Charlotte's Web of Lies

Infobox Television episode
Title=Charlotte's Web of Lies
Series=Drawn Together
Season=3
Episode=9
Airdate= October 11, 2007
Writer= Bill Freiberger


Caption = Charlotte the spider seduces Spanky.
Director= Ray Claffey
Production = 313
Guests = Rebecca Romijn as Charlotte
Prev=Lost in Parking Space, Part Two
Next=Breakfast Food Killer

"Charlotte's Web of Lies" is the thirty-first episode of the animated television series "Drawn Together". It is a parody of E.B. White's novel, "Charlotte's Web", and the film "Fatal Attraction".

toryline

One night, Spanky Ham, Captain Hero, and Wooldor go out drinking and driving, and hit a homeless man in their intoxicated state. Spanky runs into the woods (so he won't go to rehab again) and finds a spider named Charlotte (played by Rebecca Romijn). They have a one night stand, and the relationship quickly turns into a "fatal attraction". He wakes up in the morning to find himself with no shirt on in a giant web. He becomes scared and leaves Charlotte. When he leaves her, she stalks him, webbing messages of love and hate all over the Drawn Together House. He comes home with a woman one night to realize that she had left various messages. His girlfriend leaves him when she finds these messages ("I thought you [Spanky] were different!"). Spanky gets her back after calling an exterminator (who turns out to be Boba Fett), but Charlotte kills him. Finally, Spanky caves and brings Charlotte to a crowded fancy restaurant. There, she shows Spanky that she had given birth to many eggs (all of whom resemble Spanky). To ease his guilty conscience, Spanky takes up the menu and puts it right on the eggs, killing them. Charlotte calls Spanky a monster. He then opens the menu so the other half kills her. He then decides that he will order pork chops.

Meanwhile Wooldoor nurses the homeless man back to health. Hero comes to recognize the elderly fellow as his arch nemesis. He tells Hero that he is dying, and the two forge an unlikely bond when he teaches Hero to read. Their relationship is tested when Hero is asked to wash his arch nemesis' scrotum as his dying wish. Hero at first refuses to do. Finally succumbing to guilt about his nemesis teaching him to read, he complies with the help of Wooldoor. Afterwards, Hero's nemesis admits it was all just an elaborate hoax to trick Captain Hero. It is implied that he has done the same thing before. He escapes by flying through the wall, leaving a hole which looks like a giant penis and testicles). Captain Hero curses him as he flies away, and for the first time reveals his nemesis' name to be Scroto. Wooldoor is confused so Hero explains that the "hoax" seems to be the extent of Scroto's supervillainy, and that Scroto only picks on Captain Hero and no other superheros.

In an unprecedented third separate plotline, Ling-Ling kills Xandir when he threatens to shave off Ling-Ling's eyebrows. Ling-Ling doesn't care that he did this, but when he realizes that Xandir had a loving family, he declares hatred on himself. He seeks help and we learn the origin of Ling Ling's violent tendencies - he never truly wanted to be a fighter; all he wanted to do was dance. But Gash, Ling Ling's trainer, captured him and took away his dancing shoes. Gash apparently replaced Ling-Ling with a new and more powerful monster (Frankie Muniz). Ling Ling tries out for a play on Drawn Together, in which Ling-Ling is a shoo-in because he is a cast member. Unfortunately, Ling-Ling can't dance without his special shoes. He instead gets the part of Princess Clara. He soon learns that Gash was truly jealous of Ling Ling's abilities, and they share a dance number together. Frankie Muniz accidentally comes out of what resembles a poke ball and when he sees Gash and Ling-Ling dancing, he attacks the crowd. Ling-Ling goes to battle him, but he is stopped by Gash, who tells Ling-Ling that if he battles Frankie Muniz, he might revert back to his old ways. They continue to dance while the monster Frankie Muniz continues to kill people.

Musical Number: This episode ties "Spelling Applebee's" for the largest number of songs in any episode. First, at the beginning of the episode, the guys sing "Feel Like Makin' Love" as they drive away in the van. The song was originally performed in 1975 by Bad Company. At his dance audition, Ling-Ling sings "Itsy Bitsy Spider". Next, when he is pondering the decision whether or not to wash his adversary's scrotum, Hero sings a ballad about his dilemma. Finally, an unnamed character plays Steve and sings "Steve from Long Island" during the musical.

Notes and inside references

*This is the second (and final) time Xandir's parents appear, the first being in A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special.

* Spanky's line, "I won't go back to rehab. I can't go back!", followed by him jumping through a window, is a reference to "Little Orphan Hero," when Clara said, "I can't go back to jail. I won't go back!", and then jumped out a hospital window.

* After Ling-Ling kills Xandir, Foxxy expresses a fear that he might kill Funyuns. Foxxy's love of Funyuns was previously mentioned in "Little Orphan Hero". In the same scene, Toot is seen reading the issue of "Entertainment Weekly", which is well-known from the episode "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree".

* This is the first time since "Super Nanny" that the Hero Cave is shown.

* Cree Summer voices both Spanky's date and Fran Drescher.

* Spanky's date is one of the girls from Club Foot who accompany Steve from Long Island in "Clum Babies". She is massacred by Bob the Cucumber at the end of that episode; however, as all other canonical issues become resolved, this is only temporary. No name has been given for her.

* The musical director is voiced by Jess Harnell.

* Gwyneth Paltrow, originally cast to play Princess Clara in the musical, is voiced by Clara's voice actress Tara Strong.

* One of the audience members at the musical is Barbara, the realtor from "Freaks & Greeks".

* Before they are killed by Hero in a James Bond fashion, Clara and Foxxy Love are seen having a somewhat erotic moment in the hot tub as in the first episode.

* After Hero enters the house and takes off his diving suit, the waiter a.k.a. Keith Franklin from "Spelling Applebee's" walks through the scene.

* A running gag in this episode involves Wooldoor wearing women's clothing in most of his scenes, along with make-up, a wig, and fake breasts. He either dresses as a nurse or a French maid.

* The director of the musical tells Ling-Ling he can play the part of Judge Fudge because the original actor is far too busy doing something else, a reference to Judge Fudge's catchphrase, "I'm far too busy being delicious".

* This is the first episode with three separate plotlines - Spanky's affair with Charlotte, Hero taking care of his nemesis, and Ling-Ling becoming a dancer. "Requiem for a Reality Show" and "Lost in Parking Space, Part Two" also had three plotlines, but this is the first episode in which the three stories are completely unrelated and not part of a larger story.

* At the end of the episode, all of the guys are shown back in the living room, playing the drinking game again, only Ling-Ling now has a black shirt on that reflects his new career as a Broadway dancer; who stereotypically are gay and wear black polo neck's when not on stage.

* Ling-Ling sing's itsy bitsy spider in English, even pronouncing the R's in Rain properly (normally replacing R's with L's and vice versa.) This is the first time Ling-Ling has spoken English since Super Nanny.

* A notable goof in the same scene: despite the fact that Ling-Ling presses play on a tape deck, no music can be heard.

Animated cameos

* The spider Charlotte is a character from the book "Charlotte's Web", which was made into an animated film in 1973 and a live action film in 2006. The first message Charlotte leaves in her web, "SOME PIG", is the same message the original Charlotte wove in an attempt to save Wilbur the Pig.

*Gwyneth Paltrow (voiced by Tara Strong) appears in the lead role of the play Ling-Ling is starring in. She is later beaten up into a bloody pulp by Unpredictable Gorilla, and is later seen in the background of the same fancy restaurant where Spanky and Charlotte are having dinner.

* Present at Ling-Ling's anger management meeting are a number of cartoon characters known for having bad tempers: Hulk (voiced by Jess Harnell), Skeletor, Yosemite Sam, and Marvin the Martian.

* Spanky hires an "exterminator" to kill Charlotte, who turns out to be Boba Fett from the "Star Wars" franchise. This is Boba Fett's second appearance on the show; he was previously hired to kill Toot in "Alzheimer's That Ends Well", but killed Spanky instead. In the closed-captioning, the line is changed from "Exterminator" to "Boba Fett". After Fett dies, Spanky presses a button on his jetpack, sending him off with the goodbye, "So long, old soldier."

Cultural references

* When the guys hit a homeless man with the van, Wooldoor says that the accident occurred because they were drinking and driving, and then says, "The more you know." This is another reference to NBC's "The More You Know" public service announcements, which the show had previously referenced in "Requiem for a Reality Show" and "Alzheimer's That Ends Well".

* The grappling hook gun Captain Hero uses to drag to homeless man is similar to the one used by Batman.

* The scene where Xandir's parents speak to Ling-Ling is a parody of "Jaws".

* After Wooldoor mentions that he gave the homeless man a kidney transplant, the scene cuts to Toot waking up in a bathtub of her own blood minus a kidney, and with the words "Call a doctor" written on the wall in blood. This is a reference to a famous urban legend about travellers being drugged and having their kidneys harvested by organ thieves. [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/robbery/kidney.asp]

* Hero's arch-nemesis Scroto is modelled after Superman's Lex Luthor.

* During the begging of the episode when everyone is drunk. Ling-Ling's cheeks are red and circular (as a result from being drunk) alot like Pikachu's.

* One of the messages left on Charlotte's web, "Zoom Zoom"; followed with a whisper. This is in reference with the Mazda commercials with their trade mark whisper, "Zoom Zoom".

* When Scroto reveals to Captain Hero his dying wish, which was for him to wash his genetalia area, a close-up shot reveals a grotesque oil painting with the sound of a foghorn. This gag was too revealed in Gay Bash where it shows an upclose shot of Toot's cleavage. The grotesque close-up shots are in reference to some episodes from "Ren and Stimpy". The painting is only seen on the DVD edition of the episode. In the TV version the area is hidden behind a large black square.

* Ling-Ling's nemesis Gash is based on Pikachu's trainer Ash Ketchum. This character had been seen previously in "Gay Bash" and "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education", but this is the first time his name and official relationship to Ling-Ling are established.

*The red dragon Battle Monster Ling-Ling fights in the flashback is based on the Pokémon Charizard.

* When Gash captures him, Ling-Ling says, "Ling-Ling captured by pre-teen boy... just like Pete Townsend's heart." This refers to a 2003 incident where the musician was accused of using the Internet to access child pornography.

* The scene where Hero goes undercover to snuff out his nemesis (and kills his housemates in the process) is a general parody of the James Bond movies.

* The shot in which Captain Hero rises out of the hot tub (after killing Foxxy and Clara) and pulls off his scuba gear, revealing a tuxedo, is a parody of the opening in True Lies.

* The technical equipment of the Hero Cave creates the sound effects from the classic Star Trek series.

* Gash's new battle monster is named "Post-pubescent Frankie Muniz".

* When the phrase "For your Emmy Consideration." appears after the director mentions his aids is a reference to the cliched and stupid lengths some show's will go to try and win the award.