear on screen; however since Hero has gotten rid of all the assault weapons, the show's producers are only able to partially create the "A", due to the limited ammunition of the remaining firearms.

* In the DVD version of this episode, Captain Hero makes a remark about how hunting is an American pastime, since ancient Jews used to hunt 'Jesus-saurus Rexes'. This is an in-joke to Silverstein's and Jesser's Jewish heritage being inserted as a joke into the show and to both the American Second Amendment and Christ's crucifixion (and one of the oldest rallying cries of anti-Semitism - that Jews should pay for killing Christ, even though it was the Romans who were directly responsible, that Christ himself was Jewish, and that his death was a necessity).