Moral Orel/Headscratchers

• Soo...how much does Orel know about sex? In God's Chef, he get's caught jacking off, and seems to have a vague idea of terms when he's talking to Clay, and yet Putty seems to think he's "pure pureness in it's purest form". I just recently started watching the series and have missed a good deal of episodes, so I don't know if I've something or not..
  • I think Orel has a vague idea of sex, he's just very, very naive about it.
  • Putty comments on his pureness because Orel (who is 11 or 12) apparently doesn't know the F-word.
  • Fetuses masturbate and I'm sure as heck sure they don't know what sex is.
• Why did Orel shoot the bear rather letting it kill Clay? Besides, he's Complete Monster and death is what those kind of villains get.
  • Because that's not the type of person Orel is.
  • And Clay is not a Complete Monster. A monster to be sure, but not a COMPLETE one. Orel might think his life is worth something.
• If Clay and Bloberta hate each other, why can't they divorce?
  • Fundamentalist Christians aren't allowed to divorce, lest they be seen as unholy by their fellow peers.
    • Yet in Real Life, they have the highest divorce rates in America.
  • They're actually supposed to be one of the more stable and normal couples. Everyone sees their marrage as the status quo, and if nothing else Moralton is all about preserving the status quo.
  • This troper was raised by evangelical parents who made no secret at home that they hated one another, they didn't divorce for the sake of appearance and due to a twisted sense of religious guilt. It definitely happens.
• If Orel now hates Clay, why does he have a portrait of his father and mother? Shouldn't he be out of their lives now that he somewhat knows that the latter is entirely responsible for turning his family dysfunctional?
  • My guess is that he uses the Christian value of forgiveness. I mean,after how corrupt nearly everyone in Moralton was,Oral still has a cross hung up in his living room. And despites Bloberta and Clay's terrible parenting,the kids Did turn out normal,with Shapey and Blocky being a Policeman and a Fireman,respectively and Oral ended up a good guy even after all the crap he'd been put through. But that could just be because of the efforts of the few sane people in Moralton,such as Stephanie, Daniel Stopframe and Reverend Putty.
  • Because Orel is a better person than Clay is and would not shut his parents out despite how horrible they've been.
• Why is Arthur slapping Clay after he has declared that he is not worth it?
  • Clay would purposely try to instigate and emotional response as much as he possible could from his father in 'order' to be slapped,because he began to associate being phycically hit to actually being worth it,and as a result "loved" in Clay's twisted mind.
• When Clay says "Hate away, sister. Hate away", is he insulted or not?
  • He probably was, but tried to brush it off by acting smarmy and indifferent, and then got too drunk to care or remember.
• People say that Clay is abusive because he beats Orel. (Well, admittedly that's not the end of it.) Let's see, Orel has raped women, killed men, beat another child to a pulp, became a drug addict, and raised the dead, who then feasted upon the living. Seriously, is he getting off so hard?
  • Maybe because every beating is actually for the completely wrong reasons. Orel raped women? He gets beaten up because he did so in an unholy manner(using a kitchen utensil). Beat another child to a pulp? He gets beaten for abandoning his old friends. Became a drug addict? He gets beaten for using slang. So his intentions are rather questionable, and you can argue spanking isn't the best punishment anyway. What I think is odd is that the one time Orel gets punished for something he did(for bathing in his friends' blood in "Grounded") it's listed as a Kick the Dog moment(even more so because the reason Clay resorted to grounding him was that the beatings were obviously not working anymore).
    • This makes me think Clay actually enjoys punishing Orel and comes up with excuses just to whack him. He even looks forward to Orel gulping as a signal that he's going to enjoy beating him. And he looks disappointed during the time Orel is looking forward to being beaten so he comes up with a way for Orel to be afraid of being beaten again.
  • He wasn't exactly punished for bathing in his friends blood, Clay was more agitated at him 'messing up the upstairs bathroom'.
    • Honestly, Orel is a naive and impressionable child receiving terrible advice from negligent authority figures. The reason for his bathing in the blood of his friends at the start of "Grounded" is because the adults realized their advice was terrible but didn't want to admit to it or actually try being a better influence on Orel. But he kept looking for advice, and they pretended to talk to themselves to alleviate any sense of responsibility when their advice went horribly wrong.
      • It seems like all the adults in Moralton hate responcibility period! My question would be why did it take a long time for the adults to realize their horrible advice is what causes Orel to cause chaos in town?
• In "Honor" Orel talks with Coach Stopframe and seems to be really hurt that Clay told everyone he killed the bear, and not Orel. But Orel himself was the one who refused to tell his father that he killed it out of spite, so why does he fell like his father should know he's lying all along?
  • Clay doesn't take the blame for shooting Orel, because, as Clay said, he doesn't remember. However, he takes the credit of shooting the bear, even though he doesn't know that he did shoot the bear. It's just a huge slap in the face for Orel.
  • It's also the fact that Clay lies about it, trying to place the blame on Orel. The three mentioned excuses are that Orel: got between him and the bear, Orel shot himself, or the bear shot Orel.
• If Clay and Blobberta hate eachother so much during Marriage then why did they have Orel in the first place? It also doesn't help that they neglect the boy and wordofgod says that Orel is not a accident.
  • Extend their lineage, boost their imagery as a wholesome, Christian family; or, maybe early in their marriage they actually did want to have the family they couldn't have themselves.
  • Because they bought into the Babies Make Everything Better trope.
• We all know that the characters have puns and injokes for names but in the case of Mr. Nohammers, he owns a hardware store called "Nohammers Hardware" and this results in hundreds of phone calls about if he has hammers and explains "Yes we have hammers, no that's my name!" Now the one thing that bothers me about this is if Mr. Nohammers is tired of those phone calls about hammers... Why doesn't he just change his name? it would be easy as that!
  • That's part of the joke!
• So far everyone in Moralton knows Clay is a horrible alcoholic so why hasn't anyone given him a intervention about his drinking?
  • Probably because he's the mayor. People in Moralton do their best not to disturb the status quo and I'd imagine that rule especially applies to Clay.
• But in the first place, HOW did such a despicable person like Clay manage to become a mayor? He had to win a vote, hadn't he?
  • By default? He might have been the only person who ran and ended up voting for himself.

• Does Shapey and/or Block even go to school? Surely behavior such as theirs would not fly there.
• What happened to all the babies conceived because of Orel's actions in "God's Chef"?
• How the hell did Doughy even survive? If they were that neglectful to him as a baby he'd have been long dead!