Incognito



Incognito is an episode of Beavis and Butt-head which aired on September 8, 1993.

Synopsis
Mr. Van Driessen is lecturing the class on photosynthesis. Van Driessen indicates that the material will not be on the test and the class erupts in cheers, waving their hands wildly. (Daria included.)

The cheering wakes a snoring Beavis and Butt-head.


 * Butt-head (waking up): What's going on Daria?
 * Daria: This won't be on the test.
 * Butt-head: What test?
 * [Daria sighs, then returns to her note-taking.]

Awake, Beavis and Butt-head take turns throwing a fork they swiped from the cafeteria at each other. Butt-head, however, misses Beavis and knocks the lit cigarette out of the mouth of a tough student named Earl. Butt-head apologizes, but Earl growls at the two and reveals that he is packing a gun.

Back at home, Beavis and Butt-head watch a program about a criminal joining the Witness Protection Program. This gives the two the ghost of an idea.

Back at Highland High, the two disguise themselves with a straw hat, a English schoolboy's cap and sunglasses. They practice phony English accents. When Mr. van Driessen calls roll, they tell him that they are "extra-strange students" and go by the names of "Bung-head" and "Crevice". Earl is clearly not fooled.

Mr. van Driessen returns to his photosynthesis lecture, but a shot rings out and a bullet strikes van Driessen's blackboard. Van Driessen merely states that he hopes that shot didn't come from anyone in here. "Earl, that shot didn't come from your gun, did it?" Earl angrily denies he did it, asking van Driessen to run a ballistics check. Beavis and Butt-head tell van Driessen that he only aimed the gun at Beavis and Butt-head, but did not fire it.

Daria rushes to the window and something catches her attention:


 * Daria: There's the kid!

Earl takes matters into his own hands.


 * Earl: You shooting at me, punk? [Breaks larger hole in window with his gun, fires warning shot in the air.] Mr. van Driessen don't like people firin' at him when he's diagrammin' photosynthesis!
 * Daria: Earl, you don't like Mondays, huh?
 * Earl: I don't like any day.
 * Class: EARL! EARL! EARL!
 * Mr. van Driessen: Well, I guess he won't be disrupting this class anymore.
 * Daria: Not running away from warning shots, he won't.

However, Earl pays the ultimate penalty: van Driessen tells him to turn in his gun, and he won't get it back until the end of the term. (Mr. van Driessen's desk drawer contains several confiscated guns, weapons, and other deadly paraphernalia). The gun goes off while being put in te drawer - "the safety", rebukes the teacher, causing Early to sob an apology.

Earl thanks Beavis and Butt-head for helping him establish an alibi and tells them that he won't kill them. Butt-head, completely missing the plot, decides to "reveal" that the new students were Beavis and Butt-head the whole time.

In fanfiction
The events of "Incognito" have been irregularly referred to in fanfiction - Daria participating in a retaliatory shooting may be wildly out of character from Daria's Daria but the drama and humour potential is too much for fans to pass up! Usually the event is referenced obliquely, sometimes more explicitly.

Earl became a recurring character in 2010s fanfiction as a result of this episode (and the wiki covering it), as a violent man who is nonetheless on friendly terms with Daria.

Trivia

 * Daria starts wearing her second outfit: bright yellow jacket, dull biege skirt, green shirt, and red boots.


 * Daria's comment to Earl that he "doesn't like Mondays" refers to the song I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, which refers to a shooting spree by a disturbed teen named Brenda Ann Spencer. Spencer had famously said she did it because she didn't like Mondays.


 * Daria is neither bothered by the shooting going on around her, not scared of Earl. Damn.


 * Earl will barely appear after this in the show but comics have Earl as a member of Todd Ianuzzi's gang, making him a career criminal - which makes Daria and Mr. Van Driessen's calm interactions with him (and Van Driessen getting him to do things) even more impressive!


 * MTV occasionally put certain Beavis and Butt-head episodes on an informal "banned" list. These episode involved Beavis and Butt-head crossing some vaguely defined moral line, such as serving as drug mules in "Way Down Mexico Way". Although "Incognito" was never banned, it was rarely reshown as the gun element might be perceived as making light of school shootings, not to also forget to mention the infamous Columbine shootings later in the decade. It's also not been included on the Mike Judge Collection DVDs or any other DVD and VHS collection, and it is unlikely it ever will be.