D.W.’s new best friend
Just saw this episode today (I guess technically yesterday). I almost never watch new episodes of Arthur because they look like crap for one, are full of retcons, and most are very special. Every character has to be very special now. They can’t just be normal kids who you can see yourself into any one of them, each has to be of a specific ethnicity and have specific diseases.
But this episode I liked. Even though there are retcons in this episode too.
Bud can’t be in this episode, because the Compson family moved away the previous season. If we can just bring characters back as if nothing happened then there’s no emotional impact of them leaving, is there?
I feel like we’ve done this story before at least once. It reminds me a lot of Muffy Gets Mature. Little kid does something to impress older kid, misunderstands older kid being nice to mean they’re now inseparable soulmates, gets feelings hurt when older kid wants to spend more time with peers than with little kids.
Did D.W. even learn anything? She was the one who hurt Bud’s feelings first by telling him he wasn’t her best friend, and then got served her just desserts later on, but she got to play the victim card (in a song!) and shames this poor girl who was volunteering her time to help little kids in front of the parents of all those kids, and gets an apology out of her but doesn’t learn anything! At the end of the episode she’s still the same as at the beginning. Bud even admits in the episode that he’s become numb to her abusive behavior toward him.
Depending on the writer D.W. can be just a kind of dickish kid to being a narcissistic sadist who is able to manipulate pretty much anyone into getting everything she wants and never has to face the repercussions of her actions. At least half of Arthur’s problems come from his parents not properly disciplining D.W.