Maybe one of the reasons I’m so angry at Donald Duck is how much effort I’ve put into controlling my own temper—and, in recent years, working with my son on helping him control his. Now, he’s nine, and getting him to improve in any way is a challenge. It’s age-appropriate. However, it’s probably worsened in him, as it was in me. Still, I as an adult have not had a full-on screaming fit in years. Since before he was born, I think. It’s been a lot of work, but I’ve managed. And then that freakin’ duck goes around screaming and breaking things at the slightest provocation.

This time, he’s at Daisy’s house, picking her up for a date. (He is, of course, Clarence Nash; she is Gloria Blondell.) He wanders in smoking a cigar, and she asks him to put it out. No, sorry—she asks him to open a window. Which he can’t. So he has a screaming fit and smashes her entire house. She says she won’t go out with him again until he can control his temper. He sends away for a program that will help with that. It ends up being a robot that insults him for a solid ten minutes, and if he can take it, he’s cured forever.

So, uh, no. That’s not how that works. While it’s true that “insult” is kind of a mild term and that what we’re really looking at is out-and-out abuse, it’s still not the sort of thing most likely to set Donald off. Words aren’t a huge problem to him. What gets to Donald is petty frustration. And even if it were true that he had problems with insults, being insulted by a machine (“robot” seems a bit overdone for this thing) is not the same as being insulted by someone he actually cares about, and you can’t guarantee it would prevent him from losing his temper at, say, Daisy or the nephews.

Still, he’s awfully lucky that Daisy let him into the house in the first place. She coughs at his cigar smoke, and someone who tried waltzing into my house in casual disregard of my preferences is not someone I’d invite back regardless of what their temper was like. There are things you ask about, and cigars are definitely one of them. It’s also true that it seems probable that Daisy is being emotionally abused by Donald, and it’s not terribly difficult to picture a Daisy who tiptoes around him and seems to fall down the stairs a lot.

Daisy’s never really given much of a personality in these shorts. I suppose the temper she’s shown having here could be seen as a personality, but it’s clearly just for the sake of a joke, and it’s not something we often see. Minnie and Daisy exist as romantic interests for Mickey and Donald. And honestly, you’d kind of have to be a bit of a doormat to date Donald in the first place; you’d hope anyone with a spine would walk away.

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