Edd (Double-d)

Eddward (better known as Edd or Double-D) is a young male inventor and neat freak. The most intelligent and good hearted of the trio, he is very quiet (although after a certain season he became considerably louder such as yelling at Ed in an episode), extremely polite, and he is never seen without his trademark sock-like black ski hat, hiding some kind of secret unknown to all the kids except Ed and Eddy. To differentiate his homophonic name from that of Ed, everyone in the series calls him "Double-D". The nickname "Double-D" refers to the fact that Edd's name has 2 Ds in it instead of 1 like Ed's does.

His parents put a heavy workload on him, communicating an excess of tasks solely through a multitude of sticky notes. Edd hates being treated terribly by everyone and is easily frustrated. He is also the most liked of the three by the other kids and is sometimes treated civilly by them but this does not spare him from their wrath when the others are punishing Ed and Eddy. Despite this, he is basically the only member of the group treated nicely by the others, and is the only one to get off easy on punishments or to get any form of respect from the others.

Edd is almost always the voice of reason and the conscience of the group. Always pointing out the holes in Eddy's plans or telling Eddy how ridiculous or morally wrong something is, even though he's always ignored by him. Edd often calculates that the odds are against the Edds, and his calculations often prove true.

Edd is normally a straight-A student in all of his classes and hates sports (apparently because of an odd, never-discussed "dodge ball" incident. Plus he appears to be almost incapable of performing any exercise due to extreme physical weakness. (though he once dragged ten refrigerators from the house to the playground and took one hundred fence boards from the fence they were in). Edd is an excellent pedal steel guitar player, although he insists that he loathes the instrument.

Edd is amazingly intelligent, able to construct complicated machines from cardboard, signs, and various junk the Eds come across. He is the smartest of the Eds and happens to have a crush on Nazz (like every other boy in the series besides Jimmy and Rolf). He seems to not like gym class very much because of the dodge ball incident, and he agreed to escape from school in one episode to get out of gym class. He is also in the photography club at school and the editor of the school newspaper.

His usual outfit is an red/orange T-shirt, purple shorts, red socks, blue shoes, and a black ski cap.

Edd has been know to be extremely clean and tidy to the point where his actions seem similar to the symptoms of OCD. For example, sometimes Edd will happily spend an entire morning cleaning up and repainting his lawn furniture. His obsession with cleanliness has made him extremely cautious about his surroundings even to the point where he pulls out a shower from thin air, to wash in, after Ed's lucky cheese violated his person. However, this doesn't happen on all occasions

Along with cleanliness comes Edd's obsession for being neat, take a look at that bedroom, everything is meticulously labeled and neatly stored in its place be it a window (View port), through to socks, carefully-counted ant-farm, blueprints, and surgical stuff.

Everyone knows Eddy is constantly trying to be the best - the most fashionable, the most popular, the king of the cul-de-sac etc etc - he's something of a slave to his own image isn't he? Well it may seem surprising but Edd falls into this trap too, look and you'll see he's just as much a slave to his own image as Eddy is. Edd strives to be perfect, he wants to be good, he wants to do as he's told, and so he doesn't mind having half his day taken up by sticky-note orders (in fact he seems to positively enjoy it!) and because he's always trying to be ten out of ten anything less feels like a tragic failure. Edd can't just jump out of bed and go, he has to steam iron the creases out of the duvet first, he can't just go out to play he has to make sure he's done all his chores and then some – and heaven forbid he gets a detention at school, what will Mother and Father think? He'll even make Eddy's bed for him - he can't stop himself! Poor Edd needs a big dose of relaxation to get him out of his own vicious circle, he's sensible enough to know world won't end if he takes a breather, it's just a shame that Eddy's methods in Stop, Look, n Ed weren't a little more subtle or he might have realized that sometimes it's good to loosen up every once in a while.

Unlike Ed and Eddy, Edd is an only child and that accounts for his somewhat insular character for no matter how many times Eddy berates him for yapping. In Edd's house there are many rules, written on sticky notes, with a lot of household chores to be done. The main way Edd and his parents communicate is by sticky notes.

Edd's mother and father, have a room which has two beds, pictures of pears,and other items. Their closet has a ancestral fruitcake, Edd's baby clothes, ancient umbrellas filed chronologically and Xmas decorations. We also discover their beds are separate and there is no kissing allowed in their room. (there are several medikits strewn about too, possibly to deal with any infringement of the rules.)

And just as Edd has a certain romantic weak spot, many female viewers have a weakness for him ... but WHY? At first glance Edd appears to be the archetypal wimp – so just why has he emerged as the unlikely-yet-undeniable heartthrob of Ed, Edd n Eddy? That's a tough one. It looks like nobody really knows why Double D is adored so much by so many but Jono Howard has stuck his neck out and said: "What is it that every teenage male lacks?" Sensitivity, awareness, and cleanliness. Edd has these rare male commodities in spades! What else would a girl want in a boy?

Edd's not exactly the toughest guy in the cul-de-sac – to put it mildly! Besting Plank in a wrestling match requires more than a little underhanded help from pal Eddy in S1, and by later seasons he shows little improvement – after all, it doesn't take much running in Don't Rain on my Ed or Ed, Ed and Away before he's left gasping and panting in his friends' wake, and we all knows those wobbly legs of his aren't really caused by Lacksidaisycanthro Disease! And leave the manly kazoo-playing and Tom Jones posters to Eddy, Edd's musical tastes run towards the classics and though his pedal steel guitar skills are uncanny to say the least, Edd would be far happier with a violin of his very own even if he is the only one around who knows that's not a sissy thing to play.

Edd's feelings towards sports don't exactly promote a tough-guy image, either. Take dodge ball, for instance - that bane of school-age geeks everywhere seems especially terrifying for poor Edd, who legend says once earned a long-term excuse from gym thanks to an ominous-sounding "dodge ball incident." What happen to him that day, anyway? Was he battered to bits beneath a barrage of bullies? Or was the pain more emotional, perhaps the trauma of not getting an A for the only time in his life or the humiliation of failing miserably in front of whatever girl he'd had a crush on that day? One way or the other, based on his reaction to the game in Ed on a Half Shell it's safe to say dodge ball has left quite a dent on his psyche at the very least! And perhaps being on the receiving end of such rough treatment is what's left him so much more peace-loving than the average Peach Creeker. "I abhor violence, Eddy," he declares in a short-lived stand against his pal's plans to 'get' Kevin in From Here to Ed, and while his protests didn't exactly buy him the exemption he wanted they do go to show that beneath that not-so-tough exterior beats the heart of someone who's...well...not so tough! He'll go to great lengths to preserve the peace among his rowdier peers, whether that means putting an abrupt (and loud!) halt to a neighborhood battle-royal over a stuck quarter or quietly (and uselessly) imploring Eddy to be gentle as he prepares to pummel Ed for spending a quarter he was meant to be hanging onto. From popcorn fights to Edtropolis riots, if it's at all raucous or out-of-control you can be sure Edd's doing his best to break it up, and even if it might be good for him to jump in and join the fun from time to time we all know it's just not in him to do so.

But hold the phone, are we being entirely fair here? True, Double-D prefers exercising his brain to his muscles and he'd far rather tend his cocoons than join in a neighborhood baseball game, but surprising as it may seem he can hold his own in some pretty tough situations. So Eddy may ridicule Edd for being too weak to lift a butterfly and too scrawny to spin the bottle, but that doesn't mean he has any qualms about making him haul around ten – count 'em, TEN! – refrigerators when the only alternative to carry them himself – and Edd, ever the faithful lackey, somehow manages to oblige! More importantly than any rare feat of physical strength, though, is the backbone Edd shows on any number of occasions as he stands up for his friends when they need him – just see how he marches the entire cul-de-sac out of Eddy's house when the erstwhile leader of the Eds is laid low by humiliating pimple problems, and watch him put himself in harm's way as he rushes to Ed's defense in the face of Sarah's imminent attack even though he'd TOLD him not to spend her money on jawbreakers in the first place.

Sometimes Edd can even be a neighborhood hero - albeit minus the big muscles – just watch how in the grimy depths of Edtropolis he saves Nazz from the rogue … um … pigeons and their yogurt droppings (well okay he saves her and then she pounds him but hey at least he tried). And even tough-guy Kevin seems impressed when Double-D tells off the monster terrorizing the cul-de-sac in The Day the Ed Stood Still – of course he might not have been so wowed had he realized it was only foolhardy Ed-boy in disguise but let's face it, the prospect of being suspended from a wall in a coat of pre-chewed Chunky Puffs ought to be enough to terrify anybody (let alone the neighborhood clean freak) no matter who was in that costume!

Edd loves knowledge and thinks everyone else should, too, which is why he's all too happy to shed his more wallflower tendencies and take center stage when he thinks his peers are succumbing to summertime mental deterioration. He even goes so far as to bark at Rolf for chewing that – er – "grease from Papa's foot soakings", and makes Ed and Nazz switch seats when Eddy gets too chatty for his liking. Maybe Peach Creek is better off when Edd isn't in charge, after all...

So what's the bottom line here? Well, you probably wouldn't want to put money on him coming out ahead in any footrace or wrestling match (or even belching contest!) but for all his nerves and neuroses Double-D's got a certain unique courage that won't let him stand by quietly when his friends – or anyone else for that matter - needs help. It may get him into trouble almost as much as Eddy does but Edd's conscience and drive to do what's right are part of what define him and you get the feeling that no matter how many times he gets knocked about for his efforts he'll still be first in line the next time someone needs him (or he thinks they do!) and you've gotta admire that.

"What would we do without you, Double-D?" gushes Eddy in a rare fit of appreciation – and maybe he should be asking that more often, as Edd's ingenious inventions are often the only part of the Eds' scams that actually work. Whether it's a jawbreaker surveillance satellite, a hastily-assembled wagon, or a techno-marvelous Thingamajig, when the Ed-boys need just the right invention for their latest scam or adventure they can always count on Edd. Who else could come up with such a strange array of contraptions dredged from the depths of a garage - and of course they always work too - or at least they do until Eddy or Ed decide to meddle at which point the inventions AND their creator usually undergo a meltdown!

And it's not just with his inventions that his intellectualism shines through. Edd is very sharp and interested in everything from entomology to engineering to the latest in lexicons and what's more, he knows the answer to all the Eds' problems could be solved with just a little brainpower which he's more than happy to supply. So even if his reverse psychology ploy doesn't quite work as planned in A Twist of Ed, and even though his forensic investigation of Ed's copious contaminates fails to help Eddy find his magazines in Luck of the Ed – if it's the thoughts that count then Double-D is still way ahead of the game for he comes up with more of those than the rest of the Cul-de-Sac put together!

Indeed, with brainpower like his Edd should be neigh-unstoppable, right? Well ... even know-it-all Ed-boys have their mental lapses and off-days. It doesn't happen often but sometimes Double-D puts the batteries in wrong or slips up in some crucial calculation to bring all of Eddy's plans crashing down around them, and even when he's at the top of his game it sometimes gets him into trouble – I guess when you love knowledge as much as Edd it's hard to imagine not everybody feels the same way and that maybe shiny new tweezers really would be a safer prize than even the nicest of hand-drawn diplomas – aww, that's okay, Edd, you're still the cul-de-sac's A-Number-One Genius! But all his deep thinking and straight-A ways can't save him from falling victim to his own friends' pranks on any number of occasions. You'd think he'd know better but Edd is just too trusting for his own good and Eddy and Ed are all too happy to take advantage of that for a little fun at his expense. Faking sticky notes, pretending to be "totally transformed" by his Pavlovian training, egging on Double-D's hypochondriac ways, no prank is too low for those rapscallions nor – apparently – are any of them too obvious for our otherwise brainy Ed-boy to fall for.

But at the end of the day Edd's intelligence usually wins through and no matter how often they play him the fool even Ed and Eddy know they wouldn't get far without him. Whatever they need Double-D will do his best to provide, his bedroom is stuffed with test tubes, chemistry sets and bubbling flasks whilst out in the garage welding equipment is to hand along with all manner of other stuff you wouldn't think someone as high-strung and unassuming as Edd would even know how to plug in much less wield with confidence.

[*= All credit goes to Edtropolis.com]

http://

No matter what the reason factually is, it's obvious that Edd is "the good one" of the Eds, the upright, fine fellow who only wants to do the right thing, to make sure everybody is treated with kindness, that rules are obeyed and life remains as neat and clean and orderly as humanly possible (or even more so!). He also usually holds back his desire for jawbreakers to follow his plans through so as not to leave the victim on tenterhooks. So what on EARTH is he doing with two ne'er-do-wells like Eddy and Ed for best friends? Eddy gets him in trouble on a daily basis, blithely shoves him aside at his every plea of "But Eddy," and makes him the butt of his jokes almost as often as he does the rest of the cul-de-sac kids put together. And we can't be sure how much of what Double-D says Ed even understands, but it's pretty obvious he's less than appreciative of his buddy's attempt at enlightening him to the mysteries of gravity or the importance of not overtaxing your digestive system. They must be frustrating to say the least – so just why does Edd hang around with him?

Well, believe it or not Ed and Eddy are also pretty good for Edd. Just look at how much he's changed over the years – the mousy and passive wallflower of Season 1 has evolved into quite possibly the most sarcastic character on the show and while in many ways he's still just as neurotic and highly-strung as ever, when it comes down to it Edd seems a lot more confident in later episodes and at least to some extent that's got to be thanks to his pals. Without Ed and Eddy, Double-D would probably have been happy to study his arachnids and psychology books in peace and never once get out to play ball with the other kids, launch himself through the air in a makeshift tree-catapult, or spend an afternoon as a shabbily-dressed evil henchman helping to thwart the neighborhood do-gooder ... erm ... Okay, so plenty of the situations he finds himself in are despite his vocal protests but even the most distressing of Ed-ventures makes for a good story to reminisce over whether during the assembly of a time-capsule or over a rousing game of cribbage!

We've already looked at how Edd is willing to stand up for his friends when they need him but – perhaps even more impressively – by later seasons Edd will also stand up to his pals on occasion and isn't that hard for anybody? Despite Eddy's constant growling, threats, and occasional roughing-up Double-D rarely backs down when he knows what's right and though he doesn't often win, when push comes to shove it's not always Edd who's on the receiving end of the shoving. And let's face it, when you're the only one who possesses more than just a grain of common sense and who can instinctively spot trouble of your friends' own making looming large on the horizon, with friends like Ed and Eddy sooner or later you're going to have to learn to stand up and at least try to give a few good tugs on the brakes of insanity!

But despite his above-average sensibility, his strict moral values and cast iron integrity, so long as his chores are done he's more than willing to play along with his pals' dodgy scams, especially if there's a jawbreaker or two involved. So what's the secret behind this turnabout? Could there really a streak of rebelliousness to Edd's heart of gold? Of course there is, just watch how excited he gets while proudly showing off his secret laundry-chute slide to Eddy – the adrenaline of irreverence can be quite overwhelming, indeed!. So is all this his pals' doing – are they really rubbing off on Double-D? You bet, but also maybe Edd had it in him all along – sometimes all you really need is a little shove (or, okay, many great big ones) to help you tap into your inner imp and the better you are at being perfect the more important it is you have someone to give you that shove. And when it comes right down to it does it really matter what he "gets" out of hanging around with Eddy and Ed? Edd could leave at any time but he probably never will for it's obvious that he just genuinely likes Ed and Eddy and has just as much fun as they do in all their misadventures despite any protests from his conscience – for better or worse they are best friends and aren't they all lucky for that?

Its also important to keep in mind that his alleged new found bad streak isn't entirely consistent. In the first season he was willingly taking part in scams and willingly listening to Ed's stories and believing them. It wasn't until the show truly began to develop that Double D would become the group's conscience while at the same time showing his "imp" side.

Also, it is possible that he hangs out with Ed and Eddy in order to teach them things, and make them smarter. Sometimes, he knows that a scam is going to fail, but he goes along with it to get Eddy to learn from his mistakes (e.g. One Size Fits Ed) to which Eddy doesn't learn a thing and instead just gets angry. In the case of Ed, Double D could just want him to be generally smarter than he already is, though this is hard, because Ed was born stupid. Double D's desire to get everyone to learn and be smart is something he should just stop trying to do. A lesson that he needs to learn is "Don't cast your pearls before swine." Ah well, Double D is still a great guy.