|
Wooldoor Jebediah Sockbat is a fictional character in the animated series Drawn Together. He is voiced by James Arnold Taylor.
Background
Wooldoor is a spoof of wacky children's show characters, with SpongeBob SquarePants, Stimpson J. Cat, and Looney Tunes being particular influences. (In "Unrestrainable Trainable", he is even referred to as a "poorly conceived SpongeBob parody".) He is capable of morphing into many different things, and hides objects in his buttocks in order to pull them out later for comic effect. He can also split himself in two; ironically, the second Wooldoor who appears in these situations is cold and aloof, as opposed to the real Wooldoor, who is desperate to be everybody's friend (see Multiple Wooldoors below). He was once married to his buttocks, but they separated after the baby (a piece of feces with a face) didn't look like him. He is briefly engaged to Captain Hero's old girlfriend, Unusually Flexible Girl, but the engagement is broken off after Wooldoor decides he only wanted her because he thought Captain Hero wanted her. The relationship comes to a permanent end when Toot Braunstein and Princess Clara accidentally kill her with a potato gun.
In "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II" it is revealed that most of his people, the Sockbats, were murdered in a Holocaust perpetrated by the Sweetcake people (themselves parodies of Strawberry Shortcake), who turned to eating the Sockbats as a remedy for an economic crisis. There is some inconsistency regarding Wooldoor's parents. They are revealed to be dead in the aforementioned Sweetcake episode; their bodies, having been processed into snack foods, are shown sitting in a Sockbat Snacks vending machine. However, in Season Three it is suggested that they are still alive. In "Freaks & Greeks", a male and female Sockbat are displayed prominently in a pile containing the housemates' ailing parents. In "Lost in Parking Space, Part One", when he thinks the group is going to perish in Foxxy's van, Wooldoor tells Foxxy to take some letters to his parents, and then gives her two Scrabble tiles, claiming he stole them last time he visited their house.
In "Drawn Together Babies", it is shown that Wooldoor was not always a Sockbat, but was once a human named Walter Saget and was changed into a Sockbat after an intense interrogation by Baby Captain Hero on his Sit 'N Spin. It also explains that he has to make the "Whee" sound every thirty seconds or he drowns in his own bile, another side effect of the spinning. This may be considered non-canon, due to the looseness of the series itself and the existence of other Sockbats.
Personality
Wooldoor is the most innocent of the characters, remaining somewhat oblivious to the depravity and chaos around him. Because of this, he is perhaps the most kind-hearted of the housemates (though he is capable of insulting the other housemates- particularly Toot- without realizing it). On the downside, he is rather gullible and prone to being pushed around by the other characters (Spanky Ham in particular bullies him relentlessly). Wooldoor idolizes Captain Hero, and in "Captain Girl", he has a dream come true when he is given the job of Hero's sidekick.
Wooldoor behaves very much like a hyperactive child. This may in fact be the case; he is shown reaching puberty in "Clum Babies", indicating that he is not yet an adult. His birth is given in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II" as being in the year 5753. Assuming this is based on the Hebrew calendar — the only mainstream system which places his birth in the recent past (5753 corresponds to 1992-1993), and which fits in with the Jewish analogy of the episode — this would make him about 13 as of 2006. However, it is also possible that this is merely a wildly inaccurate date, fitting with the character's unusual nature. In the episode "Wooldoor Sockbat's Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!", Wooldoor says he earned a lot of money by being a Bar Mitzvah, an occasion which usually occurs at age 13. His catchphrase is simply, "Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!", which he says at some point in nearly every episode. He has his own theme music, a pedal steel guitar tune which is similar to SpongeBob SquarePants's theme music. In "Wooldoor Sockbat's Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!", the tune is given lyrics and becomes the theme song to Wooldoor's children's show.
When he masturbates, his semen comes out of his mouth in the form of "clum babies," adorable giant sentient sperm that cure the diseases of anything they touch. When Clara gets tuberculosis, one of Wooldoor's clum babies saves her life, even though she had spent the entire episode condemning masturbation and stem cell research. Wooldoor's clum babies would prove to be the saving grace of all the housemates; when everyone except Wooldoor is wiped out in a shooting spree perpetrated by guest character Bob the Cucumber (who snaps when Foxxy Love suggests that the Bible is open to interpretation), it is suggested at the end of the episode that Wooldoor will use his clum babies to resurrect everyone. As far as Wooldoor's religion goes, the Sockbat comparison to World War II-era Jews mentioned above has led many to believe that Wooldoor is Jewish, but the episodes "Clum Babies" and "A Tale of Two Cows" reveal that Wooldoor, like Clara, is Christian. He did, however, have a Bar Mitzvah as a means of raising money for his children's show. His being mistaken for a Jew is a running gag on the show, such as in "Unrestrainable Trainable", where a series of events causes him to have a large nose, wear what appear to be a Magen David, a kippah, and payot, and be holding large bags of money; when Clara sees him like this, she becomes terrified and tries to baptize him by pushing him in the pool.
It is revealed in "Captain Girl" that Wooldoor has fake breasts, which helped him win the Miss Universe Pageant in 1997.
Though it is never emphasized to any great extent, Wooldoor does have a sinister side that is shown every so often. In "Dirty Pranking No. 2", after being shunned by Xandir and Captain Hero, he puts on a pair of sunglasses and informs them, "If anybody needs me, I'll be in the clock tower" while he cocks a rifle. In "Captain Girl", he hijacks an old man's car, threatening him with a gun and telling him to get out of the car and into the trunk; he then shoots at the man when he tries to flee. When Wooldoor gets inside the car, he discovers the man's three grandchildren inside, who are presumably killed moments later when Wooldoor jumps out of the speeding vehicle with them still inside. In "A Tale of Two Cows", when Wooldoor accidentally kills a trucker, the man's last words are, "Tell my family I love them"; Wooldoor then guts him and wears his carcass as clothing in order to deliver the message to the man's family. He also appears to have a god complex while playing the role of a surgeon.
Despite surpassing his housemates in hyperactivity and general zaniness, Wooldoor has a deep capacity for serious, thoughtful reflection on events, though he uses this ability very sparingly. Examples include the speeches he makes while the plane is going down in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist" and following the massacre of his housemates in "Clum Babies".
Role on the show
One of Wooldoor's primary traits is his ability to assume any role a scene or story requires. To this end, he often appears in episodes as a wacky "filler"-type character rather than in his own persona. He is capable of assuming any profession at a moment's notice. In "The Other Cousin", he is a professor, and in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist", he becomes the pilot who flies the group to safety. He appears to be quite skilled in several medical disciplines as well: he is a psychiatrist in "Little Orphan Hero" and "Toot Goes Bollywood", a surgeon and mad scientist in "Terms of Endearment", a plastic surgeon in "Alzheimer's That Ends Well", and a regular medical doctor in "Super Nanny". Wooldoor is often shown as a minister or priest; in fact, he is the one who performs Spanky's gay marriage to Xandir in "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education".
While Wooldoor played minor parts in the first season of the show, he became the focus of several episodes in the second season, not unlike Captain Hero. Typically, the stories focusing on Wooldoor cast him in a child-type role, such as when he brings home a cow in "A Tale of Two Cows" or gets in trouble at the mall for stealing candy in "The Lemon-AIDS Walk". Ironically, in "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", his character in the episode's role-playing exercise is that of a pedophile (in this instance, he is roleplaying the part of a priest as a parody of the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases).
Originally, instead of being an attention-starved weirdo, Wooldoor's role was to have been that of a bipolar drug addict. However, creators Jeser and Silverstein decided to change this when they realized that the cast's personalities were getting too dark, and they needed a character who was innocent and childlike to contrast with the darker tendencies of the others.[1]
Multiple Wooldoors
Wooldoor and his other half.
As mentioned above, Wooldoor is capable of splitting himself into two people. Although the splitting has not yet been shown on television, the featuring of multiple Wooldoors in certain scenes is a running gag on the show.
- In a deleted scene from "Hot Tub" (which appears as an extra on the DVD), during his character introduction sequence, Wooldoor exclaims, "I'm everybody's best friend- even my own!" He then splits himself in two and gives the other Wooldoor a hug. The other Woldoor exclaims solemnly "You're pathetic, I hate you", spits in his face, and finishes with a sardonic "Whee"
- In "The Other Cousin", Xandir, Toot, and Wooldoor successfully reunite Ling-Ling with his father. To celebrate the happy occasion, Xandir and Toot hug each other while Wooldoor splits himself in two again to hug his other self. Although this scene only appears in the DVD version of the episode, the televised version does include a scene moments later in which both Wooldoors are seen licking Ling-Ling's father.
- In "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education", Wooldoor is the photographer taking pictures of Xandir and Spanky's fake honeymoon. A second Wooldoor can be seen moving the backdrops.
- In "Freaks & Greeks", while Wooldoor is mowing the lawn at the beginning of the episode, another Wooldoor answers the door.
Character design
In original artwork for the show, Wooldoor's nose was yellow (like the rest of his skin), and he wore socks with sandals.[2]
References
- ^ "Drawn Together's creators face reality". IGN.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.
- ^ "Reality fever hits cartoons". Variety.com. Retrieved on 2006-11-27.
| |
