Legally Wooton

At Whit's End, Connie is run ragged hosting back-to-back birthday parties themed around Happy Porpoise, a cartoon character all the kids adore. When Wooton and Penny Bassett stop in, Wooton notices something odd about the costumes, and then he sees the character on top of the birthday cake: lavender skin, rainbow glasses, and a beach ball balanced between her rostrum and beret. It is Jolly Dolphin, a character he invented years ago and hardly ever showed anyone. Stunned, he declares, "Happy Porpoise is Jolly Dolphin!"

A quick look at the character's website reveals that Happy Porpoise belongs to a rising artist named Terry Blaze. Wooton knows him well. Terry let Wooton stay at his place when he first moved to Odyssey and encouraged his artwork like a big brother, but Terry is also the friend who once told Wooton that kids would never relate to a character as jolly as Jolly Dolphin. Since all of Wooton's old drawings burned up in his house fire, he has no way to prove the character was his. Penny urges him to stand up for himself, but gentle Wooton would rather turn the other cheek. He only changes his mind when he reads a Happy Porpoise comic and discovers that Terry has made her selfish and mean, refusing to share her beach ball and leaving the great white sharks out of her birthday party. Wooton cannot let a creation of his be a bad influence on kids, so he agrees to meet with Terry.

Terry, it turns out, is a grown man working out of his mother's garage, giving himself pep talks like "I, Terry Blaze, am not a loser." When Wooton explains that Happy Porpoise is really Jolly Dolphin, Terry claims he remembers no such character, but he cheerfully tells Wooton that nothing is stopping him from making his own Jolly comic book, and he even asks to see a copy before it goes to press. Delighted, Wooton creates a new comic in which Happy is knocked off her seahorse, struck blind, and converted into Jolly, an underwater retelling of the Apostle Paul's story that shows how God's mercy changes people.

But when Wooton visits Terry again, the friendly reunion turns out to be a trap. Terry gets Wooton to admit on a hidden recording that he changed the character and has no surviving drawings, then announces he is taking Wooton to arbitration for ruining his product and his future fortune. At the hearing, arbiter Simon Jones listens as Wooton argues that Jolly is his intellectual property. Terry fires back that ideas do not count until they are registered, and he produces a registered copyright, complete with a date stamp, on a black-and-white drawing that Wooton instantly recognizes as his own stolen artwork.

During the recess Wooton is ready to give up, but Penny reminds him that mercy does not mean letting people get away with wrong, because that hurts them as much as everyone else, and if Terry wins, Jolly will go right back to being a bad influence. Then Wooton's dolphin impression jogs Penny's memory, and she races off, telling him to stall. While Wooton filibusters about the Constitution and the Ten Commandments, Penny digs through her old things in Connie's closet and finds a squeaking plush Christmas ornament Wooton made her when they first met, holding an original full-color drawing of Jolly Dolphin. An art expert confirms the ink is Opti-Zappy Colors, a defective brand used for only about a year, long before Terry's copyright was filed.

Terry still refuses to back down, so the arbiter proposes a showdown: both men must draw the character from memory at the same time, backs turned. Wooton lovingly sketches every detail, down to the eyelashes and the beach ball, while Terry's attempt looks like a cockroach, and he is forced to admit he always hired artists instead of drawing the comics himself. The arbiter rules for Wooton with a warning for Terry: "Don't take this to court. You'll lose."

Afterward, Wooton finds Terry outside struggling with his car and offers him no revenge, only kindness. He cannot teach kids about mercy without showing it himself, so he invites Terry to help him figure out Jolly's future storylines, perhaps with a new cockroach character. A grateful Terry apologizes for everything, and he means everything, confessing a whole list of old crimes, from stolen coffee creamer to a swiped sports coat and even Wooton's beloved aardvark nightlight.