Dan Vs The Dentist - The Good Version
So, what would I do differently? Well, as it turns out, just about everything.
See, even though Dan Vs is such a good show, I think you'll find it difficult to argue that it started off on the right foot. Because it didn't.
So let's go through the train wreck that is "Dan Vs The Dentist" one last time.
The opening plays out exactly the same. Dan is yelling at his grandmother over the phone. It is important because this is the setup for a discussion point later. Then, Chris comes over and wants the twenty bucks.
You can even take Elise's birthday out of it. Make him want the twenty bucks for some other reason, such as, say, being low on cash due to frequent spending on Dan's schemes. Something. Why? Because Elise's birthday is not mentioned again despite a day passing. Yeah, the ending takes place ON HER BIRTHDAY and it goes unacknowledged. Alternatively, you could make her preparing for her birthday to be the B-Plot, but I think it works better without the birthday at all, because I have an even better idea for a B-Plot.
You can keep the teddy bear jokes, as they were hilarious. Plot-wise, Dan defends his bear again, but here, Chris calls him out on it.
- Chris: Hey, maybe I could sell this bear and get some money.Dan: WHAT!? No way are you doing that. This thing is precious to me.Chris: No it isn't, I've never even seen you with that thing before.Dan: Well, um, maybe it will someday be precious to me. You never know.Chris: Dan! Give me that bear!
And then the fight ensues just like before and Dan loses his tooth. This eliminates the problem of why the viewer hasn't seen the bear before.
And now we have our title card.
Chris asks why Dan is blaming the dentist, and Dan recites the same dialogue as before. The dentist was Crazy-Prepared.
- Chris: Well, his plan worked. You have to go to the dentist.Dan: And play into his hand? Not likely.Chris: You could always go to a different dentist.Dan: He's the only one in the neighborhood.*Chris: Well, what do you want to do then?Dan: We'll fix it ourselves.Chris: We?Dan: You, mostly. I can't see inside my own mouth.Chris: But I'm not a dentist!Dan: Exactly. So that means I can trust you.Chris: Look, Dan. I don't know how a dentist would reattach teeth.Dan: We use a hot glue gun to glue it in!Chris: I don't think that's how a dentist does it.Dan: Great. That means we won't play into their evil hands.Chris: I'm gonna do some more research.
And that means you writers also need to research it
. Maybe include Chris talking about it - with some Genius Bonuses if you're generous.
Chris gets ready to reattach the tooth and... Cut to an overview of the whole city with Dan's scream.
- Chris: I haven't even done anything to you yet.*Dan: Forget it. I want another option.Chris: All right, I'll call Elise.
This scene plays exactly the same - minus the parts where Chris references Dan's swallowing of the tooth. That was dumb in the episode, contributed nothing, and I consider its exclusion here to be a vast improvement.
The other difference here is that rather than returning to Dan and Chris, we use this phone call as an opportunity to transition to Elise, who is working on building her supercomputer.
- Elise: All right. Just about got it... aaaaand... done.Computer: This unit is now ready for operation.Elise: Excellent. Now to test it. Computer, calculate the (insert some complex thing here. I'm too lazy to think of anything right now, because I'm making this liveblog on short notice, but the writers have plenty of time).
And thus, you've made a Shout-Out, which the viewers will enjoy, and you've set up an enjoyable B-Plot of the computer pulling a HAL 9000 and invoking A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
As Elise realizes this, the computer tries to kill her in ridiculous ways. She dodges them like a pro, which serves as Foreshadowing for what's to come. Throughout the episode, you slice in this B-Plot with the A-Plot. Chris and Dan will do their adventure, which I will describe below. And meanwhile, Elise will keep trying (and failing) to outwit the computer, only to discover that the computer is expecting that and is making her survival chances even worse after each time she plays into its hand like that. I'm not going to describe the B-Plot below, except when it intertwines with the A-Plot, because my task was to IMPROVE this episode, not write a completely different one.
Back with Dan and Chris, we get this:
- Chris: She said to go see a dentist.Dan: *sigh* I suppose we have no choice.
Cut to them at the dentist's office which is now an ADULT'S dentist office. We don't need it to be a children's dentist. That added nothing to the story. Besides, Dan acts like a child anyways, so it doesn't even add humor by contrast.
Also, there is no longer any dialogue in the waiting room scenes - just as how there wasn't any before. After Dan gets called back, we see Chris go sit down in the waiting room and read something quietly. Other patients - who are adults, not unattended children - are doing the same thing.
Cut to Dan in the back. The dentist gets ready to perform the operation, same as last time.
And then cut to the waiting room, hearing Dan's screams. Everyone, one by one, except Chris, looks up and looks towards the back to see what's going on (but they don't leave their seats). After everyone has done this, Chris looks down, sighs, and gets up to walk over there.
- Chris: What's going on here?
And from here, they knock out Dan and reattach the tooth. This plays out the same with Dan and Chris in the car later, and Chris commenting that Dan has a cavity and needs to go back. Dan swears revenge on the dentist for doing that. Chris says no, and that he wants to spend time with Elise, and gives her a call.
Cut to the B-Plot. At this point, Elise is getting so close to overcoming the supercomputer. In fact, she can do it really easily now. The only thing that could possibly stop all of her progress is if her phone goes off. Naturally, it does. The Computer hears this, and locks her out of whatever she was attempting to do. It also destroys her phone, preventing her from contacting Chris for help. Cut to the A-Plot.
- Chris: That's weird. She's not picking up.Dan: That must mean she's left you.Chris: She hasn't left me, she's just not picking up her phone. You're being ridiculous. (*Beat*) ...right?Dan: *gasp* LOOK!
We then see Elise, from the back, kissing the dentist on the sidewalk. He looks up at Chris and smiles.
- Chris: Oh my god.
And they drive off. Now, we get The Reveal. The camera spins around to reveal the face of the woman, along with her entire front side, and it's not Elise, but someone else, who really is in love with the dentist. Now, the reason this is here is:
- It gives Chris a reason to hate the dentist, so he's more likely to go along with Dan on this.
- It will better allow the A-Plot to crossover with the new B-Plot when the time comes. However, much like the new B-Plot, I won't be mentioning the bits about the "Your Cheating Heart" story until they come up in the A-Plot, although I expect Chris to have lines about how sad and unexpected it is throughout this whole thing, with Dan being a Deadpan Snarker with a Lack of Empathy at most of them.
Chris is now gung-ho about getting revenge on the dentist, so he enthusiastically goes along with Dan's plan, so they go back to the dentist at night, break in, and steal his files.
Given the re-working of the storyline that I have done, it is impossible for Elise to decode the message for them. So it's just not encrypted beyond needing the goggles to view. The message this time isn't about "I gave Dan a cavity while fixing his tooth," but is rather a general note that points to the dentist being a supervillain, including where his secret lair is. Heck, it doesn't even have to be Dan's file, just a general file is fine.
They intend to follow the note to his evil lair, but they see him getting into his car first. Which, by the way, is now just an ordinary car and not a supervillain motif, because it would make no sense to drive a supervillain car to work in this world. This isn't a superhero story, and the setting just doesn't match. He can have the supervillain car at his hideout though - that's fine.
Dan gives him an insult as they charge him, which the dentist hears, and quickly gets in his car to make his getaway.
They go to the car-mobile and have their chase scene, which is just as awesome and funny as before.
He gets on the highway, and they lose sight of him. Fortunately, now they know where he is going, thus eliminating that Plot Hole too.
The rest of the A-Plot plays out identically to how it did originally - Dan and Chris storm his lair, fight his minions, dodge his traps, jump on his shell to get infinite lives, and then ultimately defeat him.
Now, we just need a resolution to the B-Plot. Chris drops Dan off at his apartment and drives home alone, saddened that he lost Elise. The original episode here tried and failed to deliver a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. Here, I'm going to try and succeed at one, dammit.
Chris has no idea that Elise has been battling a supercomputer, by the way. He comes into the house, and finds Elise in the garage, still trying to find a way to battle the computer, and just barely surviving. Chris talks to her, still not realizing that she is fighting a computer. He does a lot of Self-Deprecation here. He mentions how he's a loser, and how he's an idiot for thinking that someone as amazing as Elise could love someone like him, and more stuff like that. And he finishes it with "But even with all of that, I love you. It feels like my purpose is to love you." Elise finally looks up from what she's doing, confused at why Chris would say this, and possibly even suspicious that this might not be the real Chris, and instead a deception made by the computer*.
She explains how she cares for him, and loves and cherishes him. And she says WHY she loves him, so that we can get some character development. She needs to explain the purpose of her love, and then after that she delivers the same line "It feels like my purpose is to love you."
The computer hearing this cannot comprehend it, as it is unable to feel love.
The computer, which Elise has been struggling so hard to defeat up until this point, to the extent that it's been built up as an undefeatable foe*, is defeated by The Power of Love. It keeps reciting those same words until its system gets overloaded and it is forced to shut down (may or may not blow up as well). But this is in the background. The foreground focuses on Chris and Elise hugging each other and kissing. THAT, ladies, gentlemen, and anyone who identifies as both, neither, or a mix, is exactly how you create a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.
Now, we cut to the A-Plot one last time. Rather than the dentist getting up and swearing vengeance on Dan, he struggles to get up after his hideout self-destructed. It's not as easy. But a hand reaches out from offscreen and helps him. Then we get a POV shot to see who the dentist sees. It's that fake Elise that he was hanging out with, now wearing a supervillain outfit of a similar motif. There's your Sequel Hook.
And this is at least 1000x better than the real episode. Yet I managed to come up with this whole thing in about 20 minutes*.
Oh yeah, and for the record, Dan Vs The Dentist is my Fanon Discontinuity. As far as I'm concerned, it never happened. If a later episode contradicts something that happened in this disaster of an episode, it will be ignored. Because I will just assume that the writers realized this episode sucked and are replacing it with their new ideas. I'm not going to fault them for that.
For now, we'll just assume that Dan Vs The Dentist didn't happen, so I'll go into Dan Vs The Ninja on the next page with knowledge of only "New Mexico" and "The Wolf-Man", but not "The Dentist." I'm putting this one out of my mind forever.
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