"Hand Me Down Ed" is the 20th episode of Season 4 and the 97th episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy. In this episode, strange things begin to happen when a mysterious old boomerang flies into the Cul-de-Sac and reverses the personalities of the kids' and the Eds whenever somebody physically touches it.
A boomerang circles the bright blue skies of Peach Creek as down below Jimmy teaches his toys yoga. Everything is going well when out of nowhere Kevin's basketball hits a large mailbox and knocks it over, straight onto Jimmy's friends. Dolly is dead, and Mr. Yum Yum is broken in half. Jimmy cries, unable to lift the mailbox, as Kevin comes over. Bemused by the sight, he lifts the mailbox using just his foot as a fulcrum and mocks Jimmy over the loss of his toys. Jimmy gathers up his broken doll and walks away, fuming, when he spies a boomerang stuck in a bush. He picks it up and examines it before sticking it in his shirt to give the illusion of muscles. He is giggling at the trick when suddenly he transforms.
Now a bruiser, Jimmy grins evilly. He walks over and smacks Kevin's hat off his head. Kevin turns around and sees an angry, muscular Jimmy holding the large mailbox that just crushed his toys. His eyes widen as Jimmy brings it down on him and then jumps on the box. Jimmy's jumping jostles the boomerang loose, however, and it flies away. Jimmy comes back to himself and looks around, stunned. When he sees an angry, beat-up Kevin looking at him angrily, he screams and runs away crying, leaving both Kevin and him confused.
The boomerang, meanwhile, flies across the cul-de-sac and through a window. This window leads to Sarah's room, which is in an intense state of disrepair due to her brother. The boomerang bangs into the toy chest lid, and it falls into the chest as the lid slams shut. Sarah then comes up and sees what's happened to her room. She angrily starts rummaging through her toy chest to find something to beat her brother with and ends up pulling out several broken pieces of sports equipment before she finds the boomerang. Another transformation occurs, and she heads downstairs with a smile on her face.
In Ed's room, meanwhile, the Eds are making a scam based on selling hygiene products. Suddenly, they hear Sarah's angry scream of rage, and they quickly finish packing and try to escape through the window. Outside, however, they find Sarah with a huge smile on her face. She asks them to play with her, but a cowed Ed can only beg her not to hurt them. Sarah is confused by this, and she starts giving out hugs wily-nily. Edd, somewhat scared by this change of pace, runs away from her. Sarah chases him, boomerang held high. The chase runs below a clothesline, however, and the boomerang catches on it and spins away. Sarah instantly reverts to normal. Ed, not noticing, runs up to her and encapsulates her in a loving hug. For his trouble, Sarah beats him to a pulp and walks away angrily.
The boomerang floats through the air and ends up landing on the roof of Rolf's shed. Rolf enters it and comes out with a gigantic bag of seed that catches on the door. In trying to work it out, the roof shakes, and the boomerang comes loose, landing in Rolf's pants. Rolf looks at it and angrily asks who threw it before suddenly bursting into an operatic song. He covers his mouth in fear, but when he takes his hands away, song flows from his lips again.
The Eds have finally got their scam together and are ready to sell it. Their first stop is Rolf's house, of course. They ring his doorbell to sell it to him. When Rolf comes to answer it, however, he greets them with a blast of his loud, operatic talents. Eddy, annoyed, slams the door on Rolf, knocking the boomerang loose onto Rolf's front step. Edd, surprised, goes to open the door and hears a small, simple "thank you" from Rolf. When he shuts the door, he notices the boomerang, and says that it's identical to the one Sarah had earlier. This attracts Ed's attention, and Edd gives him a short explanation of what boomerangs are before he's distracted by Eddy calling him to the next house. Ed, interested, picks it up.
Shortly thereafter, Ed is typing a dissertation up on a typewriter, boomerang tucked behind one ear. Edd is excited by this, and calls to Eddy to come see. While Edd theorizes on what might have suddenly manifested itself in Ed's brain, making him smart, Eddy gets fed up with Ed and the inability of his friends to concentrate on the scam and summarily yanks the boomerang away from Ed. While Ed reverts to normal, Eddy suddenly starts acting motherly, treating the suitcase in which the scam is housed as a baby. Eddy, using the boomerang as a pin for the suitcase's diaper, asks Edd to change "Casey Jr." Edd, confused, takes the diapered suitcase and undergoes a transformation himself. Eddy, finding himself back to normal, takes a gander at Edd, who is complaining about the heat and stripping off all of his clothes. Eddy, freaked out, covers his eyes and runs past Edd, along the way snatching the boomerang. Eddy becomes motherly once again, while Edd looks around and tries desperately to cover himself, unsure of why he's near-naked.
When Eddy returns, he has actually put on a dress and is wearing the boomerang as a hairpin. He tells Ed that Casey Jr. has made a stinky and hands him a diaper filled with the scam's contents. Ed dumps it into the sewer while Eddy searches for a fresh safety pin. Not finding one, he requests one from "Uncle D", who refuses to move until he finds some clothes. Ed, ever resourceful, suggests that Eddy use the boomerang Eddy is wearing as a safety pin, and removes it from his friend's hair. Ed, once again smart, decides that he must conduct an experiment relating to the boomerang's throwing range and power. He then heaves it, and the Eds all look around, confused. Suddenly, Ed points, as it's coming back. The boomerang does indeed come back, and it smacks into all three of them, carrying them backward and slamming them into a tree branch. Eddy turns motherly, Ed smart, and Edd laid-back once again. Eddy panics over being separated from "her child", but Edd isn't worried, choosing instead to remove his underwear, much to the concern of motherly Eddy and smart Ed, who denotes Edd as nothing more than a distasteful dullard.
Ed: [in 'intellectual mode'] "What an inane, inchoate and in inefficacious journey this has been." Eddy: [in 'mommy mode'] "Casey Jr's all alone! Mommy's here sweetie, don't cry!" Edd: [in 'laid back mode'] "I'm getting the need to feel the breeze between my knees…" [takes off his underpants] "That's the ticket!" Eddy: "Not in front of the baby please! Casey, you cover your eyes!" Ed: "Distasteful dullard!"
Rolf: [surprised then angered by the boomerang sticking out of his underpants] "Hello?" [looks around] "Who threw this whatchmadoohickey at Rolf's posterior?!" [Rolf's personality gets reversed and he starts singing in gibberish. He stops himself, but then starts singing again when his hand stops covering his mouth.]
Ed: [in 'intellectual mode' and hunched over typewriter] "Chasing Phantoms: A Dissertation on Unified Field Theory and its Effects on Leptons and Quasars. By Edwin." [Edd blankly stares at Ed being smart; Edd heads over to Eddy] Edd: "Eddy, come quick! You're not gonna believe this!" Eddy: [angrily] "What the heck are you doing over there?! The scam's over here!"
Eddy: [ringing Rolf's doorbell] "Double D, act natural. Ed, shut up. And I'll do all the talking." Edd: [arranging the toothpaste for the scam] "Misrepresenting toothpaste as a character enhancing ointment is far beyond my scope of vocabulary, Eddy." Ed: [clueless] "And I haven't a clue what's going on here, Eddy!" Eddy: "I said 'shut it', stupid!" [clears throat and waits for a moment; no response and rings the doorbell again until Rolf comes out singing in front of the Eds; Eddy gets annoyed and pushes Rolf back inside and the boomerang drops on the ground] "Rrgh! Sheesh. Since when did Rolf turn into one of those stuffed shirt, blowhard singer types? The guy gave me a headache. Next house!" [Edd opens the door and finds Rolf sitting against a wall.] Rolf: "Thank you." Edd: [closes the door and finds the boomerang on the doorstep] "Odd. Isn't that the boomerang Sarah had earlier today?" [Ed bumps into Edd's head and looks at the boomerang.] Ed: "Boomerjigger?" Edd: [recoiling from the bump] "Ow. Certainly you've heard of a boomerang, Ed. Its magnificent aerodynamic properties allow it, when thrown, to rotate a distance, then return to the initial place of where it was thrown. Used primarily by Natives who believed it to possess supernatural powers. Amusing, don't you think?" Ed: [picks up the boomerang] "Supernatural?" [Off-screen, he undergoes a personality change.]
Oddly, the half part of Mr. Yum Yum that was crushed cannot be seen even after the mailbox is lifted up.
Most of the time when Ed has the boomerang, he wears reading glasses. When Eddy took the boomerang from him and gets his personality reversed, Ed was not shown taking off the glasses even though they disappear.
When Jimmy is seen with the yoga class, Mr. Yum-Yum is acknowledged as the purple bear instead of the rabbit, which is yellow instead of its regular purple.
This is the third episode where Edd is shown naked. The first was in "Pop Goes the Ed" and the second was in "See No Ed."
This is the second time Jimmy is a big and strong muscle man. The first time was in "Look Into My Eds" when Eddy hypnotized him into becoming one.
When Ed is using the typewriter, he claims that his full name is "Edwin," but in most other episodes when his full name is mentioned by Edd, it's "Edward."
One of the frowning faces in the title card is wearing a black, sock-like ski cap similar to Edd's.
After Jimmy throws the mailbox on Kevin, he shouts out "I am Jimmy, hear me roar!" This is likely a reference to Helen Reddy's song "I Am Woman."
The boomerang was seen again briefly in "A Town Called Ed," in the scene when the Eds were walking through the junkyard.