The Ed-Touchables

"The Ed-Touchables" is the first episode of Season 1 and the series premiere of Ed, Edd n Eddy. In this episode, people's items go missing around the Cul-de-sac and the Eds believe that a so-called "serial toucher" is touching and stealing people's stuff. The Eds then try to hunt down the serial toucher, who's presumably still at large, before he can make his next move. It first aired (along with its companion episode "Nagged to Ed") on Cartoon Network on Monday January 4, 1999.

Plot
Inside Edd's house, Edd is running around labeling stuff. He has pretty much labeled everything in his room when the doorbell rings. Upon rushing down to get it, he finds nobody there, so he starts back up the stairs, whereupon the doorbell rings again. Once again, there's nobody at the door, so Edd tests the doorbell to make sure it's not malfunctioning. When it works correctly, he shuts the door and heads upstairs again, but the doorbell rings once more. When he opens it, he expects nobody to be there, and is about to break into a lecture when a bucket filled with water lands on his head. Annoyed, Double D shuts the door and heads upstairs, but the doorbell rings again. This time, Edd is prepared to look up to make sure nothing falls on him, and is therefore quite surprised when a fish hits him from beneath his chin. Soggy and stinky, Edd heads upstairs again, and of course, the doorbell rings. This time, when he answers it, he finds Eddy.

Naturally, Edd lets his friend in, and soon Eddy is messing up his room. Edd yells at his friend to stop, and Eddy stops being so hyper, instead switching some of Edd's labels, which annoys Edd as well. Before Edd can complain too much, though, he finds that the piece he was going to label–his magnifying glass–is no longer there. Somebody has taken it!

Edd begins to get all melodramatic, but his friend snaps him out of it by slamming his bed over his head. Calmer, Edd accepts this and puts it out of his mind so that he and Eddy can go to Ed's place. When they get there, they find Ed watching a horror movie on his TV. Thinking quickly, Eddy suggests that they creep up and jump him, and this seems to be successful until Ed, without glancing away from the TV, grabs Eddy in a headlock and noogies him. With nothing else to do, Edd jumps in, and they get into a fun dogpile. The fun is suddenly interrupted, however, when Sarah bursts in and demands to know who took her doll. Eddy realizes that something like an epidemic is going on, as first Double D's magnifying glass went missing, and now Sarah's doll is lost. According to him, there is a sort of serial toucher on the loose.

Eddy isn't going to stand for this, and soon he shouting the bad news to the neighborhood kids. They are worried, but Kevin is the only one bold enough to ask what the "dorks" are going to do about it. When Eddy promises that he and his friends will solve the mystery, Kevin sarcastically says he'd pay money to see it, and the other kids agree that they'd pay up if the Eds solve the case.

Later, the Eds meet up in the lane, where Eddy draws up a proposal for catching the serial toucher. This plan involves having Ed perfectly still on a bench with an alarm hidden on his person and a "Don't Touch" sign hung on his body. Eddy believes that this will make the perfect bait for their toucher. The first one to see him is Kevin, but Kevin pays no attention, instead just riding off on his bike. After him comes Jonny, though, who makes a few attempts at small talk, including telling Ed that he likes Ed's new haircut. Plank likes it too, of course, and he wants to feel...which leads to Jonny reaching Plank out...which leads to Plank touching Ed...which leads to the alarms going off. Edd and Eddy leap out of the bushes and accuse Jonny, causing him to swiftly run away.

The chase goes around the cul-de-sac. Eventually, though, the Eds manage to trip up Jonny. With one last saving throw, Jonny casts his best friend forward so he can save himself. Unfortunately, the toss is only strong enough to get Plank to go in the air slightly and land on his outstretched arms. The Eds grab their culprits and drag them away for questioning.

Soon, Jonny is tied to a chair in the basement, his friend on a chair beside him. Eddy begins to interrogate Jonny, but Jonny, who has no clue what the Serial Toucher is, cannot provide them with any satisfactory answers. Angry, Eddy turns to whom he presumes to be the brains of the operation: Plank. Of course, Plank doesn't answer any of the questions, even when Eddy slaps him. Fed up, Eddy decides to move on to torture, and pulls out a squirt gun, which he holds over Plank. Eddy explains that after a few minutes of this torture, Plank will swell up like a balloon, and begins to drip water out of the nozzle. As the water drips, the one really being tortured is Jonny, who needs to use the bathroom. Eventually, Jonny can't take the torture in his bladder any longer, and he confesses just so he can finally use a bathroom.

A little while later, Jonny is dry, but not happy. The Eds have put him in a tire and started it rolling, and there is no way for Jonny to stop as he bounces around Peach Creek. With the case solved, Eddy now has a jarful of coins, and he and his friends are about to go to the Candy Store for jawbreakers when they're stopped by Sarah and Jimmy. It seems that Sarah found her doll under her bed, something Jimmy can confirm. Hearing this, Edd nervously speaks up and reveals that he found his magnifying glass on his person. Eddy contemplates what this means for the case for a few seconds, but then holds up his jar and grins, and the three friends head to the candy store.

Sarah and Jimmy aren't satisfied, however, and they manage to get a hold of Jonny's tire. Instead of taking him out, they wheel him to the top of a hill, and send him rolling down it, where he crashes into the Eds, knocking their jawbreakers out of their mouths. The Eds spend the final moments of the day chasing after jawbreakers that they can never seem to reach.

Memorable Quotes
Eddy: "Maybe you've misplaced it." Edd: [accidentally shoving Eddy backwards] "NEVER! What has become of this world? Is nothing sacred? D'oh, everything is soiled! Who would do such a thing? Who would violate the sanctity of somebody's room...WITH THEIR FILTHY HANDS?! Oh! Oh, Eddy, I feel sick!" [whimpering] "I feel nauseous! I CAN'T BREATHE!!!" [Eddy grabs Edd's bed and slams it down onto Edd's head.] "Thank you. I...needed that." Eddy: "Anytime, pal."
 * Edd: "EEEEDDY! Someone took my magnifying glass. Oh, I feel so violated."

Ed: "What? Who?" Sarah: [worried] "My dolly. Polly Poo Poo, that's who!"
 * Sarah: "WHERE IS SHEEEE?!"


 * Eddy: [as Ed and Sarah fight] "You got to love these family moments."

Ed: "Yeah, Eddy?" Eddy: "As much as I love the smell of your stinking pits...CAN YOU LET GO OF MY HEAD NOW?!"
 * Eddy: "Ed?"

Jimmy: "It's true. Won't somebody help us?"
 * Sarah: "That dirty toucher took my Dolly Poo Poo!"

Jonny: "Whoa, you guys are weird!"
 * Eddy: "Aha! Dr. Toucher, I presume!"

Edd: [putting bread into the toaster and starting it] "Ready!" Ed: "Better watch what you say, Jonny."
 * Ed: "Hey, Jonny, nice haircut. Double D has a surprise for you: a lie detector!"

Plank: "..." Eddy: "Where's the stuff, Planky? FESS UP!" Plank: "..." Eddy: "Oh. Silent, huh?" [He slaps Plank.] "AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! SPLINTERS!!!" Jonny: "AAAHHH!! LEAVE PLANK ALONE, EDDY!"
 * Eddy: "Well, if you won't talk, maybe your friend will." [talking to Plank] "You must be the brains, huh?

Eddy: "You heard him, boys!" [snapping his fingers] "Case closed!"
 * Jonny: "Okay! Okay! I did it! I took everybody's stuff! Now let me go! I gotta go to the bathroom!"

Eddy: "Nah! You know what they say: a little childhood trauma builds character."
 * Edd: "Should we feel guilty about Jonny's predicament?"

Trivia

 * Goofs:
 * When Eddy puts the toilet label on Edd's bed, the label is white. A few seconds later, the label is a tan color.
 * When Edd tells Eddy to put the labels back in place, he places a label entitled "chair" onto his desk chair. In the next shot, when Edd prepares to label the missing magnifying glass, the chair is no longer labeled.
 * When Edd has his nervous breakdown over losing his magnifying glass, he is standing next to his desk. Then, without moving, he is shown to be standing in the middle of his room.
 * In the scenes in Edd's room, the color of the labels on Edd's items change from white to the color of what they're put onto.
 * When Edd's face gets smashed in the window when he and Eddy were going to Ed's house he has 3 fingers, but throughout the rest of the episode he has four (three and a thumb).
 * When Edd was telling Sarah that someone touched his magnifying glass, everyone is lying down on the floor. In the next shot, everybody is standing.
 * For a few shots when Eddy spoke into the traffic cone, the red stripe on his shirt is missing. This error happens again in "Sir Ed-a-Lot" and "Keeping up with the Eds."
 * Sarah's hair is red instead of orange when the kids are about to be warned of the Serial Toucher.
 * When the Eds are chasing Jonny, Eddy's shirt changes from yellow to orange (or possibly dark yellow). When they jump over the fence while racing to the street pole, Eddy's shirt is its normal color.
 * When the Eds put their legs out to trip Jonny, Edd's leg is bare. However, after Jonny trips, he is wearing his red socks.
 * When Jonny is tied to the chair during the Eds' interrogation of him, he appears to be wearing a sweater instead of his usual T-shirt.
 * When Jonny confesses to taking everybody's stuff, the chair he's sitting on disappears. Also, for a frame, his right sleeve becomes transparent.
 * In the scene when the Eds are eating jawbreakers, Ed's shoes are normally black, but after the close up shots of Edd and Eddy, his shoes are red just like Eddy's shoes.
 * At the beginning of the episode, Edd's house has a light blue garage, but later in the episode the garage is a light red color.
 * This episode marks the first appearance of the Eds and the kids.
 * There is a game on cartoonnetwork.com with the same title as this episode. However, the game is more based on "Dawn of the Eds" than "The Ed-Touchables."
 * Jonny's comment about Ed's haircut hints that Ed used to have longer hair before the show debuted.
 * When Edd begins to talk to his skull, it is very reminiscent of Shakespeare's Hamlet, wherein the main character frequently spoke to the skull of Yorick. This is a reference to the play, and Edd may be intentionally imitating the scene in order to get over the shock of losing his magnifying glass.
 * What appears to be bad designing is clear throughout the first few episodes of the series. A clear example of this is Edd's House, whose blue color goes beyond its boundaries. In reality, this was an intentional reference to older cartoons, which had general blocks of color for background objects that kids "never pay attention to."
 * The Kankers are the only characters to not appear in this episode.
 * In all of the scenes where Jimmy is seen, prior to Sarah rolling Jonny down the hill, he has a plaster on his nose. When he is seen in his last scene, he has a bandage on his head instead of his nose.
 * In this episode, jawbreakers cost a nickel, but for some unknown reason, jawbreakers cost a quarter for the rest of the series. However, Edd mentions in "Dawn of the Eds" that exchange rates have changed, providing a possible explanation for the increased cost of jawbreakers.
 * This is the first appearance of the Candy Store.
 * Shortly after Sarah attacked Ed, Edd displays hearts in his eyes while talking to Sarah, hinting at a crush. This concept is reversed in a later episode in the first season, "An Ed Too Many," in which it is Sarah who holds the crush on Edd. In "For Your Ed Only," it's revealed that Sarah keeps notes in her diary about Edd when she acts romantic or flirty around him. In "Tight End Ed", it's shown again that Edd has a small crush on Sarah after Ed placed her on Edd's back.
 * The houses of Edd and Sarah make their first appearance in the series.
 * Edd is the first character to appear in the show.
 * This is the only time we see something on Ed's TV other than Fishbowl II, static, or nothing. Look closely and you can see a flaming skull and a skeleton whirling around the screen. It's also the only time we see any of one of Ed's B movies.
 * Edd uses a "Lite-Brite" board during Jonny's interrogation.
 * Cartoon Network often mistakes "Pop Goes the Ed" as the first episode (as seen in the Best Day Edder marathon, Season 1 DVD, and on cartoonnetwork.com) but this episode was the first to air, making it the true first episode.
 * Edd has a raspy voice in this episode and the next few episodes of this season. Near the end of the first season, his voice becomes higher-pitched and clearer, something which sticks throughout the rest of the series.
 * When Edd showed Eddy the bunny slippers, Eddy referred to Edd as "Edd" twice and also after he cleaned him with a vacuum. Eddy almost never refers to Edd by his real name in any further episodes unless it's part of a nickname.
 * Edd has 4,837 ants in this episode. However, later in "Stop, Look and Ed", he has 5,239, indicating that he either got more ants or more ants were born in his farm by that point.
 * The series came full-circle when Edd labels a black screen with the words "The End" (after which the credits roll) at the end of Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show. This connects the beginning of the series (Edd labeling a bunch of things) with the end of the series (Edd labeling the screen). Edd also made labels to organize things throughout the movie, mirroring what he does at the beginning of this episode.