The first episode begins in a kitchen. A singing sketchbook teaches the main characters to "get creative", singing about childlike activities. Most of Yellow Guy’s ideas are arbitrarily judged by the sketchbook to be non-creative. The climax of the episode is an exaggerated depiction of creativity in which Yellow Guy and Duck Guy become operated by people in suits, like Red Guy, and dance increasingly erratically and engage in deranged acts like covering a heart in glitter and serving a cake made from internal organs, complete with shaky camera shots and increasingly frantic music. The words "get creative" can be found hidden in this part everywhere. The video ends with everything seemingly restored to normal and the sketchbook telling the puppets, in a final line of the song, to "never be creative again". The episode premiered on 29 July 2011.
Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
- Butt-Monkey: Sketchbook seems to selectively pick on Yellow Guy throughout her lesson.
- Establishing Character Moment
- Yellow Guy's childlike mannerisms are clearly shown with his Simpleton Voice.
- Red Guy's dull and monotone personality is perfectly shown when he claims that Sketchbook's expressive hair is "really boring".
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- This episode as a whole is somewhat unpolished in comparison to the rest of the show, in terms of the effects and puppetry. Yellow Guy's face in particular is very obviously rumpled.
- The Sketchbook is far less visibly nasty than most of the other teachers to follow, with the puppets themselves committing most of the creepy actions in the form of the Creativity Explosion.
- The episode features very little creepiness up until the Creativity Explosion. While future episodes do tend to build to a single crazy moment, this is usually after a buildup of a lot of individual moments of gore, creepiness, and overt satire.
- Gainax Ending: How the episode ends. The Students go into a massive "creative explosion" that features the puppets being controlled by people in suits, extremely erratic music, and a lot of gore and death. When all is suddenly restored, Sketchbook notes her regret of teaching them creativity.
- Insane Troll Logic: Sketchbook somehow believes that the color green is uncreative.
- Mood Whiplash: The "Creativity Explosion".
- My God, What Have I Done?: Seems to regret teaching them about creativity. As she says to all of them after the climax to never be creative again.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the aforementioned "Creativity Explosion", Sketchbook immediately flops over when things go back to normal.
- Suppressed Rage: Sketchbook's tone changes ever-so slightly when responding to Red Guy's insult about her hair.
