 |
This character has been approved as a Silly Pathetic Pinhead, meaning they fit the criteria despite being consistently played for laughs. |
Marlin DePatie, better known as The Smile Away Reformatory Sergeant is a minor antagonist in the animated series; Phineas and Ferb, specifically as the main antagonist of the Season 1 Episode “Phineas and Ferb Get Busted”.
As his title obviously suggests, he is the Drill Sergeant of The Smile Away Reformatory School, designed to break down children and make them “obedient” people. However, while his intentions may seem good at first, it soon becomes clear that he less wants kids to change for the genuine better, but he’s a sadist who loves inflicting pain upon young children.
He is voiced by Clancy Brown.
What Makes Him Pathetic?[]
- Spent his life at The Smile Away Reformatory School, abusing many young children both physically and psychologically, so they become soulless and robotic people who only ever do what is demanded of them by a higher authority. Additionally on the pamphlet that parents are sent, it portrays The Reformatory School as a kind and caring place (the complete opposite of what it actually is).
- When Phineas and Ferb are sent by their parents; Linda and Lawrence Fletcher to The Smile Away Reformatory School, the Sergeant seeks to antagonise them in anyway possible just for showing hints of creativity, with him initially having them clean the toilets with just toothbrushes at first as a punishment, until he decided to treat them both far more cruelly, by forcing them into small cages and to stand still. It can be fairly assumed, because he did this to Phineas and Ferb, he also did it to many other young children in the past. Another punishment, was having their heads strapped to a device in an attempt to “suck” the creativity out of them.
- Forced the kids to do unlawful work that can be considered slavery, such as digging with literal axes, until they are completely exhausted.
- Completely sick and tired with both Phineas and Ferb, he forces them to endure a torturous cold water session, in which he would put tools in front of them, and if Phineas even tried to reach for them, the Sergeant would spray them with a ridiculous amount of cold water as a punishment, with him doing this to them multiple times until they completely broke down, while he sadistically gloats about how he “finally broke them”.
- After Candace and Jeremy busted Phineas and Ferb out of The Smile Away Reformatory School, the Sergeant chased them to the edge of a cliff, where he implicitly planned to also do everything he did all over again to both Candace and Jeremy as well, which is quickly interrupted when a battle between Perry and Doofenshmirtz suddenly appears and the spider like device Heinz was controlling kicks the Sergeant off of the cliff to his well deserved death.
- While the Episode does take place in an in-universe dream, the impact of the Sergeant’s actions are still taken fairly seriously by the narrative.
- Despite the comedic nature of the series and the Sergeant having a few comedic moments, how pathetic and detestable he is outweighs them, such as his death which was played for karma.
What Makes Him a Pinhead?[]
- Despite initially wanting to put up a facade of The Smile Away Reformatory School being a nice and educational place to send troubled students to, he completely shoot’s himself in the foot, by betraying this good public image, by literally bringing in Morty Williams, to essentially film himself committing mass child abuse and cruelty, hoping it would show off “sucking out” children’s personalities. As a result, this leads to Candace realising the extent of the school’s cruelty and fairly shortly after, planning to break both Phineas and Ferb out of the school.
- He is very easily fooled by Candace’s Morty Williams disguise, despite how blatantly obvious it was (while he did briefly wonder why he looked surprisingly feminine, he very quickly brushed it aside in favour of making an idiotic decision to let “him” and Jeremy into the school). Additionally, when Candace tells him to put his fingers in his ears, say “lalala” on repeat and go into a locker, he literally does so without any sort of questioning on how suspicious that is (especially given the circumstances), which allows Candace and Jeremy to easily escape with Phineas and Ferb, with the Sergeant obviously not realising this until too late. Even after Candace ditches the disguise, the Sergeant still mistakenly believes a dressed up cactus to be Morty, showing how stupid he actually is.
- He dies a very avoidable death, as when the giant spider device appears, while understandably shocked at first, the Sergeant still had a fair amount of time and even physical space, to get himself to safety and then pretty easily try to kidnap the kids again, but doesn’t do anything, leading to the device kicking him off of the cliff to his death as a result of his stupidity.
Trivia[]
- He is one of the two Phineas and Ferb villains to count as a Pathetic Pinhead, alongside Morty Williams.
External Links[]
- Smile Away Reformatory School Sergeant on the Villains Wiki