Toot Braunstein

Drawn Together character


name=Toot Braunstein
gender=Female
race=White
hair=Black
age=22
height=5 feet 1½ inches
job=Pin-up girl
sexuality=Heterosexual
religion=Jewish
voice actor=Tara Strong
=Aya Hisakawa

Toot Braunstein is a fictional character in the animated series "Drawn Together". She is voiced by Tara Strong.

Conception

According to creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein, Toot is partially based on Amy Crews from "Big Brother 3". Toot's passion for cheese (see "Personality" below) as well as her tendency to cry and put on weight (from "Requiem for a Reality Show"), come directly from Crews. [cite web|url=http://tv.ign.com/articles/746/746056p1.html|title="Drawn Together"'s creators face reality|work=IGN.com|accessdate=2006-11-27]

Background

A spoof of Betty Boop (Helen Kane), Toot is a feisty black-and-white former sex symbol who had her glory days in the 1920s and 30s. The confessional captions give her age as 22 years old. The show sometimes implies she is actually considerably older by depicting her with cellulite-ridden buttocks and hips, liver spots, distended labia, and breasts that sag to her knees. However, whether Toot is actually supposed to be as old as her 1920s origins would imply is somewhat doubtful (see "Age Issues", below). One of the central premises for Toot's character is that she comes from a world where her looks and body type were considered the female ideal, but in the world of today, she is regarded as overweight and outdated, a contrast that provides much of her character's conflict. Relatively little is known about her past. It is revealed that she went to fat camp when she was younger, but as her flashback devolves into a parody of "Born on the Fourth of July", the details are somewhat unreliable. She apparently has a strained relationship with her parents; after Ling-Ling wins his first cockfight in "Mexican't Buy Me Love", she declares, "Suck my balls, Mom! I'm somebody now!" as she holds up the prize check, and in "Lost in Parking Space, Part One", when housemate Xandir asks if she wants her parents' approval, she says yes, but is told that she will never have it.

The episodes "The Other Cousin" and "N.R.A.y RAY" show Toot with a penile erection, suggesting she is intersexed. Also, in A Tale of Two Cows after she has sex with Xandir, she is heard saying: "You felt almost as good inside me as I did inside you." However, these appear to be little more than sight gags in the tradition of classic Warner Brothers cartoons, the aforementioned circumstance being a visual metaphor for arousal. Additionally, Toot supposedly having a penis is just one in a long series of transgender gags in the show; Foxxy Love has been shown on multiple occasions with beard stubble, and both Xandir and Captain Hero have been suggested as having the ability to become pregnant. The uncensored DVD release of "The Other Cousin" shows Toot completely nude at one point with no penis being visible.

In an interview on Comedy Central's website, Tara Strong states that Toot is her favorite role in her career. [cite web|url=http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/drawn_together/videos/behind_the_scenes/index.jhtml|title=Tara Strong "Motherload" interview|work=Comedycentral.com|accessdate=2006-11-27]

Personality

Toot is a suicidal borderline personality who copes with life through alcoholism, binge eating, and self-mutilation. Her extreme gluttony is one of her most exploited traits; Toot is known for eating indigestible objects such as a TV and a cell phone, particularly when frustrated (she eats the TV when she is unable to find the remote in "The Other Cousin"), consuming enormous amounts of food in one sitting, and on occasion even resorting to cannibalism. (See "Unusual items eaten", below.) Toot once ate Ling-Ling accidentally during an eating binge (she later regurgitated him), and ate Wooldoor once after announcing she could not stop eating (eventually defecating him into a puddle on the floor after adding that she had irritable bowel syndrome). She is also quite fond of cheese, as she is often seen eating cheese-related products; in "Hot Tub" she carries a can of spray cheese around with her for much of the episode, and in "N.R.A.y RAY", she wishes for a large amount of cheese. Her drinking is also mentioned frequently; her dependence on alcohol is in evidence in several different episodes, most notably in "Dirty Pranking No. 2" and "Captain Girl". She is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, though this has not curtailed her drinking to any visible degree; a phone conversation with her sponsor seems to indicate her unwillingness to admit how much of a problem she has.

Toot legitimately cannot understand why men are not attracted to her, and has developed a distinct bitterness because of it. In the first episode, she had a crush on Xandir, but her affections were unrequited. When it is revealed in "Gay Bash" that he is gay, she comforts herself by saying that is the only reason why he didn't want to go out with her, until Wooldoor Sockbat tells her that "nobody likes fat chicks". Once she realizes she has no hope of being considered the show's sex symbol, she decides to become "the bitch". As such, she intentionally causes friction among the housemates by doing such things as convincing Princess Clara that she is pregnant with Foxxy Love's child ("Clara's Dirty Little Secret"), eating all the food in the house ("Requiem for a Reality Show"), and lying to Super Nanny in order to get Captain Hero in trouble ("Super Nanny"). She is usually the first to take action whenever a conflict of some sort presents itself. She is the first one to pull a gun in the Mexican standoff scene in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist", and suggests that the housemates destroy the house. She also reluctantly goes along with "The Apprentice" parody that results from Foxxy staging a sit-in, and recruits the losing housemates in an attempt to destroy the house.

However, going into the third season, her role as the bitch has diminished as the title has begun to shift over to Princess Clara (see "Clara's Darker Side"). Recent episodes have shown Toot in a more sympathetic (albeit piteous) light, while Clara has become more malicious, a prime example being the story in "N.R.A.y RAY". In that episode, Toot's feelings of loneliness are explored while Clara is portrayed as a villain, acting shallow and selfish while insulting Toot for no apparent reason. Later, when Toot discovers Clara has been murdered as a result of her wish to have her removed from the house, Toot becomes horrified rather than glad. Similarly, Toot's reputation for being sexually undesirable has also begun to turn around. In "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", she has sex with both Clara and Captain Hero while playing as Xandir's father during the episode's role-playing exercise. In "Freaks & Greeks", she becomes the object of adoration of Ling-Ling's father Jun-Jee; the two French kiss seconds after meeting, and even end up marrying each other, though the relationship is called off when Jun-Jee realizes she is only interested in him for his money. In "Unrestrainable Trainable", Toot has a threesome with Foxxy and Spanky Ham, a situation portrayed with a complete casualness suggesting it is a frequent occurrence. In "N.R.A.y RAY", she attracts the attention of not one but two guys, the titular Ray-Ray, and a boy named Mike Jerowski (who is said to be "the most popular boy in school"), whom she ends up with at the end of the episode despite being told he only dates cheerleaders. As Toot had originally become the house bitch because of her perceived failure to achieve the role of a sex symbol after being rejected by Xandir, this additional attention may be one reason why she is less actively malicious then she had been earlier in the series. Other episodes show her being more sympathetic and helpful to her housemates than she had been previously; she apologizes to Xandir on behalf of the housemates for initially not taking the role-playing seriously in "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special" and returns to save Ling-Ling from the King of Mexico in "Mexican't Buy Me Love" after initially refusing to help him.

Toot is upset when other characters are getting a lot of attention. (For example, in "Terms of Endearment", she refers to a cancer-stricken Foxxy Love as "Miss Tumor For Attention".) She seems jealous of Princess Clara in particular, although this is most likely an in-joke in that both characters are voiced by the same person. Clara claims that Toot is a one-joke character, that joke being how fat she is. In truth, Toot's unstable emotional state (she has a strong tendency to become manic at the slightest of provocation) is also a common subject of jokes. She frequently uses her own name as an expletive (e.g. "These competitions are bull-toot!" "What the toot?"), and occasionally says her name while giggling ("Hee hee hee toot!") Her catchphrase is "Goddamn it!", shouted in a shrill, sometimes reverberating voice. Toot is an unlucky character in that she has been killed off in a number of episodes. Although all of the housemates are killed from time to time as part of one of the show's running gags (some episodes result in all or most of the cast dying at once), to date, Toot has died most often out of the entire group. One key difference is that many of her misfortunes are self-inflicted; she often commits suicide or dies as a result of an accident that she caused. In "Hot Tub" she falls and hits her head twice while high on helium, cuts off her own head to get Xandir to notice her, and is eaten by Ling-Ling after unwittingly accepting his challenge. Ironically, Toot doesn't die in "Alzheimer's That Ends Well", an episode in which a group of senior citizens makes multiple attempts to kill her.

Role on the show

After being relegated to mostly brief comedic moments, Toot's character begins to be explored in more depth in the latter half of Season Two. In "Captain Girl", she makes an effort to get over her depression and reform her life by adopting a Nicaraguan baby, though the experience turns out to be a miserable failure after the baby girl becomes a wild child as Toot neglects the child while drinking. In "A Tale of Two Cows", her attempts to win Xandir's heart by using a video game cheat manual to control his actions once again end in failure when she is discovered by the former "coolest, fattest kids". While Xandir admits that he wouldn't be attracted to her even if he weren't gay, he does tell her that he has a certain fondness for her and considers her a friend whom he truly cares about, and also suggests that he was acting of his own free will when he danced with her (when the cheat manual had left her possession). This knowledge seems to satisfy her, in addition to the fact that — much to her joy and his revulsion — she also manages to get two rounds of pity sex out of Xandir. In "Alzheimer's That Ends Well", she deals with feelings that her housemates don't really care about her or pay much attention to her, though at the end of the episode, after they come to her rescue, she is glad to discover that they really do.

A running gag involves the other characters making fun of her for being overweight. The gag is reversed in "A Tale of Two Cows" when she is made a target for ridicule at her fat camp, ironically, for not being fat enough; she does not appear comically obese like the rest of the campers. However, elsewhere in that episode, when Wooldoor sobs over the loss of Live Action Cow, he says, "Everywhere I looked, there was something to remind me of her", after which the scene immediately cuts to Toot running into his doorway doing the truffle shuffle. In "Lost in Parking Space, Part One", Toot refers to herself as weighing 220 pounds. However, elsewhere, Toot demonstrates a more positive self-image. In "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II", she rants, "Goddamn it! I'm not a fucking whale! I'm only slightly overweight, for Christ's sake!" Except on the occasions when she balloons up or her heaviness is exaggerated for comic effect (for example, when she dances in the first episode, the ground shakes, and she quickly becomes exhausted), despite the jokes made her expense, Toot is not actually obese; she just isn't svelte like her fellow female housemates (though as a joke, she is animated to look heavier when she is wearing little or no clothing- possibly her outfit contains a corset). The fat jokes are as much a satire on society's fickle beauty standards as they are on Toot herself.

Age issues

Many episodes, most prominently "Alzheimer's That Ends Well", raise the question of Toot's actual age. The housemates are clearly uncertain exactly how old she is supposed to be, and while they certainly jump to conclusions, her age is somewhat debatable. Though she is often implied to be older, it appears on the whole that Toot is actually a fairly young woman as the first season confessional captions indicate.

* In "Alzheimer's That Ends Well", Toot describes herself as old twice, referring to herself as "old and fat" at the beginning of the episode, and using the phrase "an old broad like me" at the end of it. However, the former self-description can be attributed to exaggeration due to her state of suicidal depression, while the latter is spoken in a patronizing manner. In the nursing home, she throws away her tampons, indicating she has not yet gone through menopause (which happens to a woman between the ages of 45 and 55). Additionally in this episode, when the old people try to kill her, she displays athletic skills far beyond those of an elderly person, including the ability to perform somersaults, jump around with great agility, and climb up onto a second floor balcony sheerly on the basis of her own strength. Finally, at the end of the episode, Toot is unaffected - unlike the senior citizens - by Clara's Vajoana's comedy routine.

* In the episode "Captain Girl", when Toot indicated plans to get pregnant, though everyone wondered who would possibly have sex with Toot, no one ever suggested that her pregnancy was a biological impossibility. As Toot attempts to find an alternative, Xandir, Foxxy, and Clara approach her, suggesting that she consider the responsibilities of parenting before getting pregnant, further supporting the notion that Toot is still young enough to become pregnant.

* In the first season's confessional captions, Toot was designated as being 22 years old; older than Clara (20), but younger than Foxxy (23). Several other episodes contain allusions to her age supporting this notion. For example, in "A Tale of Two Cows", Toot attends a 10-year reunion at her fat camp. In the flashback, she is depicted as being a teenager or adolescent, making her current age somewhere from 20 to 30.

* Toot's sagging breasts and cellulite-ridden hips are often cited as evidence that she is middle-aged or elderly. However, "Drawn Together" is known to spontaneously alter the characters' artwork for a quick visual gag, usually making it clear that it is just a momentary gag rather than a true representation of the character's actual physical form. (Toot is also depicted with a donkey tail and hoofs at one point, and at another, has a twig for an artificial right arm, and at another she has two wooden prosthetic legs but later has both legs near the end of "A Tale of Two Cows".)

* In the episode "Freaks & Greeks", Toot's marriage to Ling-Ling's father is drawn to parallel that of Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall, suggesting that she is much, much younger than her wealthy husband.

* A running gag on the series involves Toot dressing and/or behaving in a childish manner. Examples include "Super Nanny", where she acts as a bratty younger sibling to Captain Hero, "Captain Girl", where she throws a temper tantrum upon discovering her baby's disappearance, "Unrestrainable Trainable", where she is dressed in baby attire while in bed with Foxxy and Spanky, and "Mexican't Buy Me Love", where she dances around in pajamas like a toddler shouting "No! No bedtime, No sleep! EAT!" while Ling-Ling tries to put her to bed.

* If there is indeed some continuity to character age on the show, the most likely solution to the age problem in the "Drawn Together" universe is two separate concepts of age: physical and chronological. Toot is chronologically the oldest character, but she is not elderly. She is physically in her 20s, just overweight and out of shape. Spanky is chronologically the youngest character (being a webtoon), but he is designated as physically being the oldest (31). The characters may all have existed for the duration of their chronological lifespan, but the speed at which they age is independent of that fact. Worth noting is the fact that most cartoon characters never age at all, a situation "Drawn Together" follows most of the time. However, the show very often blurs these lines deliberately for the purposes of humor. (For example, Maggie Simpson remains an infant on "The Simpsons" after nearly two decades on the air, even though time has apparently progressed within the continuity of the show, and thus she should be entering her twenties.) The premise for Toot's character is that she is a sex symbol "from" the 1920s, not "since" the 1920s. She is temporally displaced to appear in the show, not aged since that time.

Unusual items Toot has eaten

*A whole can of spray cheese, including the can itself ("Hot Tub")
*The entire contents of a fridge, including the containers and the spy camera it contained ("Requiem for a Reality Show")
*Han Solo frozen in carbonite ("Requiem for a Reality Show")
*Ling-Ling ("Requiem for a Reality Show")
*Her own liposuctioned fat ("Requiem for a Reality Show")
*A television ("The Other Cousin") (Note that this may also be a reference to an episode of "The Young Ones" in which Vyvyan eats a television set as the TV licence man comes calling.)
*A cellular phone ("Dirty Pranking No. 2")
*Mexican immigrants ("The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist")
*A live shark ("The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II")
*Chum ("The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II")
*An entire island's worth of virgins ("The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II")
*Strawberry Sweetcake ("The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II")
*Wooldoor ("Captain Girl")
*Fiberglass insulation, which she believed to be cotton candy ("A Tale of Two Cows")
*A goat ("A Tale of Two Cows")
*A dog ("Freaks & Greeks")
*The Wienermobile, including a bundle of dynamite and a Terminator robot. ("Wooldoor Sockbat's Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!‎")
*A third-world child ("Breakfast Food Killer")

Character design

In original artwork before the show's release, Toot had longer hair, a thin waist (with broad hips) and wore a strapless dress. [cite web|url=http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117893385.html?categoryid=14&cs=1&query=%22Drawn+Together%22|title=Reality fever hits cartoons|work=Variety.com|accessdate=2006-11-27]

Prototype comparison

Betty Boop from the "Betty Boop" series (l); Toot Braunstein from "Drawn Together" (r)

References