Doug and his sister Judy

In general, most families have at least one weirdo. Depending how you define the term “weirdo." My family (especially my mom’s side) is full of them and we’re perfectly fine with that. In the movie Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Lindsay Lohan's character Lola described herself as a flamingo in a flock of pigeons.

All of these things can be used to describe Doug’s older sister. She’s a self-proclaimed actress who attends the Moody School for the gifted and loves Shakespeare.
I want to assume she’s one of those “love or hate” type of characters, but for the sake of this post, I can only speak for myself.

I always thought Judy was kinda nuts and over the top, but I’ve always kinda liked her. As I grew up, some of the things she went through became EXTREMELY relatable. And watching the series back now, I can appreciate a lot more than I did.
For example, there were instances where she really is a great older sister.
In "Doug’s Secret Admirer," before he leaves for a potential date, she offers some advice for how to break the ice. “Try ‘you look nice.’ Girls like that.”
Or when she does a showcase at his school ("Doug Can't Dig It"), she’s insistent on him being part of it, including getting their picture together for the school paper. He was dreading the whole thing because she usually does things to embarrass him. On this one occasion, she was subtle and probably wanted him to be involved because they don’t spend a lot of time together.

There are other examples, but as a whole, four episodes stand out to me as Judy Funnie story arcs.

Doug’s Babysitter

Their parents are going away for a cruise and leaving the two of them alone for the week. However, hell quickly breaks loose over the TV remote... and they were still in the driveway!
So reinforcements are called in: in the form of Mrs. Stinson. Doug and Judy are in agreement; she’s quite possibly the world’s strictest babysitter.
I said before how Judy can be over the top... that’s nothing compared to this. Mrs. Stinson has a whole song and dance about following her rules. Literally! Granted, some rules like doing chores and finishing homework before fun are reasonable... but banning Shakespeare (“that man had a dirty mind”), Judy’s crazy wardrobe and sunglasses...

Not to mention they’re only allowed to eat prunes and they’re practically under house arrest except for school... we're almost in LifeTime movie territory here. 

Judy had to sneak out to go to the movies and Mrs. Stinson calls the police to interrupt the movie and drag her back home. And when Doug sinks low enough to order school food to get away from prunes, she follows him to school to give him a brown bag of them... again, yikes.

Doug figures out that he and Judy need to combine forces to get their lives back. Part one is distracting Mrs. Stinson’s main spy: her parrot, Sunflower. Then they create a false trail that leads her to the perfect distraction.... Mr. Bone.
He happens to be accepting a disciplinarian award and she loves his speech. So while they’re all cozy with her favorite show (which takes place inside a penitentiary), Doug and Judy celebrate their new freedom at the Honker Burger.

Doug's Behind the Wheel


So the big conflict in this episode is Judy having trouble getting her drivers license because she failed parallel parking...
I never related to her as much as when I literally had the same problem.

I'll bypass the rest of the details of that journey. Ultimately, I did my license on the second attempt... and I haven't had to parallel park in over 15 years. I doubt I'd be able to if the opportunity came up.

Based on her DMV commentary, it sounded like Judy's driving style was as bad as Cher from “Clueless.” She did accuse the instructor of having no imagination...
Doug’s urgency about Judy passing the test goes back to Patti. Bumper Car Mania opens that weekend and he offered to take her.
At first, Judy tries (and fails) to adapt to other modes of transportation. Doug then suggests getting practice on a mall video game: Dino Drivers. She’s so embarrassed about having to stoop to that level that she wears a disguise and insists on being called “Violet.”
Maybe it’s all the distractions, but it takes her a long time to get a hang of it. But parallel parking is the one thing that keeps her from taking her place in the winners circle.

Final ditch attempt: they go out driving for real and he tries to give her parts to act out.
All kinds of chaos (and great dialogue) follows.

First, he suggests a secret agent plot line and she calls it stupid. 

"What's my motivation, Doug? What am I thinking? Does this mission mean to me?"

My personal favorite, which I still quote to this day whenever the opportunity comes up, comes after he says she's playing a blind girl who'd been underestimated her whole life.

"Doug, think for a second. If I'm blind, how can I be driving? Elementary plot problems..." 

Finally, she gets out of her head for two seconds (telling him off for making that promise to Patti without consulting her) and parallel parks flawlessly. And everyone, especially Judy, has a blast at Bumper Car Mania.

One little thing I have to point, though... 
I don’t know if this differs from state to state, but in Pennsylvania, when I failed my test, I had to wait a week before I could take it again. 

Doug’s deadline was only a couple days away and she finally succeeded the day before. I don’t even know if the DMV is open on weekends. I'm just saying... it's highly unlikely his plan would have come together this perfectly in real life. 

Doug’s on Stage

...Bluffington really makes a big deal about Founder's Day. This is one of three episodes that has some sort of focus on it.
(The others were “Doug’s Treasure Hunt” and “Doug’s a Big Fat Liar”)

The school hosts a pageant every year marking this annual event. And it’s the same dull pageant every year, which takes place in colonial times and has a script written in old English.
For Doug, the worst part is having to share a costume with Roger- he’s the back end of the same horse.
But his sister Judy is appointed director of the play and to the thrill of his classmates, she completely flips the script and turns it into a hip musical. Roger becomes the “pot roast of hospitality” with his cronies as vegetables and Doug gets to bust out his bongos for some instrumental accompaniment.

Skeeter also gets to live his lifelong dream when Judy turns the role of Thaddeus Bluff into an astronaut. Unfortunately, his dad learns about Judy’s embellishments while Skeeter and Doug rehearse in the basement and he puts in a personal call to the mayor. The mayor comes to the school and Mr. Bone follows suit to fire Judy and revert everything back to normal.

I’ve already alluded to the Mayor’s ineptitude in previous entries (and I have one other huge example planned for later)... but the fact he got involved in a school play of all things is ridiculous. It’s bad enough he can barely accomplish important things without consulting his wife but when he does get involved, it’s in trivial garbage.
Speaking of garbage, his worst showing by far was “Doug’s Monster Movie” where he gets wind of the littering problem in Bluffington and his actions actually make things WORSE., Including but not limited to littering the town with flyers about beautifying Bluffington (and also- Vote For Me!)

But I digress...

Come opening night, everyone is so stiff during the play because they hadn’t had much time with the old script. Patti’s one line was so stilted that it was cringeworthy.
One other line I always remembered was Boomer and Ned playing trees and Boomer says “hark” and how they can’t settle “betwixt these two trees”. Whenever I hear the word “betwixt”- I think of this.
On top of everything else, the audience is so bored out of their skulls that they fall asleep.

Judy disguises herself as a newspaper critic and is able to sneak backstage to save the production. Everyone wakes up to Skeeter gracing the stage as an astronaut. Mr. Bone isn’t happy, obviously. It’s kinda funny though when he tries to reason with Mr. Valentine and gets shut down.
“Put a sock in it, Bone! That’s my boy.” (The only time I recall in the series where he was really proud of Skeeter— usually when he’s on screen, he blows up at him after counting to “1...2...10!”)

Mr. Bone has no choice but to run backstage afterwards and demand they put on a proper version of the play... but before he can fully law down the law, the curtain call begins and everyone gives a standing ovation. So he winds up backing off and taking a bow with the rest of them.

Doug’s Sister Act

One of my personal favorites for sure.
Considering how Judy treats life like a play where she plays all of the best parts (paraphrasing how Doug described her in episode one), it’s amazing this situation hasn’t come up earlier in the series.

Mrs. Funnie invites Judy’s new boyfriend Kyle to dinner. In true dramatic fashion, Judy acts like it’s going to be the end of the world. All because her last boyfriend was so bored at dinner that he face planted on the table.
By complete accident, Doug gives her the perfect remedy. She immediately writes a play and characters for everyone to act out. Their dad is a writer and ex pirate who has the world’s worst case of writers block. Their mom studies potato worshipping natives from a foreign land. And Doug is... the Butler.
Yeah, he’s not happy about that or her comment about him being “too dull” to fit into the family. But thanks to his brilliant imagination, he makes lemonade... with a little help from Smash Adams.

Before dinner, he finds an excuse to get Kyle alone to play up his spy alter ego and gives him a sponge to contact him in case of trouble. Yeah, a literal sponge.
While Mrs. Funnie uses all of the possible potato puns you could think of and Mr. Funnie spends half of dinner with a blistering “headache,” Judy adds a little character development for Yancey the Butler. “Don’t mind, Yancey. Ever since the alien abduction, he’s never been the same.”
I actually forgot that was part of the script.

But in the climax, Kyle finds a note (“there’s a bomb in the lasagna"), things get really good... or off the rails, depending on who you ask.
Doug dives on the lasagna and does an epic death scene. Judy’s the only one who didn’t find it amusing.
The two of them reconcile on the porch. Doug explains he did it to get back at her for giving him the short end of the stick. She made him the only person in their “dull and boring” family...well, dull and boring.
Judy comes clean to Kyle but he already kinda knew it was all an act. Apparently, he really liked it, especially how it all came together “when the secret agent dove on the lasagna”.
Because this was so late in the season, we never really saw Kyle again. It’s too bad. He was one of those cool characters we only got to see the one time.