Desmond's Big Day Out
Original air date: 4/1/2020
At Smiling Friends, an organization dedicated to making people smile, employees Pim and Charlie are assigned to help a mother's son named Desmond, who's been feeling rather down. Arriving at Desmond's house, they see that Desmond is actually a middle-aged man holding a gun to his head, prepared to kill himself due to how miserable his life has become. While Charlie believes that Desmond is beyond their help, Pim is determined to make him regain his will to live.
Pim's first attempt at cheering Desmond up is to take him to his family's house, but unfortunately Pim's family is very dysfunctional and violent. His second attempt has him try to make friends at a party, but Pim is made fun of by one of the partygoers. In a final desperate attempt, Pim, Charlie, and Desmond spend the rest of the day at the amusement park Daveland, but Desmond still remains depressed. Eventually, Desmond stuns Pim into silence when he goes on a depressing rant about life.
At Smiling Friends' office, co-worker Alan searches around the workplace trying to find his lost cheese. He hears one of his traps go off and enters the walls of the office, where he finds a bliblie, a small purple creature. Alan later ends up breaking a bliblie egg sac, flooding the office with them. When Charlie, Pim, and Desmond arrive at the office, Desmond shoots one of the bliblies and smiles over how good it felt. Later, Charlie and Alan watch a commercial starring a now cleaned-up and happy Desmond advertising his bliblie extermination service. The two laugh together as Pim still remains depressed over Desmond's previous rant.
In Memoriam Gag: Jonathan Q. Shrimpling (2004-2017)
Desmond's Big Day Out contains examples of...
- An Aesop:
- It's gonna take a lot more than just cheering a person up to help them out of their depression, especially if said depression is of the suicidal variety.
- Likewise. Having a purpose and context to your life that you genuinely find fulfilling can be all it takes to turn somebody from considering suicide to being fully mentally well, as what finally cheers up Desmond is him realizing that he likes exterminating Bliblies, and is later seen as owning a business dedicated to exterminating them for other people.
- Bait-and-Switch: We're initially led to believe Desmond is a kid who's down in the dumps. In reality, he is a fully grown, depressed man who has moved back in with his elderly mother after his life has gone to shambles.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The first Bliblie is introduced whimpering in fear and pain after losing its hand. We quickly find out how violent they are after Alan falls for the act and tries talking gently to it. The rest of the Bliblies don't even try to appear innocent.
- Bittersweet Ending: Charlie and Pim eventually manage to snap Desmond out of his suicidal funk and give him a new purpose in life and Alan got his cheese back, but Pim has been broken by Desmond's nihilism and is now in a depressive funk himself. Additionally, while Desmond gaining the will to live again is undeniably a good thing, there's still the disturbing matter of how he could only find happiness by acting out sadistic tendencies.
- Black Comedy: While this is to be expected from a work centered on a suicidal person, said person holding themselves at gunpoint all the while takes it to another level.
- Brutal Honesty: Pim's sister, when Pim insists that they love each other despite getting into squabbles, firmly states that no she hates Pim and doesn't love him at all.
- Character Death: The apparent leader of the Bliblies is shot dead by Desmond, ending their reign of terror and giving Desmond a reason to live.
- Cheer Up Episode: The main plot of the episode is Pim and Charlie, mainly the former, trying to help their depressed client gain a more positive outlook on life. With the client's depression so severe he is on the brink of killing himself, emphasis is put on trying.
- Death by Despair: Desmond mentions that this was the fate of his dog before the episode started and after his wife and kids left.
- Despair Speech: Desmond gives one to Pim after their Daveland experience. Despite acknowledging there are good things to life, he concludes that they do not change the fact that life still sucks and will eventually end, leaving Pim stunned and despondent.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Desmond's mother being an elderly woman should've been the first sign to Charlie and Pim that her son is not a little boy like they thought.
- The Great Exterminator: The plot involves Pim and Charlie attempting to cheer up a suicidal man named Desmond while the rest of the group discovers an infestation of tiny creatures called Bliblies. The two plot lines converge when Desmond kills a Bliblie and realizes that he's found his calling in life, becoming a renowned Bliblie exterminator.
- Limited Animation: Demsond's mother is animated in an extremely limited fashion, as she's literally a static drawing being carried around by two atrociously drawn legs that only rapidly move up and down to simulate the motion of walking, and aside from her legs, the only parts of her body that move are her arms and mouth.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Pim is more or less put through a Humiliation Conga for all his efforts to help Desmond find a purpose in life. Trying to show Desmond the importance of family only reminds Pim that his is way too dysfunctional, attempting to make friends at a party gets him ridiculed by the other partygoers, and going to an amusement park to have fun, while actually momentarily successful, only gets Desmond on a speech proclaiming his nihilism, ultimately rocking Pim. Even if Desmond does get better by the episode's end, it was no thanks to Pim, who winds up becoming as miserable as Desmond once was as a result of the day's events.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Desmond killing all of the Bliblies. If the commercial is any accurate reflection to his one-man rampage against all the bliblies, not only did he gun the little peckerheads down, but he smashed, stabbed, and even lit them on fire.
- Secret Squatter: Alan, while looking for his stolen cheese and paperclips, finds a man living in the walls of Smiling Friends HQ, complete with computer and enough internet access to have something to hide... alongside a massive infestation of bliblies which proceed to overrun the building.
- Series Establishing Moment: The reveal of Desmond and his suicidal intentions definitely establishes the tone of the series.
- Shout-Out: A Bliblie can be seen taking on the distinctive unconscious pose from Family Guy in the shot where the one-armed Bliblie takes notice of and yells at Desmond, Charlie, and Pim returning to the office.
- Thanking the Viewer: The little alien Pim and Charlie were watching earlier in the episode breaks out of the T.V. at the end to thank the audience for watching the episode. Naturally, this freaks out all of the employees (except Pim, who is stuck in a Heroic BSoD).
- Wham Shot: The reveal that Desmond isn't a moody child, but a fully grown man who has descended into a state of suicidal despair after losing everything that ever mattered to him in life.
- Younger Than They Look: The first sign that the yet-to-be-established-as-running In Memoriam gag is NOT a sincere memorial to a real if unusually-named person is that Jonathan Q. Shrimpling, a man with a receding hairline and graying beard, definitely does not at all look like the 12-to-13-year-old that the dates say he is.
