Doctor: Two blood sugar spikes in a week? Let's face it: Sooner or later this will kill you. Probably sooner.
Bill: What should I do?
Doctor: Well, we have plenty of nice pamphlets that I'm sure you'll ignore. But this is how I see your diabetes playing out: First comes heart disease, then kidney failure, then blindness. Oh, and you'll lose your legs to gangrene.
Bill: Are you just giving me tough love?
Doctor: Have you seen other doctors?
Bill: Yes.
Doctor: Did they tell you to diet and exercise?
Bill: Yes.
Doctor: Did you do it?
Bill: ...
Doctor: Here, take this. You'll end up in a wheelchair anyway. Might as well get one now, while you still have good insurance.
After gorging on junk food at a carnival, Bill collapses and is taken to the hospital. There, he is diagnosed with diabetes and is told to go on a healthy diet and exercise. He briefly attempts to eat a healthy diet, but quickly caves to temptation and ends up in the hospital for the second time in a week. The Jerkass doctor says that since Bill will never follow his advice to diet and exercise, his diabetes will end up killing him. The doctor then tells Bill that eventually he'll end up losing his legs to gangrene, so he might as well just give up and get a wheelchair now, while he still has good insurance. A discouraged, depressed, and sad Bill takes the advice too literally and goes home in a wheelchair that he doesn't really need.
Later, Bill befriends a wheelchair rugby player (who calls himself Thunder) and his team and starts playing with them, which helps him get over his depression and learn to enjoy life again. One night, a drunk Bill gets out of his wheelchair and starts walking, leading to his new friends accusing him of faking being disabled. Bill tries to claim that he has diabetes and is therefore disabled, but when he tests his blood sugar, he finds that his blood sugar is normal; all that exercise playing wheelchair rugby got his diabetes under control.
At home, Bill, upset over losing his new friends tries to spike his blood sugar by eating handfuls of sugar. Hank and Thunder show up and stop him, telling him that he should be proud of himself for managing to beat his diabetes after his doctor had written him off as a lost cause.
Later, Bill returns to the doctor to beat him up for telling him to get a wheelchair and for being a jerk to him.
This episode contains examples of:
- Big Eater: Deconstructed with Bill and his diabetes: When he first appears, Bill is holding a bucket of popcorn, an ice cream cone, and a giant lollipop. He then orders another giant lollipop covered in cotton candy and starts stuffing his face, causing him to collapse from a blood sugar spike (leading to his initial diagnosis). After grocery shopping with Hank and eating a sensible dinner, he takes one cookie out of a package and eats it, then seconds later he breaks down and starts shoving cookies into his mouth like Cookie Monster. This causes his second blood sugar spike and his encounter with Dr. Weissman.
- Brutal Honesty: More emphasis on brutal than honest. Dr. Weissman tells Bill exactly what will happen to him if he doesn't change his lifestyle: his diabetes will progress and cause complications such as heart disease, kidney failure, blindness, and losing his legs to gangrene. He takes it too far by telling Bill to just go ahead and get a wheelchair now since these things are inevitable.
- Dirty Coward: Dr. Weissman acts all smug and condescending to Bill at first and even dismisses his complaint at the end by saying he didn't diagnose Bill with "cryabetes". He quickly tries to weasel his way out of an inevitable beating when Bill makes it clear how pissed off he is for the jerk telling him to give up on improving his health and get a wheelchair, but Bill doesn't allow it and proceeds to beat the doctor's jerkish ass.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Bill going to Dr. Weissman's office and beating him up. To be fair, Weissman was a jerk and basically implied Bill should give up and would never change his lifestyle, but Bill was the one who chose to get a wheelchair he didn't need rather than change his diet and exercise, so beating up Weissman was excessive.
- In Bill's defense, Dr. Weissman went over the line in painting a really bleak picture as to Bill's prospects in managing his diabetes, telling him the battle was already over.
- The Dog Bites Back: At the end of the episode when Bill's giving Doctor Weissman an epic beat down, the nurse he rudely brushed off at the start of the episode walks by. When Hank awkwardly tries to explain the situation to her, she says she doesn't hear anything and walks away smiling.
- Dr. Jerk: Doctor Weissman told Bill that he should just get a wheelchair now since he would never make the life changes to manage his diabetes. He was also rude to his own nurse, brushing off her suggestion of nutritional counseling.
- Handicapped Badass: Thunder and his team are basically this trope incarnate, and some of it rubs off on Bill as he starts playing with them. The exercise Bill gets from that lets him get his diabetes under control.
- If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: Zig-zagged: After learning of Bill's diagnosis, Peggy restricts Bobby to eating healthy food. Bobby and Joseph observe her through the kitchen window as she is making wheatgrass juice. She tastes the finished juice, makes a disgusted face, wipes her tongue clean with a towel, then serves the juice to Bobby. Yet when Bobby eats some of the candy bar that Joseph gave him when he saw how bad the wheatgrass juice must taste and how much Bobby must be suffering from only being allowed to eat vegetables, he can only take a single bite before declaring it to be far too sweet, and when he drinks the wheatgrass juice, he finds that it tastes better than he assumed it would.
- Implausible Deniability: When confronted over his grossly unprofessional conduct, Dr. Weissman claims that he only told Bill that he could possibly lose his legs one day if he didn't get his diabetes under control — after having told Bill right to his face that he should just get a wheelchair right then because he'd inevitably need it one day. Naturally, Bill doesn't buy it for a second.
- Doctor Weissman: I never said anything that could constitute malpractice... under its current definition.
- Inspirationally Disadvantaged: After it is revealed that Bill does not actually need a wheelchair, he explains to Hank that he had enjoyed the attention he was getting while he had it. Hank counters that people liked him for what he was doing with his new friends and not for his wheelchair, but Bill does not believe him. Though when Hank and Thunder find Bill eating sugar, Hank explains that he had gotten his diabetes under control after having been told that he was a lost cause — that what he had done was legitimately inspiring without having to be Inspirationally Disadvantaged.Bill: How am I supposed to be inspiring with legs?
- Keeping the Handicap: Bill attempts this after being accused of faking and rejected by his new friends. He eats handfuls of sugar in a desperate bid to bring back his diabetes and restore the new life he had forged for himself. Fortunately, Hank explains the situation to Thunder, and the two of them explain to Bill that there's no need for that.
- Loophole Abuse: While grocery shopping with Hank, Bill takes a boxed carrot cake and tries to put it in the cart (thinking that it qualifies as "healthy" on account of having carrots as an ingredient). Hank isn't having any of it, and stops him:Hank: We already went over this with the zucchini muffins!
- Never My Fault:
- Bill refuses to take responsibility for his diabetes. At first, he blames it on his genetics despite his first doctor (and eventually Hank) saying that his poor diet and lack of exercise were the main culprits. He'd rather give up and succumb to the complications than make the necessary changes to reverse it. He does reverse his diabetes once he does start exercising, but it was due to pure dumb luck.
- When confronted over the grossly unprofessional manner in which he discussed Bill's diabetes, Doctor Weissman denies everything, trying to claim that he only said that Bill could possibly lose his legs at some point (after explicitly telling Bill that he should go ahead and get a wheelchair because he'd inevitably need it one day). Bill is not convinced.
- Nutritional Nightmare: At the carnival, Bill orders a giant lollipop and asks the carny to "put a wig on it", which translates into dipping the lollipop in the cotton candy machine. As Bobby looks on in awe, Bill mentions another secret menu item called a "hugging cow", a hamburger wrapped in pastrami.
- Obfuscating Disability: Bill didn't actually need the wheelchair. Doctor Weissman told him that sooner or later he would eventually lose his legs to gangrene if he didn't get his diabetes under control, not that there was anything wrong with them now. It's unclear if Bill was unintentionally faking and stayed in the wheelchair all the time because he misinterpreted Dr. Jerk's angry ranting and genuinely thought he was disabled or if he was intentionally faking it for sympathy and attention, as well as because he preferred to be in the chair than change his diet (and slipped up by getting out of it when he was drunk).
- Quit Your Whining: Doctor Weissman feels no remorse when Bill confronts him over his embellished diagnosis. All he has to say is that he didn’t diagnose Bill with "cryabetes". Cue an epic beatdown from Bill.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Sort of. Bill didn't really need the wheelchair in the first place and was only in it because Dr. Weissman told him he should just give up and get one. But Bill's friends treat him getting out of his wheelchair as this trope, after initially accusing him of faking being disabled. Hank does, anyway; Boomhauer and Dale just shake their heads in disgust before leaving the alley, and they aren’t seen again in the episode.
- Tough Love: Bill asks Doctor Weissman if he was giving him tough love after the doctor lists all the terrible things that will happen if he doesn't get his diabetes under control. Instead of answering, Weissman points out that Bill ignored his previous doctor's advice and tells Bill that he might as well just get a wheelchair now since he would need it eventually anyway. It's possible that Weissman really was trying to use tough love to scare Bill into changing his lifestyle (which failed since Bill chose to get the wheelchair instead), but it's also just as likely that Weissman was just being a jerk (especially considering that he callously dismissed his nurse's suggestion of nutritional counseling and told her that there was no hope for Bill).
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Bill's first doctor is stupified when Bill pleads ignorance to how he could've gotten diabetes i.e. poor dieting. Bill merely thought the symptoms he was exhibiting meant that he was in love.
