Line #36 Headscratchers/MoralOrel


1	'''Beware of unmarked spoilers!'''
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3	* How did Orel turned out to remain a good person by the end of the series and a functional adult even after everything he experienced as a child? I know he has always been a good kid, but we lost half of his development about how he got there due the series being cancelled, aside from what WordOfGod has said about his grandfather we don’t know what happened on his adolescence and young adult years aside from speculation. Would they had been worse or better?[[invoked]]
4	** Well,he does have somewhat of a ParentalSubstitute in the form of Stephanie and she's been shown to kind of keep him functional, so maybe he has some other offscreen good influences.
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6	* What does "Puppington" have to do with stop-motion animation?
7	** "Puppington" kinda sounds like "Puppet"; technically, in stop motion, the figures are puppets.
8	** "Puppington" could be derived from "Puppetoon", a term coined by pioneering stop-motion animator George Pal, which he used to describe his work.
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10	* Soo...how much does Orel know about sex? In ''God's Chef'', he get's caught jacking off, and seems to have a vague idea of terms when he's talking to Clay, and yet Putty seems to think he's "pure pureness in it's purest form". I just recently started watching the series and have missed a good deal of episodes, so I don't know if I've something or not..
11	** I think Orel has a vague idea of sex, he's just very, very naive about it.
12	** Putty comments on his pureness because Orel (who is 11 or 12) apparently doesn't know the F-word.
13	** Fetuses masturbate and I'm sure as heck sure they don't know what sex is.
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15	* Why did Orel shoot the bear rather letting it kill Clay? Besides, death is what those kind of villains get.
16	** Because that's not the type of person Orel is.
17	** Orel's own life was in danger too, you know. It's not like the bear would have stopped at killing Clay.
18	*** Also, if the bear ate Clay and then for whatever reason decided to pass Orel up he would have been left alone in the wilderness for far longer. For as much as Orel hated Clay at that point, he also knew that Clay was the only chance he had to survive.
19	** On top of that, Clay's issues stem largely from his mother's coddling and his father's contempt for him. His abuse of Orel is in large part an attempt to make sure Orel turns out as fucked up as he did; he figures his problems aren't his own fault since anyone else in his position would do the same. By saving Clay, Orel showed that even with everything he'd been through, he still hadn't lost his moral compass, meaning that Clay had no excuse for his behaviour and his sins are his own fault. In other words, it was an act of CruelMercy, though Orel may not have intended it that way.
20	** If Clay had died there, his terrible life would be at an end, Orel's family would be spared a terrible patriarch, and Moralton a terrible mayor. That's not to say letting Clay die would have definitely been the right thing, but it makes you think.
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22	* If Clay and Bloberta hate each other, why can't they divorce?
23	** Fundamentalist Christians aren't allowed to divorce, lest they be seen as ''unholy'' by their fellow peers.
24	*** Yet in RealLife, they have the highest divorce rates in America.
25	*** Nobody said Fundamentalist Christians weren't among some of the biggest hypocrites known to mankind.
26	** They're actually supposed to be one of the more stable and normal couples. Everyone sees their marriage as the status quo, and if nothing else Moralton is ''all'' about preserving the status quo.
27	** This troper was raised by evangelical parents who made no secret at home that they hated one another, they didn't divorce for the sake of appearance and due to a twisted sense of religious guilt. It definitely happens.
28	*** To answer some of this, misery loves company, but, more in the context of the show (which either pokes fun of, deconstructs religious hypocrisy, or both, along with jabbing at more "tradition views"), it makes sense that they'd stay together even if they hate each other, as, somewhere, they believe marriage is for life---''they're stuck with each other''. Interestingly enough, in the context of the show, they also do have grounds for divorce, as the both of them had extramarital affairs ("adultery" in Biblical terms), so, with both of those in mind, they stay together because, well, misery loves company and they really feed on each other's misery.
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30	* If Orel now hates Clay, why does he have a portrait of his father and mother? Shouldn't he be out of their lives now that he somewhat knows that the latter is entirely responsible for turning his family dysfunctional?
31	** My guess is that he uses the Christian value of forgiveness. I mean, after how corrupt nearly everyone in Moralton was, Orel ''still'' has a cross hung up in his living room. And despite Bloberta and Clay's terrible parenting, the kids did turn out normal,with Shapey and Block being a policeman and a fireman respectively, and Orel ended up a good guy even after all the crap he'd been put through. But that could just be because of the efforts of the few sane people in Moralton, such as Stephanie and Reverend Putty.
32	** Because Orel is a better person than Clay is and would not shut his parents out despite how horrible they've been.
33	** Had the show not been cancelled, the next major story arc would have had Clay's father move in with the family and bond with Orel. Part of that would be him teaching Orel to, if not forgive Clay, at least pity him for the miserable life he leads. Presumably this softened Orel's opinion of his parents enough to not block them out of his life. Granted, since none of this ever made it into the show its not really canon, but there you go.
34	** Unlike the majority of Moralton's citizens, Orel takes being a Christian seriously and wants to be a ''genuinely'' good Christian. "Honor your father and mother" is one of the Ten Commandments, and someone as devout as Orel would likely try his best to follow it; he doesn't have to ''like'' his parents and he can hate the kind of people they are, but he will still respect them for their roles in bringing him into the world and raising him (even if the only good they did was giving him an example of how ''not'' to act).
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36	* Why is Arthur slapping Clay after he has declared that he is not worth it?
37	** Clay would purposely try to instigate and emotional response as much as he possible could from his father in 'order' to be slapped, because he began to associate being physically hit to actually being worth it,and as a result "loved" in Clay's twisted mind.
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39	* When Clay says "Hate away, sister. Hate away", is he insulted or not?
40	** He probably was, but tried to brush it off by acting smarmy and indifferent, and then got too drunk to care or remember.
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42	* People say that Clay is abusive because he beats Orel. (Well, admittedly that's not the end of it.) Let's see, Orel has raped women, killed men, beat another child to a pulp, became a drug addict, and raised the dead, who then feasted upon the living. Seriously, is he getting off so hard?
43	** According to Dino, that stuff was written "when continuity didn't matter." Aside from a brief, blink-and-you'll-miss-it callback in "Alone," it might as well be NegativeContinuity at this point.
44	** Maybe because every beating is actually for the completely wrong reasons. Orel raped women? He gets beaten up because he did so in an unholy manner (using a kitchen utensil). Beat another child to a pulp? He gets beaten for abandoning his old friends. Became a drug addict? He gets beaten for using slang. So his intentions are rather questionable, and you can argue spanking isn't the best punishment anyway. What I think is odd is that the one time Orel gets punished for something he did (for [[BloodBath bathing in his friends' blood]] in "Grounded") it's listed as a KickTheDog moment (even more so because the reason Clay resorted to grounding him was that the beatings were obviously not working anymore).
45	*** This makes me think Clay actually enjoys punishing Orel and comes up with excuses just to whack him. He even looks forward to Orel gulping as a signal that he's going to enjoy beating him. And he looks disappointed during the time Orel is looking forward to being beaten, so he comes up with a way for Orel to be afraid of being beaten again.
46	** He wasn't exactly punished for bathing in his friends blood, Clay was more agitated at him "messing up the upstairs bathroom".
47	*** Honestly, Orel is a naive and impressionable child receiving terrible advice from negligent authority figures. The reason for his bathing in the blood of his friends at the start of "Grounded" is because the adults realized their advice was terrible but didn't want to admit to it or actually try being a better influence on Orel. But he kept looking for advice, and they pretended to talk to themselves to alleviate any sense of responsibility when their advice went horribly wrong.
48	*** It seems like all the adults in Moralton hate responsibility period! My question would be why did it take a long time for the adults to realize their horrible advice is what causes Orel to cause chaos in town?
49	*** Key word: responsibility: They'd have to assume the weight of Orel's actions (because he's really a kid who didn't know any better). Many of the show's calamities that involved Orel were because he HEAVILY (and outright BAFFLINGLY) misconstrued what they told him to do when he sought advice.
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51	* In "Honor" Orel talks with Coach Stopframe and seems to be really hurt that Clay told everyone he killed the bear, not Orel. But Orel himself was the one who refused to tell his father that he killed it out of spite, so why does he feel like his father should know he's lying all along?
52	** Clay doesn't take the blame for shooting Orel, because, as Clay said, he doesn't remember. However, he takes the credit for shooting the bear, even though he doesn't know that he did shoot the bear. It's just a huge slap in the face for Orel.
53	** It's also the fact that Clay lies about it, trying to place the blame on Orel. The three mentioned excuses are that Orel: got between him and the bear, Orel shot himself, or the bear shot Orel.
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55	* If Clay and Blobberta hate each other so much, then why did they have Orel in the first place? It also doesn't help that they neglect the boy and WordOfGod says that Orel is not an accident.
56	** Extend their lineage, boost their imagery as a wholesome, Christian family; or, maybe early in their marriage they actually did want to have the family they couldn't have themselves.
57	** Extending on that last suggestion: It may have been a case in which they thought that they could've made out better than their parents and tried to do so, but ultimately failed in that regard and then couldn't back out for the sake of Orel and their reputations (especially with Clay being the Mayor.
58	** Because they bought into the BabiesMakeEverythingBetter trope.
59	*** Probably a mixture of all those factors. Though I wonder if they took BabiesMakeEverythingBetter and twisted it to mean "This marriage is horrible. Why should we suffer alone?"
60	*** It's probably more along the lines of "hey, maybe having a baby will ''fix'' this marriage!". Orel certainly wouldn't have been the first child conceived under this mindset.
61	*** based on one of Dino’s answers in an [[http://web.archive.org/web/20110818233207/http://boards.adultswim.com/t5/Moral-Orel/A-Final-Q-amp-A-Possible/td-p/47747798/page/2 Q&A]] it can be up to interpretation if Orel was planned or not but the phrasing makes it seem as if Orel was an accident.
62	-->'''Technomaru''': " If Clay and Bloberta don't even like each other and were forced to marry... Why did they have Orel? they pretty much neglect him, Clay beats him when he feels like it and Bloberta acting pretty much acting cold towards him, just what purpose did they have when they conceived Orel? This type of thing makes me and many others think Orel was a accident!"
63	-->''' Dino''': "Why does any couple in an abusive relationship have kids? Because they fukked and a baby came out."
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65	* We all know that the characters have puns and injokes for names but in the case of Mr. Nohammers, he owns a hardware store called "Nohammers Hardware" and this results in hundreds of phone calls about if he has hammers and explains "Yes we have hammers, no that's my name!" Now the one thing that bothers me about this is if Mr. Nohammers is tired of those phone calls about hammers... '''Why doesn't he just change his name?''' It would be easy as that!
66	** [[RuleOfFunny Because if he did, it wouldn't be funny.]]
67	** In RealLife, there are people (and places) who have unfortunate names that refuse to change out of loyalty to their heritage.
68	** A less drastic measure would be changing the name of his store.
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70	* So far, everyone in Moralton knows Clay is a horrible alcoholic, so why hasn't anyone given him a intervention about his drinking?
71	** Probably because he's the mayor. People in Moralton do their best not to disturb the status quo and I'd imagine that rule especially applies to Clay.
72	** Because they're corrupt too and don't care.
73	*** Considering how messed up almost everyone is in Moralton (and [[ThereAreNoTherapists no therapists]]), it's not like it'd be a successful intervention anyway.
74	** That and it's not like Clay ''wants'' the help. You can't get help (nor ask for it) if you can't acknowledge your own role in the issues.
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76	* But in the first place, HOW did such a despicable person like Clay manage to become a mayor? He had to win a vote, hadn't he?
77	** By default? He might have been the only person who ran and ended up voting for himself.
78	** Probably the lesser of two evils won the election he ran for?
79	** Or he might've presented himself well in the first election (he didn't know it was a "stinking dead-end job" until later), and then voter apathy kicked in.
80	*** Like someone previously said, "Because they're corrupt too and don't care".
81	** In the episode "Nesting", Clay expresses surprise upon hearing that Ms. Censordoll is also in the running, implying that no one else ever runs against him.
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83	* Do Shapey and/or Block even go to school? Surely behavior such as theirs would not fly there.
84	** Well, given the zero shits adults seem to give about kids in Moralton, they're probably left to do whatever they want.
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86	* What happened to all the babies conceived because of Orel's actions in "God's Chef"?
87	** We don't see them, but it's possible they're still alive and being raised or put up for adoption.
88	*** NegativeContinuity and StatusQuoIsGod.
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90	* How the hell did Doughy even ''survive''? If they were that neglectful to him as a baby he'd have been long dead!
91	** It is heavily implied that his parents were stuck living their high school days, not knowing or caring that part of their lives is over. However, what we're not clear on (or I'm not clear on, I haven't seen that episode in a while) is if the regression was always there, or if it started out and worsened over a time-frame. Perhaps what we see of them is something that happened maybe about 2 years ago or such and Doughy was at least able to use the money to feed and take care of some issues at the house. Again, without an exact time-frame, nothing is really certain. Comes with the name anyway, Doughy "[[MeaningfulName Latchkey]]".
92	*** Alternatively, it may have been that his grandparents took care of him and passed away after he was able to live up to his namesake.
93	** Neither seem likely, since children develop long-term memory around age 2, which is still too young to care for yourself, and Doughy has no memory of ''anyone'' ever telling him they love him or treating him well.
94	** Maybe just good-old AnthropicPrinciple; the idea of two adult parents acting like high school sweethearts with realistic consequences is interesting, and maybe teaches a lesson to couples who really do expect their relationships to remain in the honeymoon phase forever. And if Doughy was a baby, he wouldn't be much of a character, especially once he inevitably died from negligence. How this dramatic situation it came to be isn't important.
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96	* Why does Clay hate his "lousy stinkin' dead end job" as Mayor of Moralton anyway? He seems focused on money even though Mayor is a pretty good job.
97	** Clay seems like someone who's basically self-destructive enough to never be happy about anything. Plus being Mayor probably involves a lot of work doing what's best for citizens and ultimately taking care of other people and judging by his interactions with his family, Clay deeply resents being obligated to take care of anyone but himself.
98	*** A better question would be is "Why the hell did Clay run for mayor in the first place?" but, knowin' what we already know about 'im, we could guess he ran and became mayor for some narcissistic reason.
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100	* When you look at the list of the people residing at the Aloneford in the episode "Dumb", it lists a "The Widow [=McMissuns=]" right beneath Nurse Bendy's name, which implies somebody married Link [=McMissuns=]... who the hell married him?
101	** Widow [=McMissuns=] could be a different "[=McMissuns=]". If that is his widow, then he probably got married to some woman offscreen.
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103	* Are the Figurellis black or Italian? Why are there so much prejudice against them when Italians are technically white? Is it because they are Catholic?
104	** The surname implies they're of Italian descent, however, so the segregation is Orel (being hella naive but probably well-meaning) thought that the Figurellis needed to be separate (IDK why, something about bandaids and "God's image").
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106	* How does Clay know the taste of urine? Was that what he put in his cereal when he was Orel's age?
107	** That sounds like a question that we don't want the answer to but, remembering how Clay would provoke his dad or attempt to, maybe that was one of the pranks.
108	*** He clearly says he "knows the taste". Many of the stuff Clay has done in his youth was presumably what Orel could've done in the series.
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110	* Can Orel just lie to Clay that he puts water in his cereal?
111	** He could but that might get him belted for lying.
112	*** But at least Orel is answering his father. Does Clay know that his son would be lying?
113	*** Given Clay's track record, Orel would prolly get belted either way. [[MortonsFork There's no winnin']].

Context Headscratchers / MoralOrel