Donut (Red vs. Blue)

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Private Franklin Delano Donut is a main fictional character in the science fiction machinima comic series Red vs. Blue, created by Rooster Teeth Productions. Voiced by Dan Godwin, Donut first appears in episode 3 of season 1 as a new recruit, whose garrulous personality tends to annoy other members of the Blood Gulch Red Team, a group of soldiers engaged in a futuristic civil war against the Blue Team.

Rooster Teeth had a plan for the character from the outset. In the multiplayer games of the Halo video game series, which was used to film Red vs. Blue, human characters wear futuristic MJOLNIR battle armor. In changing Donut's armor to pink in the latter part of season 1, the producers made his armor color, gender, and sexual orientation a running gag, and fully developed his personality during season 2. Godwin ad-libbed some of Donut's lines, to the approval of other Rooster Teeth personnel. In some scenes, the filming was adapted to complement Godwin's interpretation of the script. Early in season 1, fans reacted well to Donut; as a result, Burnie Burns, the main writer for Red vs. Blue, focused the storyline on Donut and Caboose (Joel Heyman), the Blue Team's rookie.

[edit] Role in the plot

Donut is referred to indirectly in episode 2, when Sarge (Matt Hullum), the leader of the Red Team, tells his subordinates that a "new recruit will be here within the week." The next episode introduces Donut, who appears wearing "standard-issue" red armor. Grif (Geoff Ramsey) and Simmons (Gustavo Sorola), his new teammates, immediately send him on a fool's errand for elbow grease and "headlight fluid."^[1] According to Nick Werner, who noted the contrast between Donut and the other characters in his review of this episode, "seeing such a serious and cocky young recruit being thrown in with the cynical, lazy, and pretty much bored pair of Simmons and Grif was wonderful."^[2] On his way, Donut mistakes the Blue Base for the store and takes the Blue flag in order to avoid returning empty-handed. In response, Blue Command hires a Freelancer, Tex (Kathleen Zuelch), to retrieve the flag. In the ensuing attack on Red Base in episode 11, Donut is injured from a grenade explosion and is airlifted out of Blood Gulch for treatment.^[1]

When Donut returns from Red Command in episode 16, he appears in pink armor, which he insists is "lightish red." This change attracts attention from both teams. When Tex attacks the Red Base a second time, in episode 19, Donut miraculously manages to kill her with a grenade, in revenge for her previous attack.^[1] According to Wilma Jandoc, who reviewed Red vs. Blue for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Donut's personality is developed more thoroughly as season 2 progresses, and he begins to act less sane.^[3] Donut eventually does call his armor "pink" in episode 30. Later, in episode 36, he pretends to be a secret agent named "Double-O Donut." At the end of season 2, each team leaves one member behind to keep guard while the others pursue their common enemy, O'Malley (Joel Heyman, Matt Hullum). In what he considers an imbalance, Donut is left with Sheila (Yomary Cruz), the Blue Team's tank. After most of the other Reds and Blues teleport out of Blood Gulch, Tex, who, after returning as a ghost, had suddenly disappeared at the end of episode 33, returns to the gulch and recognizes Donut as her killer, thus ending the season with a cliffhanger.^[4]

In season 3, Donut eventually joins everyone on Sidewinder to confront O'Malley. However, a bomb blasts most of the characters forward in time. In episode 53, Donut distracts the Blues with a convoluted story so that the Reds can discreetly investigate a distress signal. When they leave Donut behind in pursuit of this signal, Donut manages to steal a hovercraft from O'Malley and rejoin them.^[5] In season 4, Donut replaces Simmons as Sarge's right-hand man when Sarge declares Simmons insane for insisting that Sheila still roams the gulch in the future. In a cliffhanger at the end of the season, episode 77, a large ship drops into the gulch and lands on top of Donut.^[6] Donut plays only a minor role in season 5. He does not appear until Episode 81 where it is revealed that the impact forces him into a previously unseen underground cavern, where he finds two suits of armor, one cobalt and the other black, and decides to wait. In episode 88, he finds Sarge in the cavern and helps him find Simmons after Sarge makes contact with him. Later, he gives Sarge the idea to take over the Blue Base after witnessing the Blues infiltrating their own base. Sarge announces a plan involving Donut as a grenadier. In the canon ending, Donut is not featured prominently, only being seen standing next to the new vehicle Sarge had built.

After the conclusion of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, Donut is transferred out of Blood Gulch to another location, like much of the main cast. His current whereabouts are unknown.

[edit] Themes

[edit] Armor color and gender

A red-armored Donut from an early episode

A recurring theme involving Donut centers on his armor color and gender. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the video game used to film season 1, there is a multiplayer capture the flag game available. However, in this mode, the game allows only teams of red- and blue-armored soldiers, not the per-character colors that Rooster Teeth normally uses. As such, even though the producers had a plan from the outset to put Donut in pink armor, he initially appears in red so that they could use him in scenes involving the Blue flag, which only appears when playing capture the flag. Initially, they slotted the joke involving pink armor for the last episode of a six- to eight-part series, but Red vs. Blue fleshed out more than expected, and the joke was consequently delayed.^[7] Although the delay was unexpected, Werner thought that the early episode 3 reference to the gag made the eventual punchline "all the sweeter" when it arrives later.^[2]

When the armor change does occur, it sparks some gender confusion.^[3] The Reds immediately prod Donut with jokes about his sexuality; when Donut incredulously asks why he would be given pink armor, Grif responds, "Don't ask, don't tell."^[8] Except for Church, the entire Blue Team — Tucker, Caboose, and Tex — assumes that the pink-armored Donut is female.^[9] Originally, Rooster Teeth was going to create a love triangle in which Donut and a mistaken Caboose were two of three participants. However, the armor color change was delayed so much that the creators forgot about this development.^[10] Nevertheless, the series still shows Caboose's confusion about Donut. Rooster Teeth has Church (Burnie Burns), the de facto leader of the Blue Team, and Tex explore Caboose's mind as ghosts in episodes 31–33. There, Donut is portrayed as a female and voiced by Burns' wife, Jordan Burns.^[11] In Episode 100, when possessed by O'Malley, Donut talks about topics like the wage difference and how "men automatically assume they know everything". In second ending of the final episode, Donut or the player that named Donut shows his true feelings toward his armor color with disgust.

Burns mentioned that they tried to exercise some restraint with the armor color jokes when the gag first appeared.^[12] In season 2, however, Matt Hullum became more involved as a writer for the series, and, as Godwin noted in an August 2005 interview:

The armor color gag also appears outside the series proper. In an audio and video test on the Red vs. Blue season 2 DVD, Donut advises the viewer to adjust the color until his armor appears "perfectly light red".^[14] Acting in-character during an interview segment with Godwin that aired on G4techTV, Donut warns, "If your cameras are messed up, and you show my armor as pink to all your viewers, I'm gonna sue."^[15] Another reference occurs in the Red vs. Blue public service announcement "Real Life vs. the Internet", in which Donut is a male pretending to be female over the Internet. In "4th of July Safety Tips", Church berates Donut for wearing pink armor instead of his "old red armor so that [Donut, Church, and Caboose] can be red, white, and blue." Donut responds, "I'm being patriotic in my own way." The armor color confusion has also been featured on Red vs. Blue merchandise; a T-shirt sold by Rooster Teeth reads, "It's not pink. It's lightish red."^[16] Outside Red vs. Blue, Burns and Hullum joked about red and light red in extra material created for the season 1 DVD of The Strangerhood, another machinima series created by Rooster Teeth.^[17]

[edit] Sense of direction and annoyance of others

According to Burns, another running gag involving Donut is that he "never knows where he's going".^[18] The first instance of this occurs when Donut leaves on his fool's errand in episode 3; he initially heads away from the exit of the base, and Grif has to correct him. On his way back from the Blue Base in episode 6, Grif tells Donut to head to the base and wait. Donut begins to head the wrong way again, and an annoyed Grif yells, "Back to our base, dumbass!"^[1] In episode 36, the Blues capture Donut briefly when he mistakenly heads toward the Blue Base during his reconnaissance mission. Watching Donut from a distance, Grif closes the episode with the line, "Oh crap. I knew I should have just shot him."^[4]

The other characters are also often annoyed by Donut's tendency to talk incessantly about non-consequential matters. For example, during a repair job in episode 42, he annoys Tucker by remarking, "I never knew a Phillips screwdriver was the X one. Do you think it's named after a guy named Phillip? That guy Phillip must have a fucked-up-shaped head!" When Grif and Simmons call shotgun for their jeep in episode 57, Donut instead calls for "shotgun's lap".^[5] As Sarge's right-hand man during season 4, Donut annoys his leader with various proposals, which include the incorporation of more positive reinforcement and the redecoration of the Red Base.^[6]. In season 5 when Sarge finds Donut in the cavern, Sarge believes he has died and gone to Hell.

[edit] Voice acting

 Dialogue sample

Donut screams like a woman.

Donut's voice actor, Dan Godwin, turned a simple stage direction into a drawn-out scream that continues in the background while other action occurs. The scream continues through the end of the episode.

Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Godwin, who recorded his lines alone in his home instead of in the Rooster Teeth studio,^[13] contributed to some of the jokes involving Donut's personality by ad-libbing. For example, when Donut accidentally injures himself in episode 35, he exclaims, "Simmons, I need your ovaries!" The initial script mentioned "bones" instead of "ovaries"; Godwin improvised the change, with positive feedback from the staff.^[19] When Donut pretends to be a secret agent in the next episode, Godwin ad-libbed sound effects while recording dialogue involving a "super-spy jet pack".^[20]

The episode 37 plot requires Church to possess Donut; during production, it was decided that Burns, the voice actor for Church, would voice Donut during the possession. Burns recalled in audio commentary that he made sure to retain an element of Donut's stupidity by confusing pronouns.^[10] Later, he stated that Godwin made a unique voice effect to mark the end of Church's possession. As such, Burns used a different visual effect to indicate this transition. Instead of visually dissolving the two characters, as was the normal practice, he flashed Church and Donut back and forth quickly.^[10] Another example of Godwin's improvisation occurs near the end of episode 56. According to Burns, "In the script, all it said was, 'Donut screams like a woman.'… Dan just turned it into the funny thing… that we turned into… Donut running in the background."^[21]

[edit] Reception

Donut has been well-received by both Rooster Teeth personnel and viewers. Gustavo Sorola, who voices the character Simmons, noted that Godwin's voice acting "began to pick up" around episode 32 and that "Donut was probably [his] favorite character for season 2.… Dan did a great job."^[22] Season 2 co-writer Hullum agreed that episode 32 contained "some of Dan's best acting". In a February 2006 interview, Burnie Burns noted that, early in season 1, fans responded so well to Caboose and Donut that he decided to abandon the idea of an extra character, who would have acted as a journalist, in favor of more storyline involving the rookies.^[23] In light of the focus on the personalities of Donut and Caboose in season 2, Jandoc noted that "by season's end the rookies talk and act more like lunatic-asylum escapees than army soldiers. (Perhaps that says something?)"^[3] Godwin stated that much of the intended humor involving Donut derives from "gay jokes",^[15] but that Rooster Teeth has never received complaints about the theme of homosexuality.^[13]

On the other hand, Werner found that Donut's development throughout the series slightly impeded enjoyment of older, rewatched episodes. He stated:

If there’s one problem with [episode 3],… it is that the characters feel so different from what they will become, especially the titular rookies. The Donut of Episode 57… is completely different from the Donut of Episode 3…. [T]he writers and actors really haven’t found a tone for a character that they can really sink their teeth into. I think that these characters weren't natural for the voice-actors, and as they started to do their own thing, the writing followed them, until, eventually, utterly different characters emerged.^[2]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References