Clara's Dirty Little Secret

Infobox Television episode
Title=Clara's Dirty Little Secret
Series=Drawn Together
Season=1
Episode=2
Airdate=November 3, 2004
Writer= Matt Silverstein, Dave Jeser


Caption = Clara shows her Octopussoir to the rest of the housemates.
Director= Dwayne Carey-Hill
Production = 102
Guests = Carlos Alazraqui as the voice of Prince Charming
Alex Borstein as the voice of Evil Stepmother
Prev=Hot Tub
Next=Gay Bash

"Clara's Dirty Little Secret" is the second episode of the animated series "Drawn Together".

toryline

Weeks have passed since Clara's first encounter with Foxxy, and she's spent the entire time telling everyone the story nonstop, to the delight of all of the housemates except Toot. Thinking Clara needs to be taken down a peg, Toot convinces Clara that she's pregnant with Foxxy's child. This causes Clara to panic, as she realizes in horror, "Father would never allow me to birth a black woman's child!" Toot informs Clara that she can end the pregnancy by falling down a flight of stairs, a goal with which Toot is more than happy to assist her. After Toot pushes Clara down the stairs numerous times, Foxxy asks Clara what is going on, and Clara confesses to her that she is pregnant with Foxxy's love child. Realizing that Clara is completely ignorant about sex, Foxxy decides to set everyone straight by giving the housemates a sex-ed lesson, but rather than making her happy she cannot be pregnant, Clara becomes despondent.

Foxxy confronts Clara to find out what the problem is. Clara reveals that after Foxxy's lesson (which stressed the importance of a woman's vagina), she now realizes that she will never be able to find happiness, since no man will ever want to come near her intimate areas. Foxxy tries to tell Clara that regardless of what her father might have told her, her vagina is a beautiful place, but Clara proves otherwise by revealing that her vagina is a gigantic, tentacled monster, the result of a curse placed upon her by her stepmother.

Although gentle on the surface, the Octopussoir (as Clara calls it) is revealed to be extremely sensitive to loud noises. Toot wastes no time exploiting this quality, and deliberately disturbs the Octopussoir, causing it to destroy the furniture in the living room, and consume Wooldoor (and a cameraman). Despite Foxxy's attempts to protect her, the other housemates temporarily adopt desperate measures and chase Clara before an alternative is found.

According to her stepmother, only the kiss of her true love can break the curse. To this end, the housemates stage a "Bachelorette"-type contest in which men compete to be Clara's true love. Clara meets Prince Charming and becomes instantly smitten with him, believing him to be the man of her dreams. However, his kiss, rather than curing her curse, causes his penis to turn into an octopus itself. Dismayed at his new condition, Prince Charming commits suicide.

Since the curse now appears unremovable, the housemates once again take up arms to kill the Octopussoir. Clara tries to show them that the Octopussoir is actually quite nice and likes to help people, but it is not until the Octopussoir begins cleaning the long dormant pile of dirty dishes in the sink that everyone realizes that it's not such a bad creature after all. The housemates all come to terms with Clara's Octopussoir, and Clara makes peace with her stepmother. Wooldoor gets expelled from Clara's vagina and the episode ends with all housemates singing again.

Musical Number: "La-La-La-La-Labia", a Hanna-Barbera style song sung by Foxxy and the housemates a'la Josie and the Pussycats during a montage in which everyone chases Clara's vagina. Lyrically, the song is basically a long string of vagina metaphors.

Differences in DVD version

* The DVD version of this episode contains an extended version of the Clara-Toot exchange at the beginning of the episode. (Lines in italics were cut from the televised version.):

* In the televised version of the episode, during Foxxy's sex-ed class, there is a close-up shot of Clara blushing. In the DVD release, the shot shows her from farther back and includes the other housemates in the frame.

* According to the DVD commentary, the part during the sex-ed demonstration where a squirting sound is heard when the couple have intercourse was muted out when it aired on Comedy Central. It can be heard on the DVD.

* The televised version of this episode also cuts the shot of Prince Charming falling into the pool after shooting himself.

Notes and inside references

* When Clara tells Foxxy and Toot about her curse through interpretive dance, Foxxy misinterprets the move for "stepmother" as "stepfather". After Clara corrects her, Toot looks in Foxxy's direction and says, "Duuuuuuuuhhhhhh!" while her mouth is animated with a severe overbite, like a donkey. This would mark the beginning of one of the show's most frequently employed running gags.

* In Foxxy's flashback where Wooldoor is dressed as a priest, he gives Clara a Christian bible, but curiously has an Egyptian ankh symbol on his sash. Wooldoor would also be depicted as a priest in several future episodes; his sash would have the ankh symbol on it in those appearances as well.

* Ling-Ling's drum kit is composed mainly of suspended plates. The dishes are dirty the first time the song is played, but are clean during the song at the end of episode, having been cleaned by Clara's Octopussoir.

* When Ling-Ling decides he's had enough of doing the dishes, he holds up a sign that says "Lock Out." However, since he is refusing to work, as opposed to not being allowed to work, he is actually on strike.

* The Octopussoir writes a check to Jews For Jesus, a controversial evangelical organization devoted to converting Jews to Christianity- exactly the kind of charity one might expect Clara to contribute to, given her religious views.

* As Foxxy is in the confessional discussing Clara's peril, the group chases Clara through the confessional behind her, suggesting that the confessional segments occur simultaneously with the action in the episode. This parodies the confessional segments in "The Real World", which are always shot separately at the end of the week. "Drawn Together" would go on to feature many future confessional segments of this nature.

Guests in the confessional

*Clara's Evil Step-Mother: Although not physically present, Foxxy held up the magic mirror so she could explain how to break Clara's curse.
*Bob the Suitor: Explaining that he was the funny one after skipping for joy after Clara picked him to be her true love.
*Prince Charming: Explaining that his romantic approach was "textbook charming".
*Octopussoir: Was sobbing because he has been accepted for the first time.

Cultural references

* Foxxy's book on tape is narrated by Droopy Dog, the animated Basset Hound created by Tex Avery for MGM. Droopy is known for his slow, mournful manner of speech.

* Foxxy thanks Roe v. Wade for her childless condition, referring to the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. This would be the first of many abortion-related gags concerning Foxxy's character.

* Toot tells Clara that the only way to stop herself from being pregnant is to be pushed down a flight of stairs. Toot does this on the stairs in the house, but says it didn't work. Clara suggests the M.C. Escher room; M.C. Escher was a Dutch artist famous for a lithograph print named "Relativity", which depicts a room made up entirely of staircases, all of which lead to nowhere and normal laws of gravity do not apply. The M.C. Escher room that Toot and Clara visit is a duplicate of this lithograph.

* Wooldoor's blocks spell out the message 2 PAC RIP, a reference to murdered rapper Tupac Shakur.

* The naked middle-aged man and woman used in Foxxy's sex lesson are based on visuals from the sex education book "Where Did I Come From?" by Peter Mayle. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0818402539]

* The concept of Clara's vagina being a tentacled monster is a reference to tentacle rape, a theme found in a number of hentai films.

* Clara's vagina monster is named Octopussoir. This is a reference to Octopussy, a character from the James Bond franchise.

* The scene where the screen splits into four frames depicting everyone in peril, with a time clock displayed, is a reference to "24".

* The scene where Wooldoor Sockbat gets pulled into Clara's vagina and nearly crushed to death is a spoof on the infamous scene in "", where Luke, Han and Leia are trapped in one of the garbage smashers on the Death Star, but are saved from being crushed by C-3PO and R2-D2 shutting it down.

* While hiding, Captain Hero reads from his diary. The excerpts he reads are from "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank.

* The scene where Xandir cowers while Clara's vagina corners him and sticks out its tongue is taken from the film "Alien³".

* Foxxy's "neck-sprain well-lit pie diversion" is a reference to "Scooby-Doo", which often featured villains deceiving people with false images created by highly implausible methods.

* The housemates' chant of "Kill the beast!" originally comes from the novel "Lord of the Flies". However, given that Clara is a Disney spoof, the show is more directly parodying Disney's "Beauty and the Beast".

* Clara's Evil Stepmother is a spoof of the Wicked Stepmother, a stock character from fairy tales who occasionally appears in other works of fiction as well. Clara's stepmother in particular is based on Lady Tremaine from Disney's animated version of "Cinderella".

* The character of Prince Charming is another stock fairy tale character, often used in stories as an idealized representation of the young female protagonist's true love. His kiss being required to break Clara's curse is based on stories (particularly "The Frog Prince") where the handsome prince has been transformed into a hideous creature of some sort, and the young woman's kiss is required to transform him back. "Beauty and the Beast" (which is also parodied in this episode) is a more complex version of this.

* The scene in which a bachelor begins crying in the back of a limo and rips open his shirt as he implores the other bachelor, "Make me feel good!" is a reference to the Halle Berry/Billy Bob Thornton sex scene in "Monster's Ball". According to the DVD commentary, the voices of the two bachelors are provided by creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein.

* When Prince Charming gives Clara his rose, music similar to 'The Swan Princess plays in the background.