Dave returns from his hiatus a fortnight ago in another humorous adventure, this time set in a hospital. Dave wants to cheer up a friend of his who recently suffered a stroke, and doesn't want to embarrass him by wheeling him around for a walk, so he disguises himself as a patient to make his friend feel less self-conscious. Like many (all?) of Dave's schemes, this one ends as poorly as possible, with Dave mistaken as an actual patient, strapped to a gurney flipped upside-down, inching his way towards a door to escape from an unnecessary endoscopy. When Stuart got to this part I found myself thinking: "Why oh why does Murphy let him out of the house unsupervised?"
This led me think more pertinent questions about Dave's essential nature. He screws up like this constantly, so why does Murphy put up with him? Why do I, or any Vinyl Cafe listener, put up with him? It's because Dave isn't some generic, bumbling sitcom dad: he doesn't into messes out of stupidity, or greed, or pettiness, or for the sake of poetic justice due to some wrongdoing: Dave almost always hatches these hair-brained schemes because he's trying to help someone.
Remember the first episode I reviewed? He crashes through the grocery store in his cart because he wanted to help Murphy with chores. He walked across Northern Ontario for a day because he wanted to quit smoking for Murphy. Almost every story is like this: Rode a toboggan in the middle of the night? He was trying to cheer up his neighbour! Wore a rabbit costume to a Bar-Mitzvah? He thought someone asked him to! Dave's always trying to cheer up the people around him, and even though his attempts occasionally end in bodily harm, he's usually succeeds, and it's both his intentions and his success that make him like-able instead of annoying.
