Identify with the King, His Wife, or His Friends

Identify with the King, His Wife, or His Friends by Roxanne McDonald

We can relate to the characters and their misadventures: that’s what makes “King of Queens” so funny and an audience favorite.

Consider the “King of Queens” episodes audiences name as our favorites:

The couple’s troubles…

Despite how both are kept awake at night by the barking, Doug allows himself to be suckered into walking the neighbor’s dog—behind Carrie’s back, of course. “Doug Days”

When Doug lands in the hospital, as he comes out of surgery and is still in the anesthesia fog, he mutters a number of female names. Carrie decides to control what fantasies he’s allowed to have—including any where she is not dead, as Doug originally has to fantasize.

When at a company function Doug can’t remember one of Carrie’s colleague’s names, he fakes a heart attack.

Carrie shoves Doug, who falls down the stairs and breaks his leg. Since she is so contrite and all doting, Doug milks the situation…though once he is healed (unbeknownst to Carrie), he joins his buds in trampoline basketball…where he is of course caught by Carrie.
At Carrie’s insistence, Doug does a command performance appearance at Carrie’s boss’s cultured affair, but he hasn’t eaten all day: he rifles the kitchen (that the boss never uses) and finds some eggs which he scarfs down raw. The eggs turn out to be rotten, and Doug ends up having to get sick…behind the Kabuki screen and in front of all the guests. “Hungry Man”

Doug brings home a motorcycle, despite how Carrie has forbid him to do so, for fear he will die. To pay him back, she starts smoking in an exaggerated that’ll teach him for making her worry kind of revenge…. “Queasy Rider”

Doug and Carrie get lost in the woods on vacation. They of course fight and go their separate ways to find a way out. Between the fear of the “square-shaped bird” (an owl) and his Rambo roving (which he breaks down as a savage for—twenty minutes into his fretful wandering), juxtaposed with Carrie’s finding the road and a diner, this one is a classic.

Single Deacon and Doug and Carrie go golfing with a fourth they meet in a restaurant. Carrie gets stuck with the laughing woman who makes the fourth in their favorite foursome only never laughs at anything Carrie says while roaring over every single thing Deacon and Doug say.

The best friend couples visit apple country, where Deacon and Kelly “get it on” often and much to the dismay of Doug and Carrie, who do it once. “Get Away”

Doug becomes enamored by Spence’s girlfriend’s cooking. Carrie gets jealous. Fans love Arthur’s role in this episode, wherein he talks about having never seen The Wizard of Oz but noting how, he says, “I heard it has midgets in it…and that spells funny.” Arthur is also in on the cooking issue, and when Carrie has a dinner party and Spence’s girl brings salad—despite Carrie insisting she not—Arthur chastises Doug, telling him, “Your wife has made you a salad with love; eat it, you ungrateful bastard!” “Food Fight”

One of my favorites, too, in one episode Doug has bluffed his IPS boss and ended up having to quit to save face. He lands a job as a bike courier, and on his route he runs into wife, Carrie, who has been doing a tanning regime that is way too overdone.

Doug and Arthur discover that Carrie is way nicer when she’s had a few, so every night they have drinks waiting for her when she comes home. “Lush Life”

Carrie befriends a gay guy at work, who becomes what Doug identifies as her “work wife.” So Doug gets a work wife, too, only it’s Deacon, who is none too happy with the moniker and who retorts, “If anyone is the wife, it’s you.” “Business Affairs”

Another episode I adore is the Thanksgiving episode, wherein Carrie is the only one afraid this strange guy with the eye patch (“patchy”) waiting for his bro to pick him up will rob or hurt them…. And, of course, he does.

The boys’ foibles…

Fatty McButterPants reappears in many forms, as Doug is often trying to diet, trying to squelch his love affair with food.

Doug does the stripper pole act.

Doug and Deacon haggle and argue over Mentalo—which Doug loved as a kid and Deacon claims to have yearned for. When Carrie gives Doug Mentalo for Xmas it is a cheap knock-off that frustrates Doug even more:
Doug: This is Mental-Man!
Carrie: So? What’s the difference?
Doug: Fez, Turban! Do you not know the difference, woman?! (Thanks to IMDB bb fans of “King of Queens” for this direct quote.) “Mentalo Case”

Doug doesn’t want to be a foursome with a couple Carrie has befriended, so he pulls all kinds of obnoxious to discourage them from staying: he pulls up his shirt and makes his belly talk, etc..

When Carrie has to work nights, Doug needs Arthur in bed with him so he can fall asleep. He wines and dines his father-in-law and lures him with special TV shows and movies. “Arthur, Spooner”

When the lawyers at Carrie’s workplace mistake Doug for a lawyer, too, he goes along with it. “Affidavit Justice”

Doug has his former football teammates over, and has a hard time when they mis-remember who made the winning TD—which they attribute to a guy who is now in a wheelchair. “Block Buster”

To sneak with Ray Romano and watch a game, Doug has to adjust some cables in the attic. But he gets stuck in the trap door, and has to have buddy Richie and others rescue him. “Dire Strayts”

Jealous that Arthur gets what he asks for, Doug figures out a way to get Arthur talking about his past and coming around to related foods, whichever food Doug wants that night. He then convinces Arthur to force Carrie to make or get that food for them that night.

A running favorite is the three-part episode with Doug and Deacon having been laid off and Arthur joining them for gambling (betting on a See ‘n Say sound), pranking, and street-roaming, kids in tow. (The photo on this page is a still from this episode.) “The Strike-out Trilogy”

And my favorite in this category is the episode set on Valentine’s Day, when Deacon and Doug have to transport penguins in a refrigerated truck. The guys lock themselves in the refrigerated part. Doug discovers the sign on the inside of the door (which none of us would see until we had entered, closed the door, and turned around—which of course we wouldn’t do until it was time to leave, duh). The sign reads that one should have the door key at all times as the door automatically locks from the inside and yells, “Mother of ASS!” My absolute all-time favorite Dougism.

The females’ frustrations…

Carrie is assigned, on top of her usual duties at the firm, babysitting for Mr. Kaplan’s grandson. The toddler has a penchant for breasts, and consistently grabs at Carrie’s “toys”. “Mammary Lane”

Carrie discovers she is pregnant, and before she can tell Doug, she has some time to imagine…a full-sized Doug as her baby. “Pregnant Pause I”

Carrie gets stuck with a new friend, played by the brilliant Jeanine Garafalo—a woman who is relentless, invasive, and dull as hell, what with her “literally” comments and all. Worse, the woman is one whom Doug just stopped dating without a fair or proper sign off, so now Doug is remorseful and worrisome…that Carrie is about to do the same.

Carrie is out of work, and so decides to craft cell phone jackets—which are hideous and pricey to boot and which she forces on all her friends to buy.

The family funnies…

Doug is sitting in the living room and yelling into the kitchen to Carrie about how much Arthur bugs him. When he exclaims that Arthur is a demented old circus monkey,” it is Arthur who now in the kitchen hears. Doug has to spend the next week backpedaling and trying to make it up to him. (The traveling a zillion miles to a closed shop for Italian ice is also part of the funny.)

Doug drives Arthur to a retirement center costume party, but Arthur convinces him to let him go to a bar down at the docks instead.
Arthur is stubborn about the way Carrie coddles him, makes him take his meds, etc.. When Doug defends Arthur, Carrie relinquishes all responsibilities for her father’s well-being to Doug.

Doug’s parents fly in to get Doug and his sister to sign wills. The whole session takes place in the airport.

On one visit to Doug’s parents’, decades old secrets are exposed:
First, Doug learns his beloved Rocky is not his original dog. Not only that, but there have been several Rockies, all of whom Doug has deludedly believed were the original.
Next, he learns he was not born in the U.S.

The dialogue exchange is quick and hysterical:
Doug: Are you telling me that this is Rocky II?
Joe: Actually, this is Rocky IV.
Janet: We were going to tell you about Rocky III, but she died right before your wedding.
Doug: SHE?!
Doug [A few minutes later, when Mom mentions something about his being born in Canada]: I’m CANADIAN?
Doug [Overwhelmed by one more truth]: YOU TOLD ME THAT WAS SUPER KINDERGARTEN!!

Doug and Carrie take Arthur to a shrink (played by the brilliant William Hurt), to, as Carrie hopes, get him some medication that will prevent him from bugging them. Instead, they each ends up on the couch, and Carrie meets with her equally cruel child self (through regression) as does Doug meet, and have a physical fight with, his childhood self. At the same time, the shrink makes Carrie and Doug “validate” Arthur, who then goes on all kinds of “I want to”s—making candles, cooking, etc.. “Shrink Wrap”

Carrie is mortified to play board games with her father, as he always (as has always, even when she was a little girl) is an overbearing winner, humiliating her with jokes and jabs about what a loser she is.

When Arthur is in the hospital and possibly near death, Carrie rifles through his papers at home (for insurance or some other important document). She discovers he has hidden away all her acceptance letters to colleges she had applied to and had never heard from. Back in the hospital, as her ailing Dad sleeps, she eats his hospital food and tosses his flowers in the trash. “Lyin’ Hearted”

And the best of the lot: Doug’s mom befriends Margy, an important ex girlfriend of Doug’s, instead of Carrie. At the same time that Carrie is “catching” Mom sneaking a visit in, Doug is working on the song he supposedly wrote for Margy. When he does the outside the balcony window serenade, however, guess who shows up right behind Margy?
This one not only goes in the females’ frustrations category but belongs on the top ten best episodes list. It is one of my absolute favorites. And besides the remake episodes—where Spence is like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, where Doug is Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners and Carrie is Alice—I love any episode where I can identify with Doug and his limitations and frustrations…any episode where he ends a scene yelling “ASS!”

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