Lost in Parking Space, Part One

Infobox Television episode
Title=Lost in Parking Space, Part One
Series=Drawn Together
Season=3
Episode=7
Airdate= November 15, 2006
Writer= Elijah Aron and Erik Sommers


Caption = The Delivery Man catches up with Clara.
Director= Peter Avanzino
Production = 306
Guests = Will Forte as Kirk Cameron
Phil LaMarr as the delivery driver.
Prev=Mexican't Buy Me Love
Next=Lost in Parking Space, Part Two

"Lost in Parking Space, Part One" is the twenty-ninth episode of the animated television series "Drawn Together".

toryline

As she makes her rounds through the Drawn Together house one morning, Princess Clara is shocked to discover her fellow housemates indulging in what she considers all manner of sin. She warns them that they should mend their ways because the Rapture is coming, but the housemates refuse to listen. While Clara is up in her room, Xandir suggests to the rest of the group that they go to the mall. At first, they aren't too keen on the idea, but after Xandir convinces them of the potential excitement to be found there, they all become eager to go. Xandir even distributes special "Drawn Together Mall Trip" T-shirts for them to wear. As they leave, Wooldoor suggests getting Clara and inviting her to come along, but the others, tired of Clara's preaching, won't hear of it, so they depart without her.

Clara comes downstairs and sees that she has been left alone in the house. At first, she is delighted to have the house to herself, but her excitement turns to frustration and confusion when she sees the housemates' clothes strewn all over the living room, having been discarded when they all donned their T-shirts. Recognizing this as the final sign of the Rapture, Clara decides that her fellow housemates have all been taken off to heaven, and she has been left behind. At first, she is upset that Jesus appears to have abandoned her, but is convinced that her being stranded is the result of some sort of error, and immediately begins praying for God to fix it before Satan shows up to make her sign her soul away. Within moments, a delivery man shows up with a package, and when he asks Clara to sign for it, she fears he is Satan come to claim her soul. She does her best to resist him by setting a series of booby traps, but he evades them all. Realizing she has no choice, she tearfully signs her name and bows in reverence to her new master, "Satan."

Meanwhile, the housemates arrive at the mall in the Foxxy 5 van, but have difficulty finding an available parking space. The only available space seems to be for compact cars; despite the fact that the van is obviously too wide to fit into it, Xandir pulls in anyway. The housemates try to exit the van only to discover they are wedged in too tightly to open the doors, and a fallen light fixture prevents them from exiting through the back. The housemates panic, and the resulting anxiety causes Xandir to go into a catatonic state. Despite objections from Captain Hero and Spanky, Foxxy breaks through the roof to get help, leaving Ling-Ling, Toot, and a ventriloquist dummy-carrying Wooldoor huddled in the back. However, once Foxxy is inside the mall all thoughts of rescue leave her mind. She goes into Hot Topic looking for "Drawn Together" merchandise, but the store clerk doesn't understand what she's talking about. He says they might have some in back, so he goes to check; Foxxy follows him, and discovers a closet full of "Drawn Together" merchandise. As soon as she discovers this, the clerk bashes her in the back of the head with an officially licensed "Drawn Together" plank.

Back in the van, the hole in the roof has caused the temperature to drop. Captain Hero and Spanky build a fire, but realize they will need more kindling to keep it going. Toot and Ling-Ling turn against Wooldoor, and decide to use his dummy for this purpose, throwing it on the fire. Wooldoor reaches out to Xandir for help, and succeeds in bringing him back to consciousness by reminding him he's the troop leader. Xandir, however, says that his decisions are always wrong, and decides he must run away. He exits the van through the hole in the roof. Taking matters into his own hands, Wooldoor grabs the group's water canteen and puts out the fire. The group is left without any way to keep warm, plus Wooldoor has used the last of their water supply. They give themselves up for lost, arousing Captain Hero with the possibility of necrophilia. The episode concludes with a montage of silent clips: first, the housemates stuck in the van hugging each other to keep warm, then Foxxy waking up tied to a chair in the Hot Top stock room, then Clara bowing to the delivery guy while he looks at her cleavage, and finally Xandir collapsing in the snow as two cloaked figures approach him slowly. On this cliffhanger, the episode ends.

Notes and inside references

* Xandir is performing stem-cell research upon the foetus previously seen in The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II The baby was aborted from Wooldoor by Strawberry sweetcake.
* Foxxy looks for "Drawn Together" merchandise at Hot Topic and finds none, but upon inspecting the store's stockroom, she finds boxes of merchandise that the store is hoarding. According to episode commentary, this is a reference to an incident where the creators, upon being told that Hot Topic carried T-shirts from the show, eagerly went to the store to see them, but did not find any. The clerk here is modeled after the store clerk the crew dealt with that day.

* Xandir gives everyone T-shirts that say "Drawn Together Mall Trip '07", but refers to the event verbally as "Mall Trip '06". In episode commentary, the creators reveal that this is because the episode was originally to air in 2007, but was pushed up when the season premiere was shifted from January to October, by which time it was too late to change the animation. Part Two, however, aired in 2007.

* Excludie, the ninth housemate who is always excluded from everything (such as all previous episodes), is voiced by series co-creator Matt Silverstein.

* When Clara realizes she has been left behind, various snippets of dialogue from earlier in the episode cycle through her head. Amongst the snippets is a brief image of Foxxy Phat saying "Hey hey hey!" in the episode "Captain Hero's Marriage Pact". Ironically, the particular story from which the Foxxy Phat clip is taken did not involve Clara at any point.

* When the group first gets trapped, Wooldoor says, "Ach du lieber Augustin!", an old German expression similar to "Oh no!"

* The scene in the confessional booth where Captain Hero chops off his own head and survives is a fourth wall breaking reference to how no one on the show ever dies permanently. It also marks the quickest transition from a character being dead on the show to coming back. (Captain Hero comes back less than one second after his corpse moves out of view.)

* Though not utilized as frequently as the similar Hero/Xandir gag, the seduction scene between Wooldoor Sockbat and Captain Hero continues the show's running gag of Wooldoor and Hero being depicted as intimate partners. Previous implications were Hero giving Wooldoor a massage in "Captain Hero's Marriage Pact", Hero and Wooldoor sharing a kiss and a nude scene during the "Batman" title sequence spoof in "Captain Girl", and Wooldoor performing an erotic dance for Hero later in that same episode.

* Georgina (aka the "goat girl") from "Freaks & Greeks" makes a cameo appearance as the girl who receives the doll in which Talking Jesus's voice chip was mistakenly installed.

* Princess Clara is shown to own both a rosary and several crucifixes in this episode, furthering the notion that she is Roman Catholic. However, the doctrinal idea of a secret rapture (in which some are silently and unexpectedly taken up to heaven) and its associated eschatology arose from the ideas of John Nelson Darby, a Protestant, and are generally associated with evangelicalism.

* During a confessional scene, Foxxy notices Hot Topic and immediately runs out. She emerges in the mall, and is shown to have come out of a store called "Confessional World".

* The scene inside Hot Topic adds to the running gag that Foxxy can never get the housemates names right, including her own, referring to herself as Foxxy Brown. Other names she gives are Wooldoorf (wooldoor) and Ploop (Toot).

* Phil LaMarr makes his second guest appearance of the season. Here he is the voice of the delivery driver to whom Clara signs her soul. He previously appeared in "N.R.A.y RAY" as the titular Ray-Ray.

* The production numbers for this episode and its conclusion (306 and 308, respectively) seem odd given that the two obviously take place back to back with one another. According to creator commentary, this is because "Lost in Parking Space" was initially pitched to the network as a single episode, and it was produced as episode 306. However, after making episode 307, "Mexican't Buy Me Love", the decision was made to split "Lost in Parking Space" into two parts. Additional material was created, and Part Two was produced as episode 308.

* This is the first "Drawn Together" episode not to contain a musical number.

* When the housemates are watching the 'Amazing Race Riots' show on TV, the Korean deli shown is the same one featured in Super Nanny

* In a deleted scene included on the Season 3 DVD. Ling-Ling says Wooldoor's name for the first time in the history of the series.

Animated cameos

* When the housemates are trying to find a parking space at the mall, three potential spaces are taken by three different characters:
** Speed Racer in the Mach Five.
** He-Man riding on Battle Cat.
** Wonder Woman, who yells at the housemates after they crash into her invisible jet, which was parked in a space that they thought was empty.

Cultural references

* The title of this episode is a reference to "Lost in Space".

* Clara's story in this episode is inspired by the "Left Behind" books, a series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins about the lives of those left behind on Earth following the Rapture.
*Kirk Cameron, whose voice is heard on the Rapture Hotline, is the star of "", and one of the most outspoken born again Christians in the entertainment industry. The website Cameron mentions as he jumps out the window, www.wayofthemaster.com, is a real website; it is the homepage of The Way of the Master, a Christian evangelical group in which Cameron is a partner.

* Kirk Cameron, on his hotline message, refers to himself and his good friend Richard "Boner" Stabone as examples of cool people who are going to heaven. Stabone was the best friend of Cameron's character Mike Seaver on the sitcom "Growing Pains". He then gives Tracey Gold as an example of someone who is damned to hell, Gold being the actress who played Mike's sister Carol.

* The housemates watch a show called "The Amazing Race Riot", a dual reference to "The Amazing Race" and race riots—specifically, the tension between blacks and Koreans during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

* Xandir's mall trip, complete with matching T-shirts and a title by year ("Drawn Together Mall Trip '06"), strongly resembles a semi-organized student vacation, particularly spring break.

* The Jesus doll Clara talks to is a parody of the Jesus doll from Stephen King's "Carrie".

* The scene with the voice chip mix-up in the Barbie-type doll and the Jesus figure is similar to a large-scale prank where a group known as the Barbie Liberation Organization replaced the voice chips in a number of Barbie dolls with voice chips from G.I. Joe figures, and then placed the dolls on store shelves. [http://www.rtmark.com/legacy/blo.html] [http://sniggle.net/barbie.php]
**Additionally, the voice chip in the Talking Jesus (which was meant to go into the fashion doll) says phrases such as "Just pretend you're eating a banana" or "If you don't let him do it, he'll break up with you." This is a reference to Mattel's Teen Talk Barbie, which caused controversy because some models could say, "Math class is tough." This was interpreted as a reinforcement of offensive and outdated gender stereotypes. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DE103AF932A15753C1A964958260]

*Many elements of Clara's story in this episode parody the film "Home Alone":
**After searching the empty house, Clara goes into the confessional and says, "My roommates left me all alone" twice. The first time she sounds shocked and dismayed, but the second time she is obviously pleased with the situation. Macaulay Culkin's character delivers the line "I made my family disappear" in exactly the same way.
**She then indulges in a series of childish antics, including putting on winter clothes and sledding down the stairs, the way Culkin did.
**When she sees the housemates' clothes and thinks they have been taken off to heaven without her, Clara puts her hands to her cheeks and screams. This was the trademark holler of Kevin (Culkin's character), which became the signature image of the "Home Alone" series.
**The various booby traps Clara tries to use to evade the delivery guy parallel those Culkin used against the burglars who broke into his house. The delivery guy even mentions "Home Alone" by name when he explains that he saw through all of Clara's traps because he had watched the movie so many times.

* The company for whom the delivery driver works is not named, but his brown uniform suggests the United Parcel Service.

* Hero states that if the housemates want his gun, they'll have to pry it out of his cold, dead hands. This is a reference to Charlton Heston, who at the 2000 NRA Convention said that those who sought to take his gun away would have to take it "from my cold, dead hands!". [http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/5/21/165857]

* When Wooldoor attempts to seduce Hero, he is dressed as the Dutch Boy, the mascot of Dutch Boy Paint. [http://www.dutchboy.com/about/index.asp]

* When Wooldoor stretches out his badly fractured leg, Hero says to him, "You're trying to seduce me." This is a reference to "The Graduate", where Benjamin makes this same accusation of Mrs. Robinson. A parody of the song "Mrs. Robinson" plays in the background during the scene.

* Wooldoor's dummy says, "Just like the Grateful Dead, you've gotten us into yet another stupid jam!", a reference to the band's propensity for long instrumental jams.
* Hero refers to his limp right hand as his Bob Dole hand, a reference to Dole's right hand, which sustained nerve damage and over which he has limited control. This is why Dole is often seen gripping a pencil. In Germany, this was changed to Hero's Stephen Hawking hand, possibly because Bob Dole is little known in Germany.

* Ling-Ling says, "Help us, Foxxy Love, you're our only hope!" as his image flickers. This is a reference to Princess Leia's line "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!" in "". The flickering is a reference to the way Leia's image flickered during the scene in question. Ling-Ling also looks around after he says the line, as did Princess Leia in the original.

* When the Hot Topic employee attacks Foxxy, he says, "Nighty-night, Foxxy Love." This is a reference to the 2006 film "Hostel". The subsequent scene of Foxxy waking up bound to a chair in a basement is animated to resemble a scene in the film, down to the background and the slow backwards pan away from Foxxy as she looks around.

* The ending of the episode, with the "Drawn Together" logo floating toward the viewer, is a reference to the TV show "Lost". In "Lost", the opening title follows the same angle toward the viewer. It also references the way many "Lost" episodes end in cliffhangers.