The “Josh is Done” Episode from “Drake & Josh” Still Haunts Me

The beloved Nickelodeon series created a mature, nuanced episode that deconstructed the chaotic relationship between its titular leads, teaching us important lessons about atonement and forgiveness.

Nickelodeon’s “Drake & Josh” contains some of the most memorable moments in the canon of classic 2000s-era teen sitcoms. The tale of two stepbrothers—goofy, bumbling geek Josh Nichols (Josh Peck) and popular, airheaded slacker Drake Parker (Drake Bell)—gave us timeless catchphrases and running gags that are still referenced today through the bountiful virtual fountain of Internet memes. But there is one particular episode—and one particular moment from that episode—that still resonates with me, one that I can’t seem to shake off because of how it changed the way I viewed “Drake & Josh” and how it managed to expertly tackle a serious issue within its silly, slapstick-heavy DNA.

In “Josh is Done,” the eleventh episode of the show’s fourth and final season, Josh arrives late for a chemistry exam after Drake forgets to drive him to school. In a fun bit of physical comedy, a desperate, overly sweaty Josh begs his unforgiving teacher to let him take the test, pleading from outside of the class as his teacher closes the blinds one by one. Drake watches his stepbrother's humiliation from the inside, unbothered and unapologetic. 

The tone of the episode shifts pretty quickly after that: Drake comes home and asks Josh to bounce with him on a bouncy ball he stole from the kid next door, but Josh, unnervingly calm and stoic, declines. He not only rejects to hang out with Drake, but renounces Drake wholeheartedly as a brother, remarking that he now only sees Drake as just a roommate. Cue the canned “oohs” from the audience.

Part of what makes this plot more compelling than the usual shenanigans Drake and Josh find themselves in is that the personal stakes feel deeper. In almost all of their misadventures, Drake is the one responsible for wreaking havoc and is left unscathed, while Josh has to save him and often bears the brunt of the blame. Even when both brothers are responsible for creating chaos, Josh is still somehow the butt of the joke in the end. With “Josh is Done,” the tables turn: Drake finally gets what’s coming to him and he becomes the primary target of schadenfreude for once. 

Initially in denial, Drake comes to terms with the reality of Josh being “done” with him once he realizes the difficulty of doing things on his own. Drake runs late to the movie theater because his car wasn’t filled up with gas, a chore that he relied on Josh to undertake. As his stress deepens, Drake develops a zit and essentially spirals into a pool of rage and insanity. Meanwhile, Josh’s life improves exponentially without Drake: he aces his makeup exam (and is awarded full credit for doing so well), gets along better with his boss Helen (Yvette Nicole Brown), spends more quality time with his friends, and loses a long-gestating rash. 

Even though it is satisfying to see Josh finally stand up to Drake and break free from their vaguely co-dependent mold, it’s equally horrifying to see the impact it has on Drake. He experiences a nightmarish inverse of It’s a Wonderful Life, where instead of seeing how much worse Josh’s life is without him in it, it’s the opposite; life is so, so much better without Drake. As an audience, we are asked to identify with Drake’s pain just as much as we are supposed to relish in it.  

The episode’s scribe, Ethan Banville, whose writing credits also include other Dan Schneider shows like “iCarly” and “Zoey 101,” delicately builds this tension between Drake and Josh toward a cathartic, devastating, and unforgettable emotional climax. In chemistry class, Josh replaces Drake with a new lab partner, forcing Drake to sit next to a mute nerd who is unable to help him. When Drake causes a chemical accident during their assignment, he is shoved into a medical shower to avoid infecting himself and others. Facing the same embarrassment as Josh from earlier in the episode, Drake, drenched in water and shame, finally admits his immense guilt for hurting Josh in front of everyone.

The normally confident, smooth-talking Drake stumbles through a heartbreaking apology, his tortured regret carried effortlessly by Bell’s performance. He takes responsibility for his actions and emphasizes that he needs Josh way more than Josh needs him. The normally unhinged Josh is stunned and silent, a reaction expressed with compelling restraint from Peck. Rather than play this scene for cheap laughs, Banville makes a smart decision to let the drama of the moment unfold organically, a rare occurrence for a show as deliriously wacky as this one. 

Their chemistry teacher Mr. Roland (Tom Virtue) calmly asks Josh if he’d like to go after Drake and reconcile. Josh, still wrapping his head around what happened, declines. In the next scene, however, Josh does reconcile with Drake at home through an enthusiastic game of ping pong, a callback to the beginning of the episode. Again, Banville avoids watered-down sitcom clichés of characters just hugging it out and moving on—although a gentler version of their “Hug me, brotha!” catchphrase would’ve been nice to see. Instead, he engages in something that is both subtle and representative of the show’s spirit, having Josh forgive Drake with a wordless, knowing smile as the two reconnect. 

In my mind, “Josh is Done” is unquestionably the best episode of the series, and if I’m being completely honest, one of the best episodes of television, period. It highlights not only the limits of Drake and Josh’s dysfunctional antics, but grapples with the consequences of those antics. Whenever Drake and Josh—mostly Drake—landed in trouble, their punishments and subsequent lessons were often temporary. Here, the punishment is way more brutal, but the lessons feel much more earned. This isn’t to say you must completely embarrass yourself in order to gain redemption from someone you’ve wronged, but having the self-awareness to acknowledge the specific things you’ve done to hurt someone is something to be valued and practiced. As Drake learns, simply saying “you’re sorry” isn’t enough to win Josh back; he needs to suffer through what Josh has suffered through in order to get to that place. 

It’s a shame, then, that “Drake & Josh” never really returned to this kind of dramatic territory, thereby labeling “Josh is Done” with the unfortunate title of a Special Episode. As most sitcoms tend to do, the show recalibrated back to its plot-centric narrative in lieu of more complex character exploration. Occasionally, it veered toward unexpected moments of poignance, like when Drake and Josh protect their nefarious sister Megan (Miranda Cosgrove) from a duplicitous teen boy in “Megan’s First Kiss” or when Josh decides to break up with his nemesis-turned-girlfriend Mindy (Allison Scagliotti-Smith) in “Mindy Loves Josh.” Thankfully, though, “Drake & Josh” took a courageous path in challenging the relationship of the titular characters before it ended its run and the result is a worthwhile, meaningful examination of the little ways we hurt people and the big ways we can make amends.