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inbarfink · 8 months

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Okay so there’s a lot of DHMIS fans out there who try to rank or analyze the Teachers and which ones are worse and which are better, and I thought I might as well throw my own proverbial hat in the proverbial ring and give my own take on the matter.

I’m going to go over all of the (central) Teachers in the DHMIS Web Show + DHMIS TV Show and give my own read of how ‘bad’ they are. I’ll be looking primarily at their focus episode where they actually act as teachers. I know a lot of the Webshow teachers came back in a much more chill and friendly role in the TV Show, but for me the things they did while they were acting as teachers is more important than how they act on their ‘off hours’ (if those even count as the same people in the same continuity)

And obviously, this is going to be a very personal sort of reading, very much based on my interpretation of DHMIS and its themes.

So let’s start with the Teacher who started it all! Sketchbook!

So I am gonna… try and start with the pros. So, before Sketchbook comes into the scene, our Trio was just sitting very, very still around the breakfast table. As per the creators’ own word, this is meant to show that our trio lacks creativity. So, learning how to Get Creative is a lesson that, in general terms, our trio could use to learn. Plus, not all of her lessons are that bad. Like, imagining silly faces on oranges, seeing images in clouds, using hair to express oneself - that’s all… alright I guess. And she can sometimes be entertaining and engaging to our trio, even including the not-easily-impressed Red Guy!

Sketchbook: Now, when you stare at the clouds in the sky, don't you find it exciting? Red, Duck, and Yellow Guy: No. Sketchbook: Come on, take another look! Yellow Guy: Oh wait! Together: I can see a hat! I can see a cat! I can see a man with a baseball bat! Together: I can see a dog! I can see a frog! I can see a ladder leaning on a log!

But, as we all know, the devil’s in the details. Alongside her kinda-alright lessons in creative thinking, she hides a pretty strong overcontrolling tendencies.

She has no way to engage her students when they go ‘off-script’ by not being immediately impressed with her lesson - outside of just vaguely telling them they’re ‘not thinking right’ -

Duck Guy: I don't see what you mean. Sketchbook: 'Cause you're not thinking creatively!

Or just ignoring their words entirely.

Sketchbook: I use my hair to express myself! Red Guy: That sounds really boring. Sketchbook: I use my hair to express myself!

And she clearly has a pretty strong idea of what is ‘good’ or ‘correct’ creativity. Making her shut Yellow Guy’s creative expressions down if he’s ‘doing it wrong’ according to her inexplicable restrictive standards.

And, well, this seems to be the Point where my opinion diverges quite a bit from that of the majority of the fandom… But, I’ve seen people say that the Sketchbook’s ‘never be creative again’ line proves that she might not be that evil, cause, well, look at all the horrifying shit the trio did while they were Creative! Not wanting this to happen is a perfectly understandable and moral position! And shows that she can actually be a responsible and moral teacher!

Well…that’s not my interpretation.

Yeah, the Creative scene is creepy and gross. But… I dunno if it represents something truly harmful and evil going on. Yeah they were using organs as decorations and baked that awful meat cake but… but while that gore is Gross, there’s not really the implication that they killed or harmed something to get it, you know?

I think the Creative scene is not just our characters ‘going CRAAAZY’, I think it’s more like… both literally and metaphorically, the characters are being Creative in those kinda weird and off-beat ways. Expressing their creativity and feelings in messy and odd ways found in art pieces much like… well, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared itself.

That awful gore cake is almost a perfect metaphor for DHMIS, actually. A pleasant childish facade revealing an inner layer of gore and horror.

They’re just making art that’s maybe a little gross. And maybe a little scary. And maybe a little too raw and visceral for themselves to handle. But that’s not inherently a bad thing. You know, even if it is pretty messy and they are kinda emotionally rattled from their own creative expressions, that might be something they would need a guiding hand in channeling in healthy and better ways…

But certainly not just “well, don’t you ever do this again”.

Now let's all agree to never be creative again.

For me this is just an extension of pouring oil all over Yellow’s Clown Painting. The Trio is still Doing Creativity Wrong by the Sketchbook’s standards - and she has decided they are doing it so Wrong that they shouldn’t be Creative ever again. It’s basically equivalent to some sort of hypothetical art teacher who watches DHMIS and goes “this is so creepy! I don’t think the people who made this should make art ever again!”. I think it’s clear why this kind of person would be a bad teacher when it comes to teaching art or anything to do with creativity!

Well, look at the time, looks like we should move on to...

Tony the Talking Clock! Okay, so I think… Pretty much all of the pros I was giving the Sketchbook are lessened with Tony. It certainly feels like there is an escalation with the Badness of the teachers going on. While one can argue that the trio needed to learn about the basics of Creativity - just not from a person like the Sketchbook - I think it’s harder to make the same argument about Tony’s very basic Time lesson. Like, before he shows up Red Guy and Duck just make a super-generic comment about time -

Red Guy: Come on, guys, stop mucking around. We only have five minutes until our show is on. Duck Guy: It's not enough time!

And if you just compare the way the trio participate in Tony’s song versus Sketchbook’s song….

Sketchbook: I see a silly face! Yellow Guy: Wow! Sketchbook: Walking along and smiling at me! Duck Guy: I don't see what you mean. Sketchbook: 'Cause you're not thinking creatively!

Yellow Guy: This tree that is old, has circles inside! Tony: This tree that is older has shriveled and died. Duck Guy: The apple that's fresh is ripe to the core!

They don’t really appear confused by the concept of time or surprised by Tony’s explanation of time. Red Guy asks one question (“And then what happened after the olden days?”) but that just might be out of politeness. It all seems to be stuff that they already understand about time. And he was doing this while the trio had other things planned.

But we don't really want to, we're going to miss our show.

And he just whisked them away on a musical adventure repeating ideas they already knew. So even if he didn’t do all of the Bad Shit that he did, he’d still be wasting their time.

But of course, we can’t forget about all the Bad Shit he does!

First and foremost, he’s got the same Issues as Sketchbook with his students going ‘off-script’, but he is even less patient. Almost immediately resorting to name-calling and violence.

Don't be STUPID, friends!

There's a time and a place for mucking around!

And in addition to just being a very simplistic view of Time, his lesson also contains some stuff that’s closer to straight-up inaccuracies. Namely his overly-romanticized presentation of both the past and the future.

And once they start actually questioning the lesson, and asking questions more advanced than he was prepared too, at first he deflects in a similar manner to the Sketchbook -

Duck Guy: But when did it start? Yellow Guy: And when will it stop? Tony: Time is important and I am a clock.

But then he quickly resorts to shutting them down with his loud beeping, until their ears bleed. Just a more indirect form of violence. It’s clear that his idea of ‘teaching’ is not one that encourages actual curiosity about the world, it’s just about following and repeating his points. And while the Sketchbook had a similar worldview, she never seemed to have more than Words and Oil to shut her students down, Tony has Time on his hands.

Namely the infamous final scene of the episode, where the group withers away and dies.

Here, there is no doubt that what is happening is harmful and is causing them suffering, and while Tony denies it, the Trio seems to believe that he is responsible for it. Considering the amount of seeming-reality-warping he was capable of during the rest of his musical number, it’s not that implausible.

It’s unclear WHY he did that, I think it’s most likely yet another way to punish them for not respecting him and his lesson, and for asking questions they shouldn’t. It’s also possible he just has a sadistic streak and tormenting them was always his goal, but considering how much his Control Freak aspect was emphasized during the rest of the episode, I am kinda leaning towards the former option.

Also in general “teacher bad because they are a control freak who ties too much of their ego into being smarter than their students” is more compelling to me than “teacher bad because they love cruelty”

Oh! did I just mention... LOVE?

And now, Shrignold (and the rest of the Love Cult!)

Okay, so let’s cut to the chase here. The thing about Shrignold is that he’s literally a cult recruiter. And that fact invariably corrupts any sort of ‘positive’ I could possibly say about him.

Like, yeah, Yellow Guy was very emotionally distressed and in need of a pick-me-up and Shrignold’s lesson seems to be comforting him - at least at first. But that’s less of a matter of his Lesson having some useful elements as it is a matter of Shrignold finding an emotionally vulnerable and isolated person to prey on - because he’s a cult recruiter.

And yeah, some of Shringnold’s initial explanations of love weren’t all bad and they only turned restrictive and Weird later. But that’s because his whole strategy is to sell Yellow Guy on Love as a general concept representing happiness and togetherness -

But you know it doesn't have to be; I hate you, you hate me. Cause even though we're different, it doesn't make a difference and we can live in harmony. I know you don't know who I am, but maybe I can hold your hand and together we can understand about love!

Shrignold: To love each other is to care, to be kind… Flower: …and to share! Rabbit: I love my friend, so I give them a hug! Purple Guy: I made this for you cause I love you so much! Beaver: I love my pet cause he's a crab.

And once he is committed to the idea that he needs Love to be happy, that is when Shrignold starts to conflate that general concept of Love with a more restrictive one and start shoving Heteronormativity down the child’s throat. Because he’s a cult recruiter.

Shrignold: No, no, no, that's not how it's done. You must save your love for your special one! Yellow Guy: My special one? Unicorn: Everyone has a special one.

Beaver: He's made for her… Unicorn: …and she's made for him! Rabbit: And that's the way it's always been. Beaver: And it's perfect. Purple Guy: And it's pure. Shrignold: And it's protected with a ring. Tree: That's the way that old love goes. Unicorn: Like a flower it grows and grows! Purple Guy: And it's forever. Flower: And forever.

And yeah, Shrignold is one of the only teachers who never loses his temper with the students, even when they’re doing something that is ‘wrong’ in his eyes. But that’s because he is trying to Lovebomb Yellow Guy in every meaning of the word. Because he’s a cult recruiter.

There’s a level where I’m, like, ‘well does that make him that textually different from all the other Teachers in the show?” I mean, you can very well argue that Sketchbook didn’t have a ‘few decent points in her lesson before it turned sinister’ - she was just trying to make them follow her ideas of creativity by getting them excited about the idea of being Creative in general and then narrowing the focus into just the creative expressions that she liked.

Buuut… this is still more obviously textually what’s going on when it comes to Shrignold. And the fact that he seems to be intentionally trying to isolate Yellow Guy from his friends and preying on him when he’s especially emotionally vulnerable, trying to manipulate his emotions and decide for him what's he feeling and why

Yellow Guy: But what is love, is it in the sky? Cloud: No it's a feeling, deep inside. Yellow Guy: Because I'm hungry? Shrignold: No, you're lonely. I can see it in your eyes.

Just gives him that extra edge of Sinister. Tony might be more obviously violent, but something about Shrignold and his friends’ passive-aggressive manipulation of Yellow Guy that feels even more dangerous.

So yeah, Shrignold’s lesson was self-contradictory and nonsensical, he keeps reinforcing obviously wrong falsehoods about relationships and emotions, he condescends to his student when he’s just trying to apply his lesson. But most importantly, he’s a cult recruiter.

And also probably homophobic.

I don't have a clever segway this time but anyway, here's...

Colin the Computer!

So while ‘Creativity’ and ‘Love’ featured the characters arguably needing to learn the Lesson (just not specifically from these terrible teachers) and ‘Time’ featured the characters just kinda minding their own business before being pulled into a totally unnecessary lesson - ‘Computers’ add a new wrinkle in the situation. In this episode, the characters are explicitly unquestionably interested in learning - just not about the subject the teacher has come to teach.

If you wanna talk about DHMIS as a metaphor for an education system that forces children to conform and recite information mindlessly while punishing their genuine curiosity - you really can’t find a better example. The Trio was practically seeking a lesson this time, but their will was overridden because that is not what they were supposed to learn.

And with the fact that they were robbed from learning about the world in favor of computers could be a metaphor for people isolating themselves from the ‘real world’ by focusing on technology. Or, to go more in line with the themes of DHMIS and how I interpret them - a metaphor for the internet and digital culture spreading misinformation and thus distorting one’s understanding of the world.

And not only is Colin taking the Trio away from a topic they actually sincerely want to learn about - his lesson is about as uselessly overly-simplistic as Tony’s. Like Red Guy said, they already have a computer - and it actually seems a bit more advanced than Colin is.

So it’s probable that they actually know all about the Wonders of Computers. The vibe I get from Colin’s song is that Duck and Yellow Guy are kinda dazzled by Colin’s bells and whistles, but Red Guy’s bored reaction is the correct one - there really is nothing new to learn here.

If anything, Colin is limiting their information of the digital world by shoving them into this infinite feedback loop of doing the same three things over and over again. Rather than the countless other things you could do in the digital world (including, you know, learning more about the world).

Colin also tends to ignore questions that are Inconvenient for him to acknowledge, constantly talks over his students…

Red Guy: Oh, maybe you could help us answer this question. "What is the biggest thing--" Colin: Clever! I'm very clevery guy. Yellow Guy: Wow!

…and there is his infamous freakout.

The notable thing for me is that just before that moment he himself already got all up in the personal space of his students. He’s a hypocrite, he thinks that he’s allowed to do whatever he wants to the Trio but they should respect him. Just another variation of that egotistical prideful streak that Tony also showed.

Also, I feel like a lot of people tend to kinda gloss over his bombardment of questions just before that freakout.

Colin: Great! Great news! Now before we begin our journey, I need to get some information from you! What's your name? Where do you live? What do you like to eat?

But to me this is clearly, like, a reference to websites collecting data from their users to sell to advertisers and suchlike. Colin is trying to pull the trio into using him more and more so he could spy on them and sell their data or whatever is the DHMISverse equivalent of that is.

But his big episode climax breakdown by the end is… a bit complicated. Like I said, I think the climax of ‘Creativity’ is both caused by our protagonists and is mostly benign - while the climaxes of Eps 2 + 3 are under the control of the teachers (Tony sped up time to punish his Students, Shrignold is a cult recruiter). But with ‘Computers’… I think what’s going on is Colin’s fault but not necessarily under Colin’s control.

Like, what’s happening here is that the digital world is getting overloaded due to Colin’s endless and repetitive lesson, right? He wanted to keep them in his digital world as much as possible, and when keeping their attention constantly focused on his digital wonders became too much for him - he started to glitch. It’s his fault, since it’s driven by his own ego and control-freak nature (and desire to harvest their data), and I don’t know if he’s necessarily feeling bad about that - but it is distinctive from Tony actively and knowingly punishing them.

(Also I know some people say that he intentionally caused Red Guy’s head to explode somehow and killed him at the end but considering he is unscathed in the next two episodes I am choosing to read it as Red Guy simply having his mind metaphorically blown)

So while Colin (at least Webshow Continuity Colin) is absolutely a Bastard, this is the first case where it is hard for me to say there is an escalation in the Terribleness of the teachers?? Maybe it’s just my personal biases talking? like, is spreading misinformation to manipulate you to join a cult better or worse than spreading misinformation to manipulate you into spending all your time on social media so he can monitor, harvest and sell your data? I can at least see the argument that the latter is worse?

And I do think the intention is to continue the escalation, considering that up next is…

Lamb Chop and the Rest of the Healthy Band!

Okay, so, I think it’s pretty clear by now that I’m doing this list with an attempt to prioritize actually evaluating the Teachers as teachers. You know, how bad their lessons are, how mean they are to the students, who much their behavior discourages actual curiousity or creative thinking… But, well, with these guys - there’s kind of a big elephant in the room about it.

Like, yes, their lesson is basically self-contradictory nonsense, they do nothing but ignore and override their students’ words and desire, and they don’t even seem particularly good at the ‘entertainment’ part of ‘edutainment’ - their song does nothing but annoy and distress the puppets for the most part. I mean, the circumstances around the song are probably a bigger factor but it certainly doesn’t help it’s so disjointed and chaotic.

But all of this feels kinda small potatoes (small potatoes make your teeth go gray!) against the fact they had one of their students killed and force-fed to another!

And unlike the thing with Tony, this doesn’t seem like a punishment for misbehaving (at least not on their specific lesson), it seems like Duck was doomed to die since the episode began.

It feels more like the Healthy Band was sent here to distract the puppets from Red’s disappearance and Duck’s oncoming demise over any attempt in education, even a very misinformed and misguided one.

But also, yeah, their level of education is quite bad and the way they treat their students even when they’re not killing them is very shitty. It's just kinda the culmination of all of the badness we already seen so I don't really have anything new to say about that.

Don’t murder your own students. That’s bad.

Anyways!

Lamp!

Lamp might be a bit harder to judge, because despite ‘officially’ being the main Teacher in Ep 6, he basically has like, a total of a scene-and-a-half to really show off his lesson. But… even in this scene-and-a-half he really demonstrates that he is a terrible teacher.

Much like the Healthy Band, he totally ignores and overrides his students… urn, student’s adamant refusal to join in on his lesson. Which is espacially obvious this time as Yellow is just TERRIFIED through the whole lesson.

And similar to Tony, he punishes Yellow for ‘misbehaving’ in a terribly cruel manner.

And there’s one more thing unique to him, and that is that the subject of his lesson is even more ludicrous than normal.

How can you be sleepy if you don't know how to have dreams?

It’s not something like ‘what are dreams’, but specifically ‘how to have dreams’. There were already a few lessons in DHMIS that seemed to teach the students stuff they already knew (or at the very least, stuff that they knew more/as much about as the teachers did) but now we’re really moving into the territory of things no one needs to learn. Just another way to demonstrate the continued degradation of the teachers even with Lamp's limited screentime and also this time no one gets murdered.

And now, let’s pull the plug on the Webshow Teachers…

And start up the TV Teachers with…

Briefcase! Again, I will start with whatever pros I can find… I think you can argue the Trio at least needed some sort of lesson about jobs? In the sense that Duck at least wanted to do something with his time - and also Yellow thought his welch was a ‘Job’. So I think that the Trio could probably use a lesson about what jobs are, just you know… not from this asshole.

Because while Briefcase isn’t as actively punishing or hostile as some of the DHMIS Web Teachers, he is incredibly misleading - first presenting an idealized version of the working world…

you can be anything you want to do It's totally up to you

Presenting work as a wonderland of infinite choices, including artistic pursuits…

But also publicly shaming his own brother for trying to chase his own career aspirations because they’re not successful at the moment.

And then trapping our Three of Us in a drab, unrewarding and utterly superfluous job.

He might not be as big of a jerk as some of the Webshow Teachers but he’s certainly pretty condescending - and he adds a new wrinkle into the wide tapestry of Teacher Awfulness: he is intentionally misleading.

Like, okay. This is kind of up for interpretation. But to me it feels like most of the teachers we’ve seen so far are true believers in their bullshit. Maybe not the Healthy Band or Lamp due to just how incoherent their lessons are and how much they’re seemingly motivated to just distract/punish their students. But even with them I’m not sure, the forces behind them might be more actively malicious, but the Teachers themselves could be just warped enough that they believe they make sense.

But this isn’t the vibe I get from Briefcase. I mean, there’s his blatant broad-daylight hypocrisy with Unemployed Brendon. And… he seems to be fully aware that he’s trapping them in Peterson's and Sons and Friends Bits & Parts Limited - doing the exact opposite of what his song says by forcing them into one of the least desirable workplaces he has access to. I feel like he must know that his song is just a way to entice suckers to give their life to the Capitalism Machine.

Like, y’know, maybe in his mind it was “it’s for their own good, they need to have jobs! Any jobs! And that’s the only one they’re good for!” but he certainly doesn’t believe ‘you can be anything you want to be’.

Especially when all that’s needed to get them back home is for him to finish his song, and yet he instead watches over quietly in disguise until Duck accidentally uncovers him. So while he might not be directly responsible for everything that happened to the trio over the factor, he’s at the very least complicit in it.

Was he planning to wait until they all retire before finishing his song? Was he planning to have them all die from old age at Petersons? Did he pull them out due to Yellow’s workplace accident or just because Duck ruined his cover?

Not to mention the way he pulled them into and back from that Time Hole proves his general emotional callousness, especially when you consider the effect this whole thing had on Yellow Guy.

My hand... My child...

Nor does it seem like he cares about his pound being lodged in Duck’s eye, which reinforces the idea he would’ve just let Yellow Guy bleed out and die in his retirement party if Duck hadn’t forced him out.

Speaking of Death…

Coffin

So Coffin’s the guy who really starts the trend of DHMIS TV Teachers being… different from their Webshow Equivalents. Both in the sense that they tend to be less actively and obviously malicious and in the sense that they tend to suffer some sort of Terrible Fate - this, combined with the main trio themselves proving they are capable of some Fucked Up Shit, make them more sympathetic to the audience. For a lot of people, folks like Coffin are actually pretty decent teachers.

My opinion is… a bit more complicated. Now, it is true that he showed up offering an important and necessary service to the trio - he’s basically a funeral director who got summoned because someone died. While he can be a bit of a jerk and that’s Bad-

This level of jerkiness is, like, the maximum he reaches when even Duck pees inside him. Compared to basically every other teacher and even our protagonists, that makes him remarkably even-tempered. Even the more seemingly-fucked-up stuff he did - like removing Duck’s organs and y’know, sealing him underground forever while he’s still conscious - seem to be pretty normal for Dead people in this bizarre world.

So yeah, I do generally agree that Coffin is not nearly as bad the teachers we’ve had before and he certainly did not deserve to get pissed in and then die, but…

The important thing to remember, from my perspective, is that Coffin isn’t just a Funeral Director. He’s still supposed to be a teacher, who teaches the trio about death. And judging him from this metric, he did an abysmal job. Literally all of the troubles in this episode; from Red and Yellow’s emotional anguish, their shitty treatment of Stain Edwards to, again, poor Coffin himself getting pissed in and smashed to bits - those all stem from the same root cause. Which is that our Main Trio just doesn’t know shit about dealing with Death.

Out of the Three of Them, Red Guy seems to be the only one who’s mostly aware of what Death even means and even then only from the perspective of the deceased - he had absolutely no idea how to deal with the grief of losing Duck. TEACHING the Trio about Death IS supposed to be Coffin's responsibility. And instead of making sure they actually understand what is going on, he pretty much immediately roped them into the excitement of preparing for the Big Day, Big Day - leading to pretty much every conflict in the episode.

Plus, the funeral he arranged (the part of his job he seemed to actually put effort into), had a bunch of inaccuracies (most notably the David Blunder)... And he might be the one responsible for sending the mourners to the house with the Make a New Friend Kit. All of these - seeing Duck being memorialized inaccurately, and having all of these super-performative grief forced on him, and then being pushed to explicitly move on and replace Duck as quickly as possible… Although it seems they were done with some good intentions, all of these pretty much exacerbated Yellow Guy’s Issues with dealing with his grief - in addition to never really having the permanence of Death explained to him before the event.

I mean, you have to make some consideration towards the fact that the Puppets themselves were not really able to admit that they didn’t really understand Death - so it’s not like Coffin was willfully ignoring requests for knowledge from his students. He didn’t know that they didn’t know! But I also feel like it is his responsibility as their teacher to take the initiative and make sure they understand the material he is teaching. (and of course, the Puppets not taking the initiative to ask questions themselves is pretty understandable when their educational environment has a history of punishing questions).

Coffin is a pretty interesting anomaly in the continuum of DHMIS Teachers. Because a lot of the time the Teachers are, implicitly or explicitly, redundant at best. Telling the Trio about things they already know in a way that is condescending, or overly simplistic, or just filled with inaccuracies even the Trio can spot. Coffin, however, is here to teach the Trio about something they legitimately don’t know and should probably know about - but he just fails to divulge that basic information that our main characters need. I think you can read it as, like, a statement about the way our society stigmatizes the discussion about Death. Especially with all the performative inaccurate mourning and then the quick push to move on (in this case by literally replacing Duck).

But whatever he was motivated by a desire to avoid actually discussing the ramifications of Death, or it was literally just a goofy misunderstanding and he thought the Trio knew what they were getting themselves into - I still feel like it was his responsibility and his failure that caused all of the troubles. I mean, it still puts him pretty high in the ranking as far as DHMIS Teacher Quality goes just cause the bar is so low - and it still doesn’t mean he deserved the Duck Piss. But this is why I don’t feel 100% comfortable with calling him a ‘Good Teacher’.

Lily and Todney!

Now with these two, the Terribleness is a lot more clear-cut. Lily and Todney are a pretty classic example of what I was talking about just before in the Coffin entry. The Trio already had a pretty good understanding of the ACTUAL concept of Family at the start of the episode.

Sure, we're not technically a family, but we live together and we have the same lawyer and it works for us.

They didn’t need a lesson about that. And Lily and Todney were less ‘teaching’ them as much as trying to ingrain in them arbitrary nuclear standards for ‘Family’ in their heads. ‘Your idea of ‘Family’ is Wrong, we are here to teach you how Wrong you are’ is their thing, basically.

They are also pretty condescending to the puppets, put them in many uncomfortable situations, and do the Classic DHMIS Teacher Move of being deflective and avoidant when one of their students calls them out on their bullshit.

Faulbchdt... That's not a word! That's right, isn't it, Lily? Family is much more than just a word!

They punish their students for failing to follow rules they have not actually properly established to them before they ‘broke’ them (see: the Mother's Piece debacle).

They also, like, ate a fellow Teacher???

All of these are pretty standard practice for DHMIS Teachers by now (I guess not the Teacher-Cannibalism), the thing that makes Lily and Todney notable is the way they try and exploit our puppets. Their main motivation is explictly not just to 'educate' the trio/make them think the 'right' things.

The reason why they try to reinforce the idea that the trio is doing family Wrong and only the twins can teach them how to do it Right is because they have something to gain out of it. On the micro-scale you can see it in the Family Tree sequence. Where Lily and Todney’s, um, roommate (relative?) is literally sustained by the blood of Red Guy - which was given willingly because Red Guy bought into L&T’s constant insinuations that he needs to be with his ‘real’ biological family in order to belong.

But more obviously, there’s the whole scheme of turning Yellow Guy into their new mother. In fact, if you watch the episode closely, it’s pretty clear they had their eyes on him from very early on.

So this whole ‘lesson’, with all of its nonsense arbitrary morals and rules, was nothing but a ploy to get the Trio into their house and isolate Yellow Guy from his friends.

But the interesting thing for me is the motivation. On some level, Lily and Todney might be the most sympathetic Teachers we’ve had - because we actually know for certain what motivates them. And that’s desperation.

Lily and Todney are HUNGRY. It’s implied that it’s not actually an uncommon occurrence in that family, since it's also mentioned in the home movie that they made before Mother was gone.

Despite having a bigger house than the Trio, it seems like this family is really financially struggling to keep themselves fed. And the Grolton Chicken Family Discount seems to be the only affordable food option they have. I mean, it doesn’t justify, y’know, driving the trio apart with their nonsense or drinking Red Guy’s blood or kidnapping Yellow Guy. They would definitely be a lot more sympathetic if they just stole food from the trio’s kitchen or something. But it gives them some sort of non-abstract material reason to do what they do where most teachers seem to do the same or worse purely out of a sense of ego, or a warped ideology, or just plain sadism.

Plus, there is the factor of the terms and conditions of the Family Discount themselves. Where, like, either Grolton’s Chicken refuses to give a Family Discount to any Group of People that is not a “Real Family” as defined by having a ‘dad’ and a ‘mom - or Lily and Todney are simply under the false impression that the Family Discount require that they’ll be a ‘Real Family’. So either there is a restaurant out there reinforcing this restrictive idea of family through financial discrimination. Or Lily and Todney have this concept of ‘family’ so deeply ingrained in them that they can see no other way.

Even with their ulterior motive to get the trio to listen to them, they probably actually believe only Real Families can open Family Packs. A lot of teachers seem to be True Believers in the nonsense they enforce, but Lily and Todney are our first example where the implication is that this ideology harms them just as much as it does the puppets. Either BECAUSE of that deluded belief or because there's a more influential organization that is also enforcing it. It’s a much bigger social system, and Lily and Todney are just cogs bringing it along to the next victim.

I mean, at the end of the day, I am trying to judge their value as teachers to the Puppets. And while this aspect makes them maybe a bit more sympathetic, it doesn’t make them any better as Teachers. This is just a new interesting flavor of Teacher-Badness - where they are directly harmed by the values they try to enforce and harm our trio with. Just one more link in a chain of harm, kinda reminds me of the way our trio treated Stain, actually. A new Wrinkle to consider when thinking of the teachers’ awfulness, I suppose.

And speaking on things that are Wrinkly, it is time for…

Warren the Eagle!

So the thing about Warren is, the lesson he has to teach our Trio was actually a necessary one. While all Three of Them care about each other, their friendship is also really dysfunctional for a variety of reasons - as you can see in this very episode’s ending.

So yeah, a lesson about how to ‘be better best friends’ would be something they needed, and especially on that day when they were so mean to Yellow Guy! And most of the lessons he has to teach them make good points! It’s just that Warren is the worst person who could deliver them. Like, leaving aside he’s a negative hole of charisma and talent the trio just does not want to listen to. He’s also a huge-ass hypocrite!

The lessons he says are actually good friendship advice (presumably just parroted verbatim from the ‘Okay Stop! learning materials) - but he himself fails to follow them even on the most basic level. For him, these are lessons he needs to Teach others, not anything he needs to learn from himself. He only interacts with them when they can be an Excuse for his own shitiness. They’re just slogans to repeat without actually understanding them himself. (Which is extra sad cause Warren IS primarily motivated by his lonliness. If HE could learn how to be a Better Best Friend, that would benfit him more than anything!)

Much like many other Teachers on DHMIS, this also feels like a reflection of problems in Real Life Early Childhood Education. How often are children taught basic concepts such as friendship, honesty, respect or kindness by parents, teachers and other authority figures - who utterly fail to actually follow these same ‘basic childhood lessons’ themselves and especially towards their own students? How many children are taught 'kindness' by the unkind?

So while Warren being an obnoxious and toxic person who shows no remorse as he destroys Yellow Guy’s mind for the sake of his own ego and self-satisfaction and, y’know, turned into a giant monster is bad enough if he was simply the puppets’ peer - the fact that he is also supposed to be ‘teaching’ an actually important lesson to them, kinda makes it worse? Because now they all know that Warren sucks, it’s also a lot easier for them to just ignore everything he told them. To just process them as empty slogans like Warren himself did, and therefore…

Anyways!

Choo-Choo!

This one’s another kinda Complicated one, and much like Lily and Todney, a rare case where we might need to consider Outside Factors when evaluating the character - so let’s take this one at a time.

First, while there is not much Wrong in his lesson - it’s unclear how necessary it is. While the puppets didn’t know much about, like, travel and driving a car - all of those are things that Red Guy taught himself on his own while Choo-Choo was kinda MIA. Choo-Choo’s own lesson was mainly just about listing various kinds of vehicles and transportations methods and I think the Trio are at least aware of what a bicycle is. So it’s probably yet another case of a Teacher giving them a lesson so simplistic and condescending it’s totally unnecessary.

Yeah, he came as a reaction to a Need one of the Puppets had, but in the sense he seems to be here as a way to try and passively placate Red Guy’s dreams of escape by offering him a faux ‘trip to the outside’ that actually never leaves their living room. It’s kinda like the Healthy Band maybe, although at least Choo-Choo isn’t distracting them from anything terrible well at least not anything more terrible than the general background terribleness of their existence.

And while he’s certainly not the worst Teacher we’ve had so far, he’s got a rather short temper, he tends to hit his students, even if it seems to be mostly by accident, but not always… And he often fails to engage with the actual questions his students ask of him…

Now, that’s the whole thing of Outside Factors. Because all of these issues with Choo-Choo’s teaching methods aren’t really Flaws In His Personality, as much as it is just… him being old and not-in-very-good-health. He’s not really ignoring or dismissing his students’ questions, he just legit has a problem hearing them properly. And he seems to be straining himself very much to the point of pain and death just to give them that lesson - which makes him easier to read as genuinely, if misguidedly, invested in Educating the Youth.

Plus, while he’s got a bit of a temper, it never really gets beyond ‘exasperated gruffness’ - not even when the trio hijack his own body to go on their little escape plan and drink all of his oil and force-fed him raisins and cigarettes -which would certainly be a justified point for someone to get angry!

And then there is the fact that he’s yet another Teacher who ends up dead due to the Actions of of the Students, so a lot like Coffin, that automatically makes him more sympathetic. (I think the Students actually killed Choo-Choo like three different times in that episode). I can totally see why he’s considered, at least, one of the ‘least evil’ teachers.

But… Well, while he might be one of the better-intentioned and least villainous teachers out there - he’s still not very good at his job? If you want to talk about how good the Teachers function as actual Edutainment for their students… yeah, Choo-Choo is not very good. We’ve certainly seen worse teachers, but his interactions with the students are generally unpleasant, the contents of his lesson are probably entirely redundant, he can't really engage with the students, and - you know- he DIED mid-lesson. Which is generally considered a downside.

I mean, Choo-Choo can’t help but be Sick and Old, I don’t want to blame him for that… There are people who can manage to be good teachers while being Sick and/or Old. The important factor here is that… while on some level it might seem admirable that he’s pushing himself despite his health - that just kinda made things worse both for everyone involved! If Choo-Choo toned things down a bit to make the lesson plan more accommodating to his own health problems (as in, take Duck's advice and Stop Morphing), that would’ve led to a more pleasant experience for both his students and himself (as in: he wouldn't have died!)

The question, I guess, is why did he feel the need to physically push himself like that? I know for a lot of people, Choo-Choo’s whole vibe reminded them of elderly and/or sick people who are forced to work and unable to retire due to financial pressures or other kinda crappy job conditions. I noticed the parallels too and it’s possible Choo-Choo is going through the anthropomorphic puppet train equivalent of this dire situation. On the other hand, part of Choo-Choo jerkish behavior is constant denial and insecurity about his own health problems. Being super-defensive about them even when his students bring them up with genuine concern.

Yellow Guy: Is that supposed to…? Choo Choo: Doesn't matter.

Duck: Can you stop morphing? Yellow Guy: Yeah! Stop morphing! Choo Choo: I'm not morphing, you're morphing!

Which of course, reminds me of the General Vibe of insecurity and condescension coming from a lot of the DHMIS teachers - clearly having their ego harmed by being outsmarted by their students or even just being asked questions they are not sure about. You know, it’s this mindset of ‘I’m the teacher and you’re the students, therefore you must Respect everything that I say because I’m always right and if you disagree with me you are Wrong’. And I think Choo-Choo’s defensiveness might come from that same source? That it is embarrassing if you have to admit your students are actually right about something, even when this thing is literally threatening your life and health.

It might be a balance of both of these. Maybe Choo-Choo has been forced into Teaching by, like, Lesley’s lackluster pension fund for her inanimate-object-nightmare-puppet-teachers or something but ALSO he feels too proud to admit any of this in front of his students or even ‘tone down’ the physical intensity of his lesson-plan once called out on his health problems by his students of all people!

Much like Coffin, Choo-Choo is sympathetic because his flaws cause mostly problems (and death) for himself. I think more so in Choo-Choo’s case since he didn’t even cause a lot of anguish for other people. His sense of pride over his students only harmed himself - in the worst possible way.

Farther complicating the issue is the fact that Red Guy was literally encouraging all of this! While Yellow Guy and Duck were clearly worried about Choo-Choo's health, Red Guy was goading him to keep going!

Yellow Guy: Maybe you should have a sit-down. Red Guy: No, don't sit down.

I dunno if that makes Choo-Choo's death Red Guy's fault (I mean this FIRST death after the song, the other two are absolutely Red Guy's fault) - I think it's likely things would've gone just the same with Choo-Choo's personal pride even if Red Guy was on Team Stop Morphing. But this moment seems so intentful and calculated (I mean, even YELLOW GUY noticed that Choo-Choo is not doing well) - that it feels even harsher than Yellow Guy smashing Coffin in his grief. Maybe Red Guy was just that hopeful that the song will eventually actually take them Elsewhere that he was willing to risk that guy's health. Maybe he was already considering hijacking his corpse?

And unlike with Coffin's death, I can't say this was caused by the problems in Choo-Choo's lesson. So it's not even a teacher's flaws coming back at him. I mean, I GUESS that was caused by the fact this supposed song about Transport wasn't actually going anywhere which was agitating Red Guy - but REALLY, Red Guy is more motivated by larger-scale wider issues about how he's trapped within the Format and thus he is THAT desperate to have a chance to escape, not anything to do with Choo-Choo individually.

I guess that's actually something you can connect with Choo-Choo's 'old teacher unable to retire' coding. Both Choo-Choo's problems as a teacher and the way Red Guy treated him are caused by wider-scale and more powerful systemic issues inflicted on them, which then reflect back on the way the act during the lesson.

Electracey

So good ol’ Electracey the Meter is generally regarded as one of the best Teachers in the whole show and that is… a pretty accurate assessment. But it’s also kinda grading on a curve, y’know? Being the Best Teacher on DHMIS is a pretty low bar to clear. So I am going to go over her problems - because I think they are often overlooked - but I do want to emphasize that, yes, while she is far from perfect, she is also the Best One we’ve had so far!

First things first, her lesson is entirely necessary and important. The Trio legit did not know what Electricity was and why it was important before she showed up.

Duck: I always assumed it was some kind of natural phenomenon, some sort of weather or something. Electracey: No, what about the lamps, and the lights, and the plug-in blanket? Red Guy: Uh… magic? Some kind… Like a spell?

And she obviously excels in the Entertainment Part of Education.

And just genuinely seem nice and cordial towards her students, which is a welcome change of pace!

She’s not even very angry when Duck steals her batteries and leaves her almost to die.

But while all of these are true, it is important to remember that she still has some Issues. For a starter, she seems to not have a Full Grasp of the Mortality of Organic Beings.

AND, like a lot of other teachers, she kinda Struggles when her students go off-screen:

"Now tell me, could you make a phone call on a phone that was just made out of rocks and soil?" "No, probably not" "Go on, try it!" "N- Why?" "Try it!"

Which honestly kinda reminds me, of, well

"I use my hair to express myself!"

And the most important thing is… there is another Point to her Lesson outside of ‘electricity is useful and you should pay your bills’. Electracey doesn’t just believe Electric Devices are cool, she believes they are superior to non-electric-devices.

"Soon everything in the home will be plugged-in and part of the electric family!"

Which is a pretty Dubious message to send to the impressionable puppets.

Now, Electracey’s saving grace is what happens when the students actually start following her lesson - as a combination of their newfound excitement for electricity and trying to distract themselves from Yellow Guy being Smart now, Red Guy and Duck do indeed start making sure everything in the house is ‘plugged in and part of the electric family'. Filling it with useless and gimmicky Smart Gadgets.

And Electracey, through her low-power shitty-battery gaze does actually try and warn them this is not a good idea.

(And it was not a good idea, obviously)

So while some of her lines are a bit ominous, maybe she at least didn’t want them to go that far, and that’s something, at least. Or maybe it was only a problem specifically because it was overloading the power on herself and the house?

Like I said, definitely the Best Teacher we’ve had so far, but she’s still far from flawless…

The big thing I am thinking about is the general fandom assessment that the TV Show had Better Teachers in general compared to the Web Show. It is true, but I think it’s important to consider why it is like this.

First and foremost, it’s because the Webshow had a clear element of escalation in the awfulness that the TV Show does not have. The difference in quality between the two Teacher Groups would’ve been a lot less clear cut if we had to compare all the TV Teachers just with Notebook, for example.

In addition , I think part of the reason the Badness of the TV Teachers is a lot more subdued has less to do with a change in tone and more to do with a change in the format. The longer, more character-driven narrative of the show allows for a more subtle and complex exploration of what makes the Teachers terrible - as well as having to explore a more diverse range of motivations and reasons for their terribleness.

Again, this is a very personal look at DHMIS Teachers, I would be happy to hear your perspectives on the matter assuming anyone made it this far into the post.

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