Schedule slip-up, oops. Also, two episode titles in a row relating to people saying things. And actually the episode title before last had to do with lying. It’s like there was almost a theme and then there wasn’t. Ah, well.

Feeny has gift baskets that Eli mistakenly thinks are for him. They’re actually from “misguided seniors” who want Feeny to write college recommendations for them. Eric comes over and laughs about how silly kiss-up seniors are, as he laughs at various things Feeny says. I’m certain this won’t come up later or anything.

Feeny enters Turner’s classroom to announce that Shawn missed his history test. Cory comes up with an excuse, saying Shawn has… something. Feeny suggests he has sloth – as in, laziness – and Cory agrees, clarifying it’s Hong Kong Sloth. Turner then immediately leaves to go back to his apartment to check on Shawn, rather than waiting until the school day is actually over.

Shawn is ordering Forrest Gump on pay-per-view. Ah, poor misguided soul, actually paying for entertainment. Of course, ti was the 90s, so it’s not like he could just watch it online where someone illegally uploaded it like I do to watch Boy Meets Wo- er… I mean, I watch this show completely legally online. Support your content producers!

…Um, anyway, Turner says if Shawn misses more school he’s going to end up like Forrest Gump. Shawn reacts the way I would, by pointing out that Gump did very well for himself, but Turner says what he means is Forrest Gump doesn’t exist. This is why it’s rough to live with teachers. Can’t get away with nuttin’. I mean, that’s what I’m assuming, based on this one show where someone lives with their teacher. I don’t think Emma had much of this kind of problem when her mom married one of her teachers on Degrassi.

Well Turner says he’s forcing Shawn to see the guidance counselor, so we cut to the next day of school where Shawn is all “I don’t want to bare my soul to some old, bald-headed guy”. Cue the attractive, bubbly, female guidance counselor who’s excited to see her name on the door.

This is like 5th use for that particular door. Also I’d like to say that all but one of my guidance counselors in my K-12 education were women (and I went to 7 schools), none of them were old, or bald, not even the man. And heck, my counselors and advisers in college were mostly women in their 30s-40s. I think Freaks and Geeks is the only time I’ve ever seen a male guidance counselor on tv, and that show came on like 5 years after this…

Oi with the tangents today, sorry.

Eric meets with Griff and Frankie. They slip Eric some official Feeny letter-head, which “fell off a truck”, so Eric can forge a recommendation letter, since Feeny is being so stingy, and apparently there are no other teachers in this school who are allowed to write recommendations. Griff and Eric leave, and Joey runs in to tell Frankie that their previous leader, Harley Keiner, has been released and/or escaped from reform school. Dundununnnn.

Back with Shawn and Guidance Counselor, she asks what his last counselor said. He says this is his first time guidance counsel…ing, and she accidentally slips that it is also her first time. I’m no expert in teaching staff stuff, but wouldn’t she have been more likely to start out as an elementary school counselor? Especially with her personality, counseling teenagers seems kind of… odd.

Well, she says… something, and Shawn shares some of his dad’s colorful philosophy on life. Counselor (okay her name is Devon) basically tells Shawn, based on what his dad said and based on her own experiences, to live free, do whatever you want to find out who you are, and just go with it. This will certainly not lead Shawn to decide to drop out of school.

In the hallway, Eli asks Feeny to help with one of his class projects. They’re making PSAs, and the kids thought Feeny would make a good narrator. Feeny is flattered and immediately begins making changes to the script. I don’t know if this plot is going anywhere.

Frankie and Joey are worried about their old boss (Harley) meeting their new one (Griff) and try to devise a way to get them together without killing each other, when Harley comes to visit next week.

Except he leaked the wrong date online to purposely confuse his enemies, and he’s at the school already. Gosh, what did internet forums look like in 1995? There’s an episode of The X-Files from like ’93 or ’94 that has an internet article on it. All blocky green text on a black background… how did anyone read on old computers?

Anyway, we arrive at the next scene, where it’s 5 am, and Chubbie’s is open for some reason. Shawn asked Cory to meet him there… I don’t know how, because if he called the Matthews home, surely someone else would’ve heard the phone, and if Shawn had just gone there… they wouldn’t have had to meet at Chubbie’s.

Well, Shawn is skipping town, to find himself, despite having no money, nowhere to go, and being a very pretty 14 year old boy. This can only end well.

Eric’s writing a great recommendation later on Feeny’s letter – or rather, a “really really really” great one, as Eric-as-Feeny would say. Alan comes down and asks why he isn’t just using the computer, and Eric fumbles and says he’s writing a paper on the Amish so it would feel weird to use a computer. Amy then comes downstairs and observes the typewriter, asking if Eric has put a waffle in the computer again. Now, I don’t know about old, 1995 printers, but you CAN print stuff out on non-blank sheets of paper these days… You just have to adjust the margins so you don’t print on the letter-head… which I’m sure is what Feeny does… why is Eric using a typewriter??

Cory comes home, distressed. His parents wonder what’s wrong, and do not wonder where he came from at this hour, or why he said he was up since 5 am. Cory decides to call Turner to tell him about Shawn, but only gets the answering machine, so he heads out to just tell Turner in person.

Amy picks up Eric’s fake recommendation letter. Alan reads it, realizes it’s fake, and rips it in half.

At the school, Feeny tells Eli how happy it made him to record his voice and he can’t wait to see how the students put it with the video. Eli tells him the kids decided to go with his own voice rather than Feeny’s. Feeny is not pleased.

Cory runs into Turner’s classroom to tell him Shawn ran away.  Okay, so it was 5 am when Cory was at Chubbie’s. The sun was out and everyone was awake when Cory got home, meaning it was probably at least 7 am. Then Cory goes to school were it’s probably like 8:15. What has Cory been doing all this time? Did he maybe just fall asleep in Chubbie’s? For two hours? Why was Chubbie’s open that early anyway? It’s a burger restaurant.

So anyway, Turner gets upset and hunts down the guidance counselor to ask what the heck she thought she was doing. She admits maybe Shawn could easily have misinterpreted what she said, but she also points out that she only spoke with Shawn for 30 minutes. Turner’s been living with him for four months, so if anyone knows why Shawn ran away, it would be him.

Frankie and Joey wait anxiously for the showdown between Harley and Griff. H and G exchange some words, but then Frankie has an epiphany. He doesn’t want them fighting about who gets to have Frankie and Joey as lackeys, so he decides to just not be a lackey anymore. After some hesitation, Joey decides to quit as well.

Griff is just like “Okay” but Harley is like “I’m going to beat you up til you change your mind.” The bell rings and Cory leads a mob of students out of class, telling about how he outsmarted Harley in a scene I didn’t mention before. Harley asked for Cory’s wallet, and it turns out Cory gave him a fake wallet, and Cory wonders what Harley’s face will look like when he finds out. He then bumps into Harley, who says “Probably like this, only perturbed.” That is the end of that scene.

Turner finds Shawn at the bus station. As he puts it, he figured Shawn would try to take the bus to Europe. Indeed, Shawn has a bus ticket to Paris. Paris, Texas (Shawn thought the TX in Paris, TX meant “tax”). Shawn goes on a thing about wanting to see the world, Turner’s all “why didn’t you tell me you feel like a failure” and Shawn says it’s because Turner has a lot of stuff on his plate already. Turner tells Shawn if he studies and gets good grades, then he can go to Europe. A friendly homeless man, who has one of the fruit baskets Feeny had earlier (he mentioned that he gives them to homeless shelters), tells Shawn he should “listen to his dad”. Shawn gives Turner a look and is all like “Yeah, I will” and then gives his bus ticket to the man. He and Turner leave, and the homeless man celebrates – he’s going to France!

During the credits, Cory is telling his problems to Devon, not giving her a chance to say anything. She finally gets a word in, to tell him she’s not really that kind of counselor, but to come back if he needs help with college. Again, I’m not an expert, but it seems like, if a student is having worries about whether to do something or not when they’re about to lose a friend, a guidance counselor should be offering some, well, guidance. I know they aren’t psychiatrists, but I thought they were there to help with “I’m having this moral dilemma and I need help” in addition to “how do I get in to this school?”

Well, Turner shows up with Shawn, who says he’s older and wiser now. Cory takes Shawn out into the hallway to talk privately. Cory says he’s angry at Shawn for doing this and he doesn’t want to hang out with Shawn if he keeps doing this stuff, but Shawn is just like “I missed the biology test, didn’t I?”, and Cory tells him not to worry, he took the test for him.

So the Harley-vs-Cory plotline never resolved itself, and Eric’s college recommendation also never came to anything. And the “Feeny as narrator” thing never really started or ended anywhere. Hooray?

Plaid – 14 It’s getting harder to count all the plaid, oy.

Fun facts: The actress who played Devon was the voice of Cerebro in the 2000 X-Men movie!
An actor imdb credits as “classmate” was in one episode of Kids of Degrassi Street and one episode of Degrassi High! My Degrassi references have come full circle, even though I didn’t recognize who this person was and he played background bit parts in both Degrassi and this show.

….Hooray?

Speaking of Degrassi… When I first started this blog (a year ago ohmygosh), I was intending to use it to cover ALL sorts of tv and movies, not just Boy Meets World. I was actually planning to use it more as a Glee review blog. So… I’ve been tossing around this idea for a while, which is basically a Glee review that compares Glee to other shows – most often Degrassi. There are tons of plotlines that Degrassi has done way better than Glee, after all.

Unless lot of people are really opposed to this, I’m going to try to put this into gear soon. I won’t be abandoning Boy Meets World. That will still be on a weekly basis, possibly twice weekly if I can get enough of a queue built back up. The Glee reviews would either be weekly or every other week, on a different day than Boy Meets World.

I’d also like to do a general tv review with the upcoming tv season. I was planning on doing that last year, but never did. Mostly because my hatred for some shows had grown to a point of indifference, so I didn’t have much to say on anything. But I’ll try this year!

Hello, all! Small Girl Meets World update!

They’ve added a younger brother to the Matthew household – 5 year-old August Maturo as Louis Matthews. He joins 13-year old Riley and 14-year old Eliot Matthews. Hopefully he doesn’t go the Morgan route where he spouts cute lines for two seasons, disappears for half a season, and comes back, played by an older actor.

I have to say, major kudos to the casting department on the Matthews children.

They don’t all look identical, but I’d believe they’re all related. It’s sort of hard to tell from just this pictures, but if you look at enough pictures, they all sort of have the same physical essence. Also it looks like Rowan Blanchard and Danielle Fishel have the same nose, and all the boys have the same nose?

At least they aren’t as diverse-looking as Amy, Alan, Eric, Cory, and Morgan Matthews were. Or Reba, Brock, and their children on “Reba.”

Ah, well, in final news, the show takes place in New York. And Topanga runs a “trendy after-school hangout that specializes in pudding”. Because when you think of Topanga – weird, insightful Topanga who went to college to become a lawyer – you think of pudding hangout.

Also, pudding? Are they too good for the tried-and-true “after-school juice bar/burger joint hangout”? Topanga could own it, and take care of legal stuff and ideas for food, but she wouldn’t be working the cash register or anything, and she could always be there trying to get kids to eat vegetables and tofu burgers and try this new granola smoothie, but the kids are like “ew no healthy stuff blech”.

If Shawn was in the show (disclaimer: I do respect Rider Strong’s decision/preference to not appear in the show), he could own the after-school hangout. Maybe he and Topanga went into business together. They both hang out there to dispense advice and get into fights about convincing children to eat certain food.

Ah, well. In another universe.

I’m suddenly getting a lot of views on this blog, so I thought I’d try to motivate myself to do the next episode. :3

Shawn and Cory are in science class, and a teacher we’ve never seen before – in a classroom set we’ve never seen before, it doesn’t look like they just redecorated Feeny’s usual classroom – reminds the class that their papers are due. Shawn and Cory of course had no idea there was a paper due. Then they overhear the teacher telling some kid, the star football player, that he can have an extension. The football player mentions he also plays basketball, and the teacher tells him just to forget about turning in the paper at all. Ah. Injustice.

So Cory and Shawn break into school later that night, to drop their papers off on the science teacher’s desk, because he apparently didn’t put the other papers in his office or take them home with him, and just left them all there where anything could happen to them. Then Cory somehow accidentally starts a fire and they both run out of the building. Cory asks Shawn if he remembered to put the fire, because, he, it’s a chemistry lab, and fires+chemicals=explosions. So Cory climbs back up the side of the building to put the fire out.

The next day, Cory’s concerned about getting caught, but Shawn tells him to chill, because no one saw. On cue, Janitor Bud rushes in and drags Cory off to face Feeny, who is inexplicably standing in Turner’s classroom with Turner and Eli, rather than in his office. Cory readily admits it was he who put out the fire, but then Janitor Bud throws us all for a loop by thanking Cory. See, Bud was asleep in his office, because… I guess he lives at the school, and the fire alarm woke him up. So he would’ve… burned to death if Cory… hadn’t put out the fire?…

Red plaid shirt buddies.

Feeny rightly questions why exactly Cory was there to put out the fire in the first place, but Bud is just like “who cares, he saved my life!” Cory tells Shawn he’s not sure about getting all this credit when it’s his fault the fire started in the first place, but then he discovers there’s a red carpet leading to his locker, and Janitor Bud redid his locker so it’s pretty, and opens with a remote. And the science teacher shows up and says he got an A on his paper, even though most his paper seems to have burned away in the fire – the fire that was contained to a garbage can when all the papers were on the teacher’s desk across the room.

There’s a jock rally in the cafeteria, celebrating Cory. Not exciting. Later Cory and Shawn walk home, Cory all abuzz with glee about how everyone loves him now. Shawn isn’t so sure about this, because he doesn’t want Cory to get all high-and-mighty about something like this. Also Cory’s parents know because people have been calling them all day.

Alan: The phone hasn’t stopped ringing all day!
Shawn: Then why didn’t you just answer it?
All: …

Next day at school, Cory’s red carpet is gone. Turner and Eli tell Cory one of the news stations wants to do a story on Cory’s heroism. Cory, who just decided not to lie to anyone anymore, is not looking forward to having to lie to all of Philadelphia on the air, or else lose his “cool” status. Feeny comes by and is all like “Yes, Matthews, now you’ll have to tell them the whole story.” I’m not sure why Feeny so far is the only person who has wondered why exactly Cory was down by the school that late at night. Seems like his parents should be wondering that as well.

Cory calls one of those radio shows where you call in for advice – which, incidentally, I’ve never actually heard of outside of television shows. Maybe I just haven’t been looking hard enough, but they seriously have them on all the tv shows and I’ve never once encountered one in real life. Anyway, he says his name is Gomez, and he’s got a problem, about how he lied and the lie just keeps going and going and he’s not sure if he should correct anyone at this point. The lady on the radio tells him he should watch the news that night, because there’s going to be a story on an inspirational boy named Cory Matthews who saved someone’s life and a whole school by putting out a fire. Cory is understandably displeased by this response.

Later that evening, Cory stands nervously, watching all the news crew stuff pull into his yard. He’s looking out his bedroom window, and I’ve already expressed enough confusion about where exactly that window is supposed to look out to and why people come in through the backyard all the time. Eric comes in and asks if Cory’s ready. Cory tries to ask for advice, posing a hypopthetical “what if there was a lie that snowballed out of control” question. Eric tell him not to ruin his (Eric’s) chance at impressing the news anchor, so he has a shot at fulfilling his dream of becoming a tv weatherman. This is one of those weird things that will actually come up several more times through the series, even though it’s never been mentioned before. It’s weird the things some shows decide are in continuity (Eric’s weatherman dreams) and the things that apparently are not (Nebula Lawrence, Stacey Hunter).

Eric tries to impress the news anchor, and Cory tries to get one of the boom mic operators to do the interview for him. Connie, the newswoman, interviews Amy, Alan, and Eric, while Cory hides on the side. Alan and Amy try to say they’re proud of Cory and that he hasn’t changed much and is still the nice, honest young man he always was, but Eric keeps trying to steer the interview in the direction of him showing off how well he can deliver a weather report.

The news goes on a break while the studio’s weatherman delivers the weather, as Eric lets out an anguished scream. Cory goes outside and Feeny dispenses advice, saying “a real hero is someone who does the right thing, when the right thing isn’t the easy thing to do.” Cory accuses Feeny of knowing all along, which… duh. It’s Feeny. Feeny says he doesn’t have enough facts to accuse anyone of anything, if that’s what Cory means.

Amy and Alan come out to get Cory, and Cory admits that he also started the fire he put out. His parents are all upset, about how he let everyone go one believing the story. And also Cory has to go in and tell Connie about all this mess on his own, on live tv and all. Then Feeny calls Cory a hero, admits he knew all along, and tells Cory to show up to school tomorrow. Cory points out tomorrow is Saturday, and Feeny says he knows that, and he should bring old clothes. He’ll be painting.

During the credits, Janitor Bud removes Cory’s automatic locker thingy. Cory doesn’t mind, because he’s got his best friend and his girlfriend back. Topanga basically had one line earlier and didn’t show much signs of not liking Cory’s new life, and Shawn pretty much only had one scene where he was concerned Cory might be getting a big head – and that was before Cory’s ego started really inflating, and Shawn seemed fine during the interview scene anyway.

All-star athlete guy asks for an extension from the science teacher again, which he gladly grants. Cory has a note from his doctor saying he’s got an appointment so he’ll miss some test, and the teacher replies “Tell it to someone who cares.” Ah. Injustice. if that wasn’t a slight exaggeration of what really happens in school, I’d say something about it.

So, the moral of the story is… tell the truth. But… since Cory didn’t tell the whole truth, he got an A on that one paper. And we never saw him get humiliated in front of everyone. And also if he’d told the whole truth from the beginning, I think he could’ve gotten charged with trespassing. So… I don’t know.

The next episode, I think, is going to be a good example you can provide in arguments for why this show wasn’t really as deep and meaningful as everyone likes to remember it as (hint: it’s the one with the pig).

Also, look at Shawn’s vest.

Ugh. It looks like a carpetbag.

Plaid count: ugh there was so much. Especially in this one shot, there was like 7 plaid shirts at once.

Just a couple episodes away from one of my favorites. Hopefully I can get to it in less than 3 weeks this time!

Shawn asks Cory if he remembers that old goldfish he (Shawn) used to have. Cory asks if he means the turtle. Long story short, Shawn has a pig now.

Cory thinks this is out of jealousy and loneliness because of all the time Cory has been spending with Topanga lately. I guess all that time has been off-screen, because she’s had like 10 minutes of screentime this season. Shawn answers to the contrary, and Topanga comes over, says the pig is cute, and asks who it belongs to. Shawn says it’s his pig, he found it, and Topanga says the pig needs a proper home, where it can run around and… stuff. Cory tells them to calm down, since it’s just a pig, and they both (er, that is, Shawn and Topanga) shoot him daggers.

Also the pig’s name is Little Cory.

Eric asks Feeny for college advice, and asks him how hard it would be to get into this school called “Yah-leh”. Feeny surmises Eric means Yale, which is easy to get into if you have the money and the brains, of which Eric has neither.

Jeez pigs are adorable when they’re small.

Cory comes over to Shawn’s house with a present for Little Cory. He brought a squirrel bank. Shawn asks why a squirrel instead of a piggy bank, and Cory tells him it’s because he didn’t think an object where you shove metal into a pig’s back would be an appealing gift for an actual pig. I don’t know what a piglet is going to do with a bank anyway. If I was a pig, I’d probably just spend all my money on candy right when I got paid.

Anyway, Topanga disapproves of Shawn keeping a pig inside his apartment, and Turner is displeased with the pig kissing him and pooping on his pillow. Remember in the last review when I said something about how people remember this show as always having such deep, meaningful plot lines?

Eric has bought a bribe for Mr. Feeny to write him a good college recommendation. He’s bought a pair of opera tickets, for Feeny to do whatever he wants with, and Feeny is like “Good, I’ll see you there at 8.” Eric is confused, because he bought those with the intention of Feeny having a good time, without Eric.

Shawn is at Chubbie’s, impressing a bunch of girls. He tells a story/joke about how he walked in with Little Cory, Chubbie says “Hey, who’s the pig you’re with?!” and Little Cory pointed to Shawn! Ha ha ha.

Topanga and Cory walk in. Topanga thought Cory had talked to Shawn about not keeping the pig. Cory suggests maybe it’s a different pig. So Topanga goes over to confront Shawn, pointing out that sure he’s cute now, but he’s going to get bigger. Shawn doesn’t care, referencing a relative of his who is also fat like a pig. Topanga doesn’t like that answer and is all “Well Cory agrees with me, don’t you Cory?” and Shawn’s like “No, Cory thinks I’m right. Right, Cory?” Cory, wishing to avoid displeasing his best friend and his girlfriend, says they’re both right, but ends up agreeing with Topanga, to the rage of Shawn.

The next day (probably), Cory tries to call Shawn, to no avail. His parents ask what the problem is, and Cory talks about the pig and blahblahblah. I’m more interested in being able to read some of what’s on the markerboard next to the phone. The first item reads “Eric goes to opera”. The third says “Cory Shawn [unreadable - sort looks like it says "child"]“. The fourth item seems to say something about Alan, but I can’t tell what the rest of it says or what item #2 says. I wonder if it’s a reference to what’s going on during the episode, or is just supposed to be like a regular “this is what’s going on today/tomorrow” reminder board.

Cory explains that he thought both Topanga and Shawn were right, and Alan and Amy tell him if that’s what he thought, he shouldn’t have taken sides at all.. You can tell Cory’s just holding back from saying “Well that’s sure helpful NOW”.

Cory apologizes to Shawn at lunch, saying he didn’t want all this stuff to happen over a pig. Shawn is all “Yeah, it’s just a pig, to you, to Topanga, to the people who abandoned him at the trailer park.” Cory asks how he knows the pig was abandoned, and Shawn says it’s because the trailer park manager told him the pig’s last owners just drove off and left him. That’s sad enough on its own, people just driving away and leaving their animals with no one to take care of them, but it’s also pretty sad if you remember that’s sort of what happened to Shawn as well.

So Cory agrees to try to get Topanga to understand Shawn’s point of view, and they have Topanga come over to Shawn’s apartment later that night, with the understanding that if she says ANYTHING negative about Little Cory, she’s out. The first thing Topanga says when she comes in is that there’s a light in the hallway that’s out and Shawn might want to tell the building’s superintendent, to which Shawn replies “THAT’S IT! OUT!” Cory then politely points out that Topanga said absolutely nothing about the pig.

Topanga then asks why keeping the pig is such a big deal to Shawn, Cory says something about Shawn being a great father and how he was giving Little Cory a bath just before Topanga came in. They look towards the little bathtub, only to find Little Cory is missing. First Shawn thinks he must’ve turned into broth from sitting in the water too long, but then they realize he must’ve walked out the door that Topanga left open.

Shawn is upset, and blames Topanga, but Topanga says that’s just the kind of thing that happens when a pig lives in a city! Shawn says he’s going to go look for him, and Cory says he’ll stay by the phone in case Little Cory calls. Topanga and Shawn both look at him like this:

Yeah, Shawn thinks Cory’s stupid for expecting a pig to call. Shawn who thought his pig turned into broth from sitting in water for a few minutes.

But the day is saved, because Turner found Little Cory outside, heading towards the rib shack.

There’s about 45 seconds from when we last see Little Cory in the tub to when Turner brings him in. In those 45 seconds, Little Cory climbed out of the tub, onto the kitchen counter, onto the ktichen floor, across the floor, out the door, out of the building – where I assume he would’ve had to go down stairs and open the building’s front door at some point – and into the parking lot, heading in the direction of a rib shack. And more importantly, how did none of the 3 kids see the pig climbing out of the tub or leaving through the door?

Oy, well, Topanga says this is exactly why she called Animal Control, because Shawn is just so irresponsible – even though it’s actually her fault for leaving the door open in the first place. Shawn finds this unacceptable, and leaves to hide Little Cory someplace. This time, regular Cory takes Shawn’s side, saying Topanga had no real right do such a thing. They leave, and Topanga asks Turner, if he hates the pig so much, why does he put up with it, to which Turner says it’s because the pig makes Shawn so happy.

At the opera, Eric is bored.

But he says it’s worth it as long as he gets into Yale. And then of course, Feeny replies there’s no way he can get Eric into a Yale sweatshirt, let alone the actual school. Eric wonders what the point of him being there is in that case, and Feeny talks about how being cultured makes you… better and more interesting, or something. Eric’s like “feh” and turns to leave, but then the orchestra strikes up a familiar tune… Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, which Eric recognizes from the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, “What’s Opera, Doc?”

He’s not actually Al Borland.

Shawn wonders if hiding the pig at Cory’s house is a bit too obvious. Cory says no, hiding it at Old McDonald’s farm would be obvious, and he’s sure Topanga didn’t actually call Animal Control anyway. On cue, an Animal Control officer rings the bell.

Cory and Shawn play it smooth and have Officer Al Borland almost convinced, but Shawn refers to regular Cory as “my little Cory”, and Little Cory the pig comes downstairs. The Animal Control guy is about to leave with the pig, when Topanga runs in. She says she found an ad in the paper for a lost pig, and she called the owners, so the AC guy doesn’t need to take the pig. She asks Shawn “Isn’t that great?”, but of course Shawn doesn’t think it’s so great. Either way, he loses the pig. It doesn’t strike him as at all odd that there’s an ad in the paper for a missing pig that was apparently put there by people who deliberately drove off and abandoned the pig?

Well, it turns out to not be important, because the “owner” of the pig Topanga contacted is Turner, who says he lives on a farm outside the city and the pig belongs to his kid, Zed. Cory and Shawn find that a ridiculous name, even though 1) Topanga’s dad is named Jedediah, and 2) Zedediah is an actual name, especially up in Pennsylvania farming communities. It’s not like the Amish give their kids names like that or anything. But Zed is a weird name to make up on the spot.

So AC guy leaves, and Shawn asks Topanga why she did that, and she says it’s because it’s not her pig, it’s Shawn’s. That’s a really stupid reason, though. I mean, if Shawn had been abusing that pig, or if it had been attacking people or something, she wouldn’t say “Oh I won’t call Animal Control because it’s YOUR pig”. But, whatever. Shawn has a pig now. And we all learned a lesson about… I don’t really know.

During the credits, Eric has fallen in love with opera, and asks Feeny if he can go to other cultured events, like ballet, or the Philharmonic, or whatever, and he doesn’t want to leave the opera. Feeny keeps telling him it’s over, there’s nothing to keep waiting for, and then the fat lady sings.

Uh, yeah, so, it’s probably not actually a good idea to keep a farm pig indoors when you don’t have a backyard, and no one really learned to not put their friend in the middle of arguments, but… Shawn has a pet pig now. Yay.

In other news, with Halloween coming up in a month, I was thinking… Halloween countdown posts? Hopefully it’ll go a bit better than Christmas in July did. My idea is to do reviews for various Halloween and spooky-related tv shows and movies. Probably won’t do one a day, but I’m shooting for at least 3 a week up until Halloween.

Boy Meets World reviews would continue as… well as regular as they are right now.

So much for Halloween month! Oy.

Well, here’s a spooky-themed episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.

We open on a creepy old house, full of skeletons. I don’t know if if it’s creepier or not that all the skeletons are of animals on a show where the majority of the cast is also animals. It’s certainly weird, at the very least.

Then we have Buster Bunny popping out of a coffin… or a trunk, it looks more like, dressed as the Crypt-Keeper from “Tales from the Crypt”. Here the episode title reference should become immediately obvious.

Buster looks genuinely creepy in this get-up, I have to say.  Wouldn’t want to run into him in a dark alley.

Also, I seem to recall there being a similar “scary” episode of Tiny Toons hosted by Elmyra in an obvious parody of Elvira and Elvira’s Movie Macabre. Maybe that’s coming up in this episode, I don’t know.

Anyway, our first toon from the crypt is called “Wait Til Your Father Gets Even”, and stars Hamton Pig, and presumably involves his father in some capacity.

It starts with Hamton and Plucky Duck playing jacks, and Plucky is gleefully cheating Hamton, with Hamton (oy I’m getting tired of typing Hamton) blissfully unaware. Not much is going on when suddenly my computer’s DVD software suddenly switches the audio to Spanish.

I restore the audio to English, and Plucky wants to make a deal with Hamton – he’ll bet his halo (yes, halo) against Hamton’s dad’s bottle cap collection. Of course Plucky wins, leaving Hamton alone and ashamed and afraid to face his father. No one mentions why he brought his dad’s bottle caps to play jacks with Plucky. also Hamton says something about how he’ll never gamble again, and now he knows what Pete Rose feels like. This is one of many instances on this show of references that its target audience probably would not have understood, while being a bonus gag for the adult audience. However, I am an adult, I do not understand that reference (although I do know Pete Rose is a baseball player, although I don’t know how or why I know that), possibly because that reference is apparently, according to Wikipedia, apparently years old.

Ham comes home, his mom yells at him and tells him to upstairs without supper and to “just wait til your father comes home!” This episode isn’t very scary so far. Also, I know kids winning things for keepsies is a difficult legal barrier to work through (no it’s not), but, I don’t know, just go back and tell Plucky you have to have the bottle caps back, challenge him to a different game, have your mom talk to Plucky’s mom… something!

Hamton seems to live in a hotel room, based on the sparse and generic decor. Ham has a daydream about his dad banishing him to… I don’t know, Phoenix*? Some desert wasteland full of red colors and rhinoceros… gypsies? They steal the notebooks and pencils out of his backpack and decide to roast him in the fire when they find out what happened. Ham wakes up and sees his father is home.

*That was a joke.

His dad, it turns out, is very kind with him. He’s disappointed, and was hoping to pass on the collection to Ham some day, but, apparently there’s literally nothing they can do about it. Then Hamton, Hamton’s dad, and Hamton’s brother all sit out on the porch and drink lots of soda pop, because having 24 of the same bottle cap is almost as good as having a whole collection of different caps.

Buster-Keeper (Crypt Buster?) points out that story didn’t have a frightening end at all, but says that Plucky’s parents didn’t react as kindly to finding out Plucky gambled.

On the one hand, that’s dark. On the other hand, this IS a spin-off of Looney Tunes.

Next up is “Concord the Kindly Condor.” According to his theme song, Concord wants to be a veterinarian, and his older brothers, who may or may not be the ghostly uncles from Casper the Friendly Ghost, think he’s a dink. Condors are supposed to eat weak and sickly animals, not help them!

Pretty much the whole plot of this story is the brothers trying to eat animals and get their brother to stop fixing animals. The brothers eventually lay off when they’re attacked by a bear and Concord helps them. He shows them their doctor’s bill and chuckles “Who says I don’t prey on the weak and sickly?”

Also there’s an elk with Rheumatism using a walker.

The said he was an elk, even though he looks more like a moose in my opinion.

Crypt Bunny then introduces us to some real horror: A COMMERCIAL.

But I’m watching a DVD, so…

Our final story stars Elmyra, and is called “Night of the Living Pets.” Elmyra is one character I must explain for those of you who have never seen Tiny Toon Adventures before. She’s a little girl who loves animals and has lots of pets, but she’s, um… a little too enthusiastic. A bit like Darla from “Finding Nemo,”, she’s well-meaning but doesn’t know the things she does are very harmful to her pets.

So the story opens with Elmyra looking through a photo album, full of pictures of her pets who have passed on, including a goldfish she tried to take for a walk, and a horse that JUMPED OFF A CLIFF to get away from her. I know I said that bit with Plucky getting sawn in half was dark, but… GEEZ. Anyway, she wishes she could see all her old pets just one more time, which is a very sweet wish that I think we can all…

Um…

I…

OH MY GOD!!

So all the zombie pets break into Elmyra’s house, and she goes classic Horror Movie route by running upstairs and just hiding in her room. Elmyra cowers in fear, but it’s no use. The zombies have found her. She’s done for.

Except when she realizes they’re all very stinky and could use a bath! The first pets she bathes dissolve in the bath water. She tries to vacuum an old, dead cat, but it just sucks all the remnants of its fur off, leaving a skeleton. The other animals run back into their graves to get away.

Then it turns out it was all a dream. Her deceased pets didn’t come back to life as zombies after all! Thank goodness.

Well, except, Elmyra decides seeing her old pets is a great idea after all, and she runs into the cemetery to dig them them all up.

Crypt Bunny says that ending was too creepy, even for him, and the show ends.

…What is there even to say? I was very much mistaken in assuming this would be a scary episode. I wish I could remember which episode of this show it is that plays out more like a horror movie. They’re in some mountain retreat or something and a moose(?) is picking them all off, one by one. I remember being genuinely frightened of that episode as a kid.

Ah, well.

This episode wasn’t particularly good, I think. I didn’t find it very funny, or scary, or anything. The zombie animal designs were creepy, though. That’s something, I guess.

I’m watching another episode as I finish typing this and finish with the pictures, and… geez, some of this show has not aged well. I guess if you were a preteen or teenager when the show first started airing, you could see a lot of these jokes and references as funny, nostalgic kick-backs, but a lot of it just comes off like “oh… I guess that existed back then.” Sister show Animaniacs has not aged as poorly, though.

That is a FANTASTIC title.

If you’ll recall, in my last review, I mentioned how I remembered there being a Tiny Toon Adventures episode with Elmyra as a parody of Elvira, Mistress of Macabre, and there was a plot with something like a serial killer moose, or something?

Elmyra, Mistress Who’s a Dork, introduces us to our feature, which is in the title spot up there.

We’re first greeted with an imposing, shadow figure who startles all the cute woodland creatures. It turns out it was just Babs, though, and everyone is scared of her giant, rabbit feet.

She and her friends, Fifi (a purple skunk) and Shirley (a white loon) are hanging out in a cottage on a cliff to get to know each other better, or something.  A cloaked figure comes in, and almost hits Babs with an axe.

It turns it was just Shirley, though. Babs isn’t amused, and says “No more practical jokes!” during their weekend getaway.

The girls use a Ouija board to find out who their soul mates are. None of them are satisfied with the results. A pillow-fight ensues. Mark that under “sentences I never thought I’d write.”

The girls collapse in a pile of giggles, and a stick turns the lights off – or, someone outside the door holding a stick. Babs is upset, reminding the others that they promised not to try to scare each other for the rest of the night. The other girls deny doing anything, which makes sense because the light-switch is all the way on the other side of the room so it would’ve taken some real ingenuity for them to turn the lights off.

Then there’s some honestly terrifying howling sounds – sort of like a cougar on steroids, and we find out it definitely wasn’t Babs, Fifi, or Shirley.

It was a one-eyed moose.

He shrieks and throws goop at all the girls, then leaves. Fifi distressed at having been slimed, but Babs smells the substance and determines it to be shaving cream, which is really weird considering it glows neon green. She decides fellow bunny Buster must be behind it, and upon opening the door, the girls find not only rabbit tracks, but pig and duck tracks as well! Buster, Hamton, and Plucky. The fiends!

The three boys are sitting around a campfire, joking about how scared they made the girls, then Buster decides to tell a scary story, about one-eyed Jack. One-eyed Jack was a jack-rabbit that was large, got hit by a car, and was turned into a weird, giant jackalope-type thing by an evil scientist.

Buster then yowls at the other boys, scares them, makes fun of them for being scared, then there’s another inhuman howl that none of them made. It turns out, of course, it was Babs and the girls this time, getting their revenge. The boys run off, because of course they did. Babs congratulates the girls for a job well done, but all Fifi can do is repeat a small phrase in French, a phrase including the name “Jacques.” Babs can’t understand her, but Shirley has a translation – “I think she’s saying ‘One-eyed Jack’!” Babs points out that Shirley always sleeps through French class, so how could she possibly know that Fifi’s saying “One-eyed Jack?”

Shirley says it’s because he’s standing right over there!

Yeeeeeeeeeks. I remember actually being quite frightened of this as a kid. It’s not as scary now, but still… The people who worked on this show sure know how to do scary character designs!

The girls run back to the cottage, and barricade the front door, forgetting the cottage also has windows and a chimney.

But, no, no obvious plot twist where he just comes in through the back door or whatever. Turns out, he was already in the house and they used him to barricade the door!

I didn’t even notice him at first, wow.

Fifi takes a stand and sprays him with skunk… spray, and Babs and Shirley run out in the way cartoons do where they bust the wall out in their exact shape. They manage to find an old, abandoned, creepy castle, which turns out to be full of taxidermied animals. In a darker cartoon, you might consider that almost the entire cast of this show is animals, so running into a place that’s full of dead animals, primped and stuffed for display, would be like if you, dear reader, entered a museum full of perfectly preserved human corpses posed to look as if they were golfing, reading a newspaper, or whatever. Perhaps there’s a wall full of mounted human heads. What would be the human part equivalent of using antlers in all of your decorating, I wonder?

Anyway, it turns out Buster, Hamton, and Plucky are all hiding in the castle. When they find out it was just the girls who scared them before, they go to leave, but Babs tries to stop them, on account of there being a real monster out there. They don’t believe her.

Yep. And then he, erm, plucks Plucky. The four remaining characters, being genre savvy, know the best thing to do in this situation is to stick together, so they walk with their backs all together.

Shirley’s thirsty, so they all walk like that into the kitchen. The sink is full of dirty dishes, but Shirley still finds a clean glass. She goes to turn on the faucet, and One-eyed Jack’s hand comes out of the faucet and pulls her up the spout (it’s a cartoon). The others are just like “huh, that was weird.” Then Ham announces he’s hungry, and they head to the refrigerator, despite the fact that the castle clearly hasn’t had an occupant in at least two weeks (judging by the cobwebs but lack of dust; also that estimation was meant to be humorously lower than expected; thank you, I’ll be here explaining my own jokes all week), so it seems unlikely the refrigerator would have anything good in it. But he is a pig.

And then he gets grabbed into the refrigerator by good ol’ Jack.

Buster and Babs actually notice and care this time, and Babs expresses annoyance at Buster’s dumb idea  – ‘Our only chance is to stick together!’ she says, mockingly.

They hear a noise, Babs determines is coming from downstairs, so Buster suggests they go up. Buster runs up the stairs ahead of Babs, and the stairs sort of life like a hatch when Babs goes to run up them, so she instead gets sucked into some sort of abyss. Buster realizes he is the only one left, and he then makes a run for it. Down the hill, swinging on a vine, down a long railroad track on one of those handcars you always see in old cartoon, and finally into a kayak. His is a bittersweet victory – he made it out alive, but he’s the only one who did.

…NOPE.

Turns out the others are all alive as well, but locked up in some dungeon. One-eyed Jack comes in and growls at them, and then… reveals there’s a zipper… it’s actually been a suit this whole time… worn by…

…Elmyra.

She has captured our cartoon friends for cuddle time, because she loves animals, and such. Before the other characters bust out of their chains and through the wall in true cartoon manner, Elmyra remarks “Don’t you just love a movie with a surprise ending?”

Not much else to say here. Like I said before, I was actually really scared of this episode when I was little. It doesn’t hold up the fright very much for me as an older person, but it’s still a great episode, with a surprising plot twist that actually makes a lot of sense.

I think that’s it for the Tiny Toon episodes this month. I will return shortly with yet another cartoon, this time about… Four-eyed Jack!

Ah, Hey Arnold. I might’ve mentioned in “Arnold’s Christmas” how Hey Arnold is perhaps a rare cartoon in that it only has one episode for each holiday, so they don’t have 3 Halloween episodes and 5 Christmas episodes even though the show only takes place over the course of 10 months. The show even has episodes for April Fool’s Day, Friday the 13th, and a very touching Veteran’s Day episode, the moral of which was “you don’t have to punch Hitler in the face to be considered a hero.”

Though this show has just the one Halloween episode (which I don’t feel like covering this year), it has several other episodes that are spooky-themed, and could definitely qualify as a Halloween episode if they actually took place in October. One is the aforementioned Friday the 13th episode, one involves a headless horse-drawn cab driver and may or may suggest one character gets killed after the end of the episode. Two more are the episodes we are covering today – season 2′s “Four-Eyed Jack”, and season 5′s “Ghost Bride.”

“Purdy Boys: Trapped in a Mansion with a Bunch of Undead Mummies”

“Four-Eyed Jack” begins with Gerald sleeping over at Arnold’s house. They’re reading a bunch of old Purdy Boys Mysteries books (a parody of the Hardy Boys) that they’ve pulled out of a box they probably got out of the basement. Then Arnold finds a pair of glasses. Weird. Arnold’s grandpa comes in to bring them milk and cookies, and when Arnold asks about the glasses, boy does Grandpa have a story to tell.

A long time ago, the boarding house had a tenant everyone called Four-Eyed Jack, “on account of the glasses.” He was big on bean recipes, always tinkering away in the basement on baked beans or whatever, until one day there was a big explosion and he died. So now his ghost haunts the boarding house, bumping around all over the place, looking for his lost glasses, especially on dark and stormy nights such as this one! A few more keys to this story is that his ghost is accompanied by a terrible groaning sound, and a foul stench.

Arnold decides it’s his mission to return the glasses to Four-Eyed Jack. Gerald thinks it’s stupid to try to give glasses back to a ghost, but he goes along with Arnold anyway. Grandpa tells them good luck, and also mentions having an upset stomach due to the raspberry cobbler Grandma made earlier.

Arnold and Gerald head out into the hallway after Grandpa leaves. They run into lazy, terrible Oskar in the hallway, in the midst of a fight with his wife. They explain they’re ghost hunting – or Arnold does, at least – and asks if he’s heard any noises lately. Oskar hasn’t, but right after that they hear a strange gargling sound.

Oskar joins the boys on their ghost hunt, because he doesn’t want to stay alone in the hallway if there’s ghosts. They then run into Ernie Potts, who tells them not to mess with the supernatural, and he also adds that he’s heard some very strange sounds coming from downstairs over the last few days.

On cue, more gargling sounds start up. They all creep downstairs, Ernie armed with a small hammer, Oskar clutching the lucky horseshoe he keeps in his pants (but he insists he’s not the least bit superstitious). They head downstairs, and find the source of the gargling – in the kitchen!

It turns out it’s just Mr. Hyunh, though. He tells them that if you’re dealing with a ghost, you should prepare an offering, to appease it and get it to leave you alone. Gerald, who’s been very skeptical and annoyed this whole time, insists there’s no ghost. Then this happens:

I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for that.

They then hear a moaning sound coming from the basement, and all five – Hyunh now carrying a fish to please the ghost – head down there. We rarely see the basement on this show, but it looks especially creepy in this episode, sort of like a medieval torture dungeon. The moaning continues, and Gerald’s starting to get nervous. Then they realize… there’s a horrible smell! Just like the one that’s supposed to signal the coming of Four-Eyed Jack!

Arnold is about to open the door the moaning is coming from behind, but Gerald stops him. If he opens the door, Gerald reasons, it will turn out one of them is wrong – “And what if it’s me?” Gerald asks. Arnold’s only response is to roll his eyes.

He decides to turn the knob anyway, but before he can, the knob starts turning by itself! The moaning is intensifying! Oh no, it’s…

Grandpa!

It turns out there’s a second bathroom in the basement, which Grandpa has always used as his private bathroom, and he was down there, moaning and stinking up the place due to the raspberry cobbler that didn’t agree with him. Gerald’s happy to be right, and that there isn’t actually a ghost, the three tenements are upset that there’s been a second bathroom this whole, Grandpa’s upset that now his secret is out, and Arnold’s disappointed he didn’t get to help out a ghost that he’d never heard of before despite living in the same place for 10 years with a guy who has lived there since the 1920s.

The next scene has Arnold and Gerald sleeping. Arnold’s still clutching the glasses in his hand. And something’s sort of weird with the scene. The “camera”‘s sort of floating and darting around, and everything’s really blurry.

The glasses leave Arnold’s hands and rise up into mid-air. Suddenly everything is clear again.

We pan over to Gerald, lying on Arnold’s fold-out couch with his blanket down around his butt. An invisible hand moves the blanket so it’s covering all of Gerald. Gerald is disturbed by this, and awakens from his slumber. And he sees this:

He rubs his eyes, unsure of what he’s seen, and looks again. The ghost of Four-Eyed Jack says “Um… Boo?” and flies out of the building when Gerald screams, waking the whole building.

I’ve always loved this episode. It’s good at setting up the mood, and you don’t really see either twist coming unless you’ve seen the episode before. Plus, ghost!

“Ghost Bride” begins with Arnold, Gerald, fat, stupid bully Harold (yeah, I don’t know why there’s three characters with such similar names on this show), skinny southern-accented hick Stinky, cowardly jerk with the weird nose Sid, eternal optimist Eugene, crazy nut Curly, and the tough-as-nails bully with a big crush on Arnold, Helga (oy try deciphering that sentence), all walking past a cemetery for some reason.

Harold mentions being creeped out by all the dead people, and Stinky comments that they’ll all be in the cemetery too, some day. Way to keep things light, Stinky.

Somehow they segue into the tale of the Ghost Bride. Curly really wants to tell the story, but they tell him no, Gerald should tell it. Curly insists that he knows the story well enough to tell it instead, but Sid tells him “Gerald is the keeper of the tale” (Gerald was always the go-to guy for urban legends, except for the times Arnold’s Grandpa wanted to mess with the kids).

Curly is the one with the red glasses and striped socks in the foreground.

The story goes, back in the Middle Ages – the 1980s – a woman was totally in love with a man. They were supposed to be married, but on the day of the wedding, she waited and waited and he never showed up. She found out later that her fiancee had gone and fallen in love with her sister, and they had gotten married that day. I just… dang, that’s cold. The woman finally snapped after a few days, put her wedding dress back on, got a hatchet out of her basement, went to the home of her former fiancee and her sister, and murdered them in their sleep. When the police arrived (I don’t know who called them, since presumably they didn’t make much screaming noises as they were murdered in their sleep), the woman was sitting in a rocker, next to the bodies, throwing rice and humming the wedding march. Before the cops could do anything, she jumped out the window to her death. They buried her in her wedding dress in the very cemetery the kids are standing next to, and her ghost apparently haunts the place.

The kids all think it’d be cool to come back at night to see if there’s a ghost. Harold doesn’t want to go, but he’ll go anyway so no one calls him a chicken. Curly leaves, still mad about not getting to tell the story. Helga’s all for it, though, and asks what time they should meet up. They tell her she can’t come, Harold adding that girls scare too easily. Remember, Harold was the only one who expressed any fear at going to the cemetery at night to see a ghost, but Helga’s the one who will get scared because she’s a girl?

Helga’s all “Fine, then,” goes home, and puts together a plan. Later the boys show up at the cemetery, find the bride’s tombstone, decide that just before sundown counts as night, and try to leave.

“… I can’t read the rest.”

But the gate is locked. They try to leave through another exit, but on the way, they hear someone humming the wedding march. Arnold tries to keep a level head, but you can’t argue with humming that doesn’t seem to have a source.

Or this:

Although it’s just Helga, of course.

Helga has a few more tricks up her sleeve, such as rigging another cemetery exit to appear to close on its own. Finally Helga’s satisfied, until she hears someone humming the wedding march. She turns and sees… another ghost bride!

This finally scares Helga and she runs to catch up the guys, explaining that all the other stuff was her BUT THERE’S A REAL GHOST AAAAAUGH.

They find a good place to hide from the ghost in a… mausoleum. I don’t know, axe-wielding ghost versus being directly next to dead bodies and coffins?

Whatever. Eventually Arnold decides to venture outside to see if they can find another exit, and Gerald goes with him. The ghost goes to the place the others are hiding in, and that’s when Arnold notices something fishy. The ghost breaks down the door (which I’m sure is a felony or misdemeanor, breaking cemetery property) and is about to kill everyone, or something, but Arnold pulls the ghost’s veil off.

Turns out it’s Curly. He was so angry at never getting to tell the story! None of the other kids are amused, and decide to “get him.” The kids, minus Curly, leave the cemetery, and Arnold reveals he knew it was Curly because he saw the ghost wearing the same socks Curly had on earlier, and it seemed like something Curly would do. Someone asks if maybe they should go back and let Curly out, but Arnold, showing an unusually cruel side, says he figures it shouldn’t take more than half an hour for Curly to realize the door only locks from the inside.

We then cut back to Curly. He’s tied up in the mausoleum.

Aaaand someone is humming the wedding march. All the other kids are well out of the cemetery by then. As far as we know, Curly’s the only person still there. Then where is the humming coming from?

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

I can’t remember if Curly ever shows up in the show again. But this was the first half of the second-to-last episode of the whole series. If he’s not in the last three half-episodes…

I don’t have much to say about “Ghost Bride.” I mean, Curly is straight-up insane on the show, but I guess they’re too young to learn to either just humor him or make sure they never hang out around him. But he does have a point – why does Gerald always to get to tell the cool stories?

Next time, we’ll have at least one more spooky Hey Arnold episode. And I promise regular Boy Meets World recaps will return soon. Especially since the “original air dates” have almost synched up with our current time. I just like when that happens, is all.

Perhaps I’ll go over the other spooky Hey Arnold episodes next year, but this year, we’re just looking at one more: “Haunted Train.”

This is one of my favorite Hey Arnold episodes. I have watched it again and again, I just really like it. It was one of my favorites as a kid, and it’s one of my favorites as an adult. Let’s just climb aboard and start the recap already:

I forgot to apologize in the last review for the “Premium” thing in the upper right. Viacom pulled the show off Netflix, and I can’t afford the DVDs.

Arnold and Gerald are chilling on the stoop outside of the boarding house. Grandpa gives them some ice cream cones that he’s just purchased off the Jolly Olly Man, and asks how things are going. The boys are both bored – they’ve done every activity they could think of, and have nothing left to do.

A train goes by. It’s like the L trains they have in Chicago (and probably elsewhere), which adds to the vagueness of where this show is actually set. But that’s not important now. Grandpa gets an idea, and asks the boys if he ever talked about the time he worked for the railroad. The boys don’t react at all, and Grandpa’s voice suddenly gets big and dramatic as he adds “…AND first heard the legend of the haunted traaaaaain?”

This piques the boys’ interest. Grandpa’s story is much shorter than the usual lead-ins to a spooky episode. It just goes, 40 years ago, a mad train engineer drove off the tracks and crashed, and no one ever saw him or the train again.

Grandpa: Some say he drove it straight to… you know.
Arnold: Mid-town?
Gerald:Downtown?
Grandpa: ALL the way downtown! To the very-most southern point!
Arnold: You mean…?
Gerald: Wow! He drove all the way to the South Pole?

No, the mad engineer drove the train to… Hades. Every year on the anniversary of its last drive, the train comes back, with the mad engineer driving it. He returns to the station to pick up unknowing passengers, who are hypnotized by a bright light, and and are overpowered by a terrible, foul stench, a smell they say is like rotten eggs, but Grandpa says is like fire and brimstone.

A big group of neighborhood kids gathered over the course of the story.

Then a terrible, ghastly, haunting sound, one that would send a chill down to your heart, an inhuman sound, starts up. Then the train travels to the “Zone of Darkness,” an area full of fire and horror.

Then the train comes to a complete stop, and they’re greeted by… Satan!

Grandpa then reveals that this very night is the anniversary of the train’s final ride, and will be picking up passengers at the old train station, and he makes sure to give them the exact location of the station. Most of the kids leave after that, and Grandpa goes inside, chuckling to himself that the kids sure aren’t bored now!

One dissolve cut later, Arnold and Gerald are alone on the stoop, and Helga is jumping rope on the sidewalk. All the other kids have gone. Now, I know Helga is really mean to Arnold all the time, so I don’t exactly blame Arnold for not connecting that she has a huge crush on him, but she does this a lot, where she’ll just be hanging out near his house, or following him, or whatever. Grandpa figured out she has a crush on Arnold (he mentions in one episode that a lot of the time he’ll see her across the street, jumping rope, like she’s waiting for Arnold), but I guess Arnold’s just not genre savvy enough yet.

Arnold and Gerald are discussing the story. Arnold says his grandpa is known for making stuff up, so he’s not toally sure. Helga doesn’t believe the story at all, saying she wants actual, physical proof. Arnold says that some things can’t be proved that way, and maybe the best way to determine if the story’s true is to visit the old train station themselves that very night. Gerald doesn’t like that idea, and Helga thinks it’s stupid, but then Arnold tells her she doesn’t have to come, and he’d understand if she was too chicken to show up. Being called a chicken is a grievous insult, so Helga agrees to go.

Cut to one dark and spooky night, the three kids approach the old train station. Gerald startles a big swarm of bats. Helga, nervous about the huge swarm of flying mammals right over her head, says “Yep, no train, let’s go.” Arnold says they have to wait longer than 30 seconds, and that’s that.

Several hours later, Gerald and Arnold have improvised a blues song about waiting for that haunted train, with Gerald on vocals and Arnold on harmonica. Helga finally has enough and tells them they’ve waited long enough. A loud “Woo-wooo” interrupts her, and she tells Arnold to stop playing that harmonica already. Arnold points out he already did, and as he’s talking, another “woo-wooo” sounds. A train horn!

Yep. Train.

“All aboard the Hogwarts express!”

The doors open and a blinding white light fills the screen, and the three kids find themselves aboard. They comment on this, Helga saying they’re victims of a force they cannot possibly imagine, and run to the doors, which close right before they can get there. The train starts moving, and a terrible smell fills the train car… The smell of rotten eggs! And then they hear some terrible, cacophonous, ear-splitting music! They’re three for three in terms of signs they’re actually on the haunted train.

Then the lights go out. The Zone of Darkness! By this point, Helga is full-on panicking. This is one of the things that makes Helga a great character. Normally she’s very tough, hard-as-rock, whatever. She gets angry pretty easily. But she’s so melodramatic! Just listen to her when she’s expressing her love for Arnold. And then there’s times like this situation, or the time they were all trapped on a subway, where everyone else is clearly afraid, but she’s the one who’s so over the top it either makes you even more nervous or just really annoyed at how nervous she is.

Anyway, Helga knows this is the end. She can feel the hot breath of the underworld upon her neck, and… Wait what’s that behind her?!

Oh, it’s just Brainy.

Brainy is this weird, creepy guy who always shows up behind Helga, breathing heavily. Apparently it’s because he has asthma and a crush on Helga, but he’s downright ridiculous. One time he showed up inside a tree that Helga was standing in front of. If I recall correctly, even Helga said that was weird.

Annoyed at him scaring them so badly, they open the train doors and throw him off, into a still river or pond next to the tracks. So… they could open the doors at any time, and jump out… And they didn’t? Not even in the place they threw Brainy into?

Gerald sees some flames outside the window. They’re almost in the fiery netherworld! Oh no! The train is about to stop, but Arnold has an idea. He’ll just… use a fire hose to put out… all of the underworld… what. I guess the plan was actually to spray the Devil when he showed up on the train. I don’t know.

It turns out the thing they sprayed was an actual guy. The conductor of the train hears the ruckus and intervenes.

Don’t think too hard about his chin.

Yep. It turns out the train is a commuter train for steel mill workers. The flames come from it, well, being a steel mill, the lights turning off and being blindingly white is just because the train is old and the lights are faulty, the foul stench is the sulfur from the steel mill, and the terrible noise they heard earlier was the conductor playing his accordion. Ah, see? Nothing supernatural going on, just regular old science. It’s almost… disappointing, after all that.

Grandpa drives the kids home, amused at their story. Arnold tells Grandpa he thinks he set them up, and there isn’t really a haunted train, after all. Grandpa says “Well… I didn’t say that.“

The camera pans over and… well…

Woo-wooo!

Yep. Turns out there IS a haunted train after all!

And the crazy ghost engineer has a blues song of his own!

This was the first episode in the series following the “someone tells ghost story, kids go to investigate, find real-world explanation, then ti turns out there was a ghost after all” formula. And it’s the only one with a really great song at the end, so that makes it the best, in my eyes.

Ah, Doug. “Doug” is one of Nickelodeon’s old Nicktoons, about a bunch of 6th graders, focusing on Doug, who learns life lessons. Basically it was like Boy Meets World, but weirder and without as many serious moments.

And like many cartoons, it has a Halloween episode, which you could guess. This one is sort of unusual for me, though, because I have only seen it once in my entire life. It was so weird, back in the 90s when Doug still aired regularly during normal viewing hours, I could never seem to find this episode. Even during October, it was either never on, or it was never on when I could watch it. I was beginning to think the episode didn’t actually exist, until…

Back when I was in 5th or 6th grade, we lived right next to the school I went to. So I woke up early, to make sure I wouldn’t be late, so waking up early+living 5 minutes from the school meant I had like an hour every morning to just watch tv. And finally, one day, early in the morning, this Halloween episode of Doug came on. I can’t remember anything about it, because that was like 10 years ago and I haven’t seen the episode since. It took place at an amusement park, and I remember finding it scary, and I think it might’ve had the same twist all the spooky Hey Arnold episodes have, but I can’t be sure.

So, without further ado, let’s get to it!

We start with Skeeter – Mosquito Valentine, Doug’s blue-skinned best friend – telling a story. Once upon a time, a baron built a beautiful palace for his beloved. After 17 years, it was finally finished, and he carried his new bride over the threshold, and they fell to their deaths, because the guy had forgot to put in a floor. Man, not enough children’s shows today immediately start with people dying violently.

The castle is apparently haunted to this day, and no one had dared enter it for some time, until some mysterious, cloaked man bought it, and built an amusement park around it, leaving the castle as an attraction within the park, and calling it “Bloodstone Manor.” So the presumably Eastern European von Hassenpfeffer or Dinglehopper or whatever Skeeter said apparently built his giant castle in the Midwestern United States.

Tonight, it seems, is the grand opening of this theme park with the haunted castle in it, and Skeeter demands he and Doug go. Doug is not enthusiastic, but agrees to go anyway. Also apparently Bloodstone Manor is actually a roller-coaster, and not just a haunted house attraction. Doug wishes he could be brave like hero Race Canyon, an Indiana Jones reference that gets major points for not being named “State Generic-last-name” like every other Indiana Jones knock-off.

Doug has a fantasy about Dr. Canyon scaling the big cliff up to Bloodstone Manor, and showing no fear even in the face of… whatever this is:

Doug’s fantasy ends and he dresses up like Race Canyon, by putting on a jacket and a hat over his regular clothes – LAME – because apparently you get into the park free if you’re wearing a costume. He heads over to Skeeter’s house, carrying two bags, and asks Skeeter if he’s ready to go trick-or-treating. Skeeter’s like “Nah man I told you we were going to Blood Manor!” and Doug’s all “What kind of foolish fool gives up the chance to score some free candy!” (I may have embellished that conversation a bit.) Skeeter agrees to go, even though he points out there will be huge lines at the park if they don’t get there early. A short scene cut later, Skeeter wonders if maybe they aren’t too old to go trick or treating. Doug’s trying to stall to keep them from going to the theme park, and insists they aren’t too old, as they’re surrounded by unsupervised children about half their size. You see, children, in the olden days, once you were in middle school, you were considered too old to go begging for free candy house to house. I know that’s hard to believe, what with people not only trick-or-treating up through senior year of high school, but not even bothering to put on costumes, but it’s true!

They are embarrassed when they knock on a door that turns out to belong to one of their classmates, and Skeeter starts getting impatient. Doug tries to come up with something to stall them a bit longer, when green-skinned bully Roger Klaatz “scares” them, and by that I mean he covers his head going “Whoooa who chopped off my head?” and Doug just says “Hi, Roger,” but Roger and his bully gang seem to think they’ve “scared the pants off them.” Roger makes fun of their costumes, even though he’s just wearing his regular clothes with a domino/Lone Ranger/burglar mask on.

Doug and Skeeter head to the park, Doug reluctantly, when Doug’s crush Patty, and her dad, pull up.

It’s irrelevant to this review, but Patty’s dad is actually wheelchair-bound. I don’t think it ever comes up on the show, it’s just a fact of life that’s never a Very Special Episode and isn’t treated as a big deal by anyone. I like that.

By the way, I just realized that for anyone who hasn’t seen this show, you may or may not be thinking me saying “blue-skinned” and “green-skinned” was some sort of metaphor, or a reference, or something. No, some people on this show literally have blue, green, or purple skin, in addition to some characters who have more of a peach color, or the tan that Patty has up there. I remember the creators said this was because they didn’t want to have to keep using boring skin tones all the time, so the blue/green/purple is to add a bit of fun to the show. It’s sort of weird, but I’ve always thought of the blue- and purple-skinned people as being dark-skinned. Maybe it had a lot to do with Doug’s neighbor looking like Bill Cosby. I don’t know.

Anyway, Patty asks if Doug and Skeeter are going trick-or-treating. They deny it, and she says she’s going to a party. I got distracted here because while she talks there’s just a solid loop of animation where she keeps moving her head to the side while she talks.

Patty asks what the boys are dressed as, and when Doug says he’s a hobo (because he lost his hat earlier), Patty says she would’ve guessed he was Race Canyon, but without the hat, and if he were a little taller he’d be the spitting image. This lights a fire within Doug and he suddenly feels brave enough to head to Bloodstone Manor. He asks Patty if her dad would be willing to give them a ride. Patty’s in awe of the boys, and says she’d never go on that ride, not after what happened to those two guys! Doug’s bravery quavers as he asks “What two guys?” Mr. Mayonnaise, Patty’s father (yes, her name is Patty Mayonnaise) says two guys went on the ride and were never seen again, just their shoes. Considering the ride just opened that day I would question the validity of that story.

Skeet and Doug finally get to the ride, but there’s a HUGE line. Like, Splash Mountain in July huge. Or Toy Story Midway Mania when it first opened *shudder*. The boys have just made it to the front of the line after waiting for over an hour, with only 15 minutes left til the park closes. Hm, are they not going to get a chance to ride it while the park is still open, causing them to hide out and sneak onto the ride, only to run into supernatural shenanigans?

Roger butts his way to the front of the line, thanking Doug and Skeet for holding his place, to the objection of absolutely no one behind him. The employee at the door announces the park is closing and no one else can ride tonight, but the gift shop is open. The big line of people behind them apparently teleported away, and the employee entered the Manor, so the three boys are left alone. And wouldn’t you know it, the doors to the place just happen to open, causing them to agree to sneak onto the ride?

“Welcome, foolish mortals!”

So the enter, and the doors close behind them. And then a portrait starts talking.

The lump in the picture frame takes the form of that hooded green guy in that second cap, and calls the boys trespassers. There’s apparently no way out of the room they’re in, except down because I guess the front door doesn’t work both ways. So there’s this huge area of the floor that’s all green and cavernous and spiky, and the front wall of the place starts pushing forward, like it’s going to push them into the pit. It turns out there’s a huge glass piece over it, though, so no harm done.

Then a secret passageway opens, the hooded green guy is in it, and tells them to come this way. They follow it and enter a dining room, where the green guy is in another portrait. It’s pretty obvious if this were real life that would have to be an actual person, or a ghost, but none of the boys think about that at all.

Ghoul guy tells them to eat, and that he thought they might enjoy a small salad.

Ewwww, cabbage!

The chairs grab them, and lower them into another floor, where they are plopped into a roller coaster car.  Doug and Skeet are having a ton of fun, but Roger’s scared out of his mind, and then the car stops and the lights go out.

They turn back on, and Skeeter observes that it’s 10 pm – the park is officially closed. So no one at this park actually goes to check to make sure no one is still on the rides, that there aren’t personal items, bombs, etc? I’m pretty sure they also do some maintenance ride-throughs at the beginning and end of each day at places like Disneyland.

Doug and Skeeter get off the car, to see if they can find an exit, or someone to help them. There’s a set of stairs leading down inside a gravepit, and they follow it, finding the ride’s control room and presumably exit. Skeeter pushes random buttons to see if he can get a dial tone on the phone, and that makes one of the rides cars pull up. Then the ghoulish guy – who I’m not sure if we’re supposed to find doubly creepy because of his dark green skin, because a lot of people have green skin on this show – shows up and is all “Alright you made it THIS time, but you won’t be so lucky next time!” Then a ride car pulls up that just has Roger’s shoes in it.

They then decide that Roger was always a jerk anyway, and leave the park without telling anyone what happened. The end.

No, they hear Roger calling from help from… somewhere, and… well, actually, Doug and Skeeter do almost leave without going back for Roger (I wasn’t even trying to predict what would happen, and I was actually right!), but Doug’s conscience gets the better of him and they go inside. Maybe it would make more sense for them to go find a park employee and ask them for help, but that wouldn’t make for a very good cartoon.

So Doug and Skeet go back into the ride, find a giant hole, wonder if Roger fell down it, Doug says no it must be like the bottomless pit at the beginning that has a sheet of glass over it, but no.

They both fall down the hole and end up in a place that seems to be part control room and part storage area, with random props and stuff hanging around. Doug finds a sarcophagus propped up against a wall, and opens it.

This green guy has teleportation powers that would rival One-Eyed Jack/Elmyra’s in that Tiny Toon Adventures episode. Before you can say “AAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH,” the green guy grabs Doug’s shoulder and demands to know what he’s doing down there. I don’t know, man, you’re the one who trapped them on the ride in the first place!

Doug and Skeeter are like “Oh, we were just leaving” and head in the opposite direction, until Doug hears Roger saying “Over here, this way, guys!” Doug sees a chicken in the mirror instead of himself, and decides to march right over the green guy and demand that he leaves them alone so they can find Roger. Green guy’s like “Okay” and opens up a secret passage that has an entrance in the sarcophagus. All three of them head down a spiral staircase together, and at this point they have to be at least 45 feet below ground, probably more around 60 feet.

Green guy leads the boys over to a control panel that apparently serves as the security area for the ride – which begs the question, where was the security guard who should’ve been making sure no one snuck aboard the ride after closing? Also, all the screens apparently get their feed from the exact same camera, which is sort of pointless.

It turns out, Roger got off the ride and called over his bully squad to put together a prank to scare Doug and Skeeter again, and also they’re going to throw s’mores or something at them.

The Green Goblin replays some footage for the boys to show them exactly what happened. Doug is displeased – they went to all that trouble to save Roger, and he’s just going to dump eggs and toilet paper all over them?! The Green Goblin has other plans, however, as he laughs mischievously. I don’t know what to think about that.

Those beaver teeth aren’t part of a costume, by the way.

Roger grows impatient, waiting for Doug to show up. Then a spooky voice calls out for Roger, seemingly from nowhere. Roger blames one of his friends, but it wasn’t him. It was… the ghosts of Doug and Skeeter!

It turns out Gobby set up a rig in the basement, so Doug and Skeeter are dressed up and suspended by wires, and Gobby is projecting them out onto the lawn, which I’m not really sure is possible, or at least wasn’t in the early 90s.

Doug and Skeeter say that it’s all Roger’s fault that they’re ghosts now, and they call Roger a chicken, and say it was rotten of him to TP all those houses. Roger agrees with the chicken comment, and him and the goons say they’ll clean up all the houses that very night! Before they leave, though, there’s just one more thing.

I don’t know why, but this guy really seemed less threatening after I decided he looks like the Green Goblin. Really.

Later, Gobby escorts Doug and Skeeter out of the amusement park, the three of them laughing at the severe psychological torture they’ve just imposed upon Roger and the two goons he hangs out with. Doug thanks Gobby, saying they couldn’t have done it without him. Gobby, whose voice, while still deep and gravelly, isn’t as scary and electronically mixed as it was before, says he has something that belongs to Doug.

Doug’s Race Canyon hat. The hat that got sucked up onto a bus earlier. That one that cloaked green guy couldn’t possibly have gotten ahold of or known that it belonged to Doug. Unless… Of course! It was obvious! I can’t believe I didn’t see it! All this time, he was… the bus driver!

No, no. When Doug asks who he is, he says you can just call him “Baron von Heffenhopper,” then he laughs maniacally and disappears into a tornado of black ink and stars.

So… The ghost of Baron von Pooperscooper bought his own house? Assuming he was the mysterious cloaked guy Skeeter mentioned in his story.  How exactly did that business deal go down?

“HELLO. I AM, UM… TED… SMITH. I WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BUILDING.”

“Um, sure, Mr… Smith. Why would you like to purchase it?”

“BECAUSE I ALREADY LIVE THER- I MEAN I DIED- I MEAN I AM DYING TO… TO… TURN THE PLACE INTO… A… AN AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE! YES!”

“….Okay… Well full disclosure, we have to tell you that several people have died on the premises, and the bodies were never recovered, so-”

“YES YES I KNOW ALREADY. WE’LL JUST PAVE OVER THE BODIES OR SOMETHING. AND MAKE SURE WE PUT A FLOOR IN THIS TIME. MAYBE A BIG SHEET OF GLASS TO COVER THE GIANT GAPING HOLE SO NO ONE FALLS IN AGAIN LIKE ME AND MY WI- WHY WHITE CANDLE, WHITE CANDLE, DON’T LET OUR LOVE DIE~.”

“…Um… yeah, so do you have any forms of I.D., a credit card, or…?”

So Doug and Skeeter run out of the park, because it either doesn’t have gates or the gates are still open despite the park being closed. Doug wonders if Race Canyon ever ran away from anything, but he still feels brave, or something.

That wasn’t scary at all. Why was I scared of this the one time I saw it when I was 11? I mean, Baron von Noodlemeier was kind of scary-looking and -sounding, but… not terrifying the way I remember. Hm. Ah, well. I have a good idea for what Halloween-related cartoon I’ll review next, based on this trend of “kids run from scary thing, turns out there’s a mundane explanation, actually there’s also a ghost” plots (although this Doug episode didn’t exactly follow that besides there still being a ghost at the end).

Also, I’d like to just say that I was considering talking about that one Boy Meets World episode that, while not a Halloween episode, is pretty scary, but I decided to leave that for later. I think that’s in season 5, and we’re barely into season 3. There’s also another great one that’s from season 6 or 7, but… we’ll get to it. Eventually.

…You know, the scariest part of this episode is that Doug had a fantasy sequence that included Green Goblin/Baron von Bergermeister before he even went to Blood Manor and saw that his fantasy was a real guy.

What.

Today we have the Phineas and Ferb Halloween special. “Phineas and Ferb” is a cartoon brought to you by the guys who created Rocko’s Modern Life. The title characters are step-brothers. Phineas decides at the beginning of summer to not let the whole summer break go by with them just sitting around, doing nothing, and resolves to do something every day. The “something” usually involves some huge activity or machinery that even an adult couldn’t possibly put together in the short time it takes on the show, such as the time they rose to fame and then became has-been superstars; designed, produced, and released a fashion line; wrote, animated, and produced a cartoon special that was released in a movie theater they also built; and decided to have the “longest day ever” by leaving their home town in the morning, traveling eastward across the entire world, and making it back to their hometown by sundown of what was technically the same day they left.

They also have a pet platypus who’s actually a secret agent who mainly fights with the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz, who… well, mainly he wants to talk over the Tri-County area, but he has a lot of other “evil” schemes, like the time he stole all the mascots from a burger chain because he hated that chain’s advertising jingle.

Maybe it sounds kind of stupid the way I described it, but it’s actually a fantastic show. In fact, in all my internet wanderings over the last few years, I have seen exactly 2 people who watched this show and didn’t like it, one of whom didn’t seem to understand what was going on in the show at all (they seemed to think all the kids were nefariously trying to get away with the worst things imaginable, when in fact they’ve been more than happy to share what they’re up to with their parents, but it never works out; they also ask their parents permission for things when they need to, even though their mom usually thinks they’re playing a game or they mean their toy car or something).

Anyway, I’ve mentioned before how cartoons sometimes have that problem, where no one ever ages and the whole show is supposed to take place over one year’s time or so, but sometimes they have multiple holiday episodes (Hey Arnold has at least three episodes that mention the start of Spring Break, despite it having one episode per holiday). Phineas and Ferb has a bigger problem, in that the whole show takes place over the 104 days of summer vacation. But the creators have gotten around that by either 1) having an episode that takes place during the summer break that just involves someone telling a scary story, or making winter in July (S’Winter), or 2) having a holiday special that explicitly states it doesn’t take place during the summer.

Simple.

I’ve rattled on way too much. Here’s “That’s the Spirit”, the first half of the episode.

Candace, the older sister, is taking Phineas, Ferb, and Perry the platypus trick-or-treating. The people at the house we see them at ask her where her costume is. She is not amused. She tells the boys that once she’s finished with them, she’s off to her boyfriend’s house.  Then they run into the other main members of their little gang, Baljeet, who’s dressed as a daisy, Buford, who…. I think is a pirate, and Isabella, who says she isn’t wearing a costume (she’s dressed as a fairy princess), but admits she got it at the mall when Phineas doesn’t really react to that semi-flirtatious statement.

Then they run into this house.

Phineas doesn’t remember seeing it in the neighborhood before, and then a boy pops out of the bushes. His name is Russell – russell/rustle, like the leaves, as Isabella points out. He says the house is haunted, so the kids decide to go in and bust some ghosts. Candace doesn’t want them gong off-track, so she can leave sooner, but goes in after them since she’s responsible for them.  They enter the house, and the lights go out! This is the third review in a row where the lights have gone out at some point.

Perry the platypus escapes to his secret base, where he gets instructions to… find out what’s going on, and put a stop to it. Which is pretty much all he ever gets in terms of instructions. This time, apparently there’s grass missing everywhere. Which is weird. Although not really all that odd at the end of October.

Back at the haunted house, Russell guides the kids into the area that has the most ghostly activity. Baljeet, who’s a total nerd, says there’s no such thing as ghosts, and, by using his EMF detector (many ghost hunters say that a paranormal presence can cause the levels of EMFs to spike above normal; also if you have old pipes or wiring in your home, that can cause your EMF levels to rise, and can actually explain some paranormal phenomena that some people would associate with a bad spirit, like scratches/rashes, nausea, whatever), can tell there’s a normal level of radiation in the room, except when he puts his detector above his head and it spikes pretty badly. Phineas is getting a reading in the 70s on his EMF meter, and comments that he doesn’t remember even putting an option for a two-digit setting on it to begin with (a reading below 3 is average and normal, a reading of 5 is abnormal and indicates a risk of getting cancer, unless it’s just because you’re standing close to an appliance, so having a score of 77… if this were real life I think all the kids would’ve been dead by this point, even if it the high EMF levels were being caused by ghosts).

Then, a pumpkin man chases after the kids.

I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a sight gag, that there’s all those black shapes towards the bottom of the screen, which are presumably dark because they’re so close to us as viewers, but the rat that’s even closer is clearly defined.

Russell insists “it’s totally like this all the time!”

Perry enters Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s lair/apartment, to find him chained to the wall. He explains “it all started a few days ago when I declared war on grass.” Long story short, he was bitten by a werecow and now turns into a cow every night.

Cowfenshmirtz then escapes his chains and runs all over the city, to a song which has a chorus including the words “werecow on the rampage.”

Back at the haunted house, the kids are still running from Jack, the Pumpkin King. Then Russell casually mentions that sometimes the floor gives out, and they plummet through a spontaneous hole into a space that is too large to be under the house. And, ghosts.

There were a lot of ghosts outside of this screencap.

One of them says “I’m not a ghoooost. I’m a sheeet… THAT LIIIIIVES!!”

Pumpkin guy continues pursuing them, and they continue running. They then find a swamp full of zombies.

There’s a news report about the lack of grass being caused by a werecow, and the newsanchor tells people to stay inside. Instead, people decide to pull out their pitchforks and torches and pursue the cow. Man, not enough people today just have flaming torches in their back pockets.

The kids are finally cornered by the pumpkin king. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Phineas stops being scared for a second and wonders, if the pumpkin guy is a ghost, and he has a pumpkin for a head, what did that make him when he was alive? Ferb says it’s unlikely he was a vegetable-human hybrid, and throws a skull at the pumpkin, knocking it off, to reveal…

He was a robot the whole time!

It turns out that Russell, and his parents, Waylan and Mona, put together the whole thing, and artificially influenced the levels of EMF detected by the… EMF detector by putting high-frequency transmitters all over the house. The kids are impressed, and Phineas asks if they maybe have one more trick left? Waylan is about to say no, when Doofenshmirtz werecow bursts through the side of the house, pursued by an angry mob covered in flour (from them running through a cooking class earlier). Phineas is happy with this, and everyone leaves, with Rustle, Wailin’, and Moaner seeing them off.

Phineas tells Ferb that for a minute there, he really did believe in ghosts. He looks back at the house, and – gasp – it’s gone!

Nah, turns out it was… inflatable, and the family is packing it up for the year (which explains why Phineas didn’t remember ever seeing the house earlier).

Phineas then asks “Isn’t this the moment in one of these things where someone really turns into a ghost?”, almost as if he’s seen the last few episodes I reviewed on this blog. Phineas and Ferb turn to stare at the family, who stare back. After a few seconds, Russell gets annoyed and tells them “That’s it!” and Phineas is like “Oh, okay” and the episode ends.

So there was no “it turns out there was a ghost after all!” plot twist, but Doofenshmirtz is still cursed to be a werecow forever, apparently.

“The Curse of Candace” begins with what turns out to be a movie. A werewolf and a blonde girl are pursuing a vampire.

The werewolf’s name is Michael, and is voiced by Michael J. Fox.

Am I the only one who thought this movie was terrible?

“…Hey, weren’t you just wearing a shirt?!”

The blonde girl is named Kristin, and is voiced by Anna Paquin, while the vampire’s named Jared and is voiced by Stephen Moyer.

This was one of 4 PG-rated images from TrueBlood I found online.

Kristin is obviously a reference to Kristin Stewart, who played Bella in the Twilight movies (or at least I’m assuming it’s a reference to that), and I’m assuming Michael is just referencing Michael J. Fox, but I don’t know what Jared is referencing. There is a Jarrod Meistle who writes children’s books about a vampire named Victor, but… I don’t know.

Candace and her friend Stacy are viewing the movie, which they declare “best movie ever.

I don’t know if the New Zealand poster is a reference to the Lord of the Rings franchise being filmed there, or if it’s supposed to mimicking travel posters found in a travel agent’s office. Or I guess it could just be a movie about New Zealand.

Candace walks into a cage housing a bat in the theater, and the bat gets caught in her hair as Stacy asks one of the movie theater employees why they have a live bat.

At the Flynn-Fletcher household, Phineas and Ferb are discussing how “It does seem like more than 104 days,” a reference to there being so many episodes in the series. Their mom is going out somewhere, and their dad is inside, watching a scary movie marathon, if they need anything.

There’s a quick cut to Mr. Flynn-Fletcher inside, as he comments “This isn’t much of a horror movie? Where are all the rock-n-roll musical numbers?

This is what I call a great joke. If you don’t get the reference, it’s a funny enough line on its own. Why would there be rock-n-roll musical numbers in a horror movie? How silly. Then, if you’re a little older and have heard of The Rocky Horror Show (or The Rocky Horror Picture Show), you’d understand the line is a reference to that, probably. Then there’s yet another layer to this joke once you know that Mr. Flynn-Fletcher is voiced by Richard O’Brien, who wrote The Rocky Horror Show and starred as Riff-Raff in the movie.

So that’s four references so far that relate to other roles the voice actors have had.

At the secret base, Major Monogram’s mission for Perry is this: Dr. Doofenshmirtz announced he will no longer try to take over the world/whatever, and he made this announcement in the strangest way possible – he wrote a letter and sent it in an envelope. And it’s scented. So Perry has to go see what’s up.

Perry arrives, and Doof is surprised to see them, so he reads his letter. It turns out his letter said something like “I know Major Monogram is going to ignore this letter and that is why you’re now trapped.” Come to think of it, the letter did seem to still be in an envelope when Monogram and Carl the intern showed it to Perry… how did they know Doof was saying he was retiring from evildoing? Did it say on the envelope?

So, Perry apparently stopped and is now stuck on the stickiest surface known to man – a floor tile from the local movie theater!

Meanwhile, Candace and Stacy are walking home. Stacy says it’s sure lucky it wasn’t a vampire bat that got stuck in Candace’s hair earlier. Candace is like “Haha… yeah.” Candace heads into the backyard, with just enough time left over for her to bust Phineas and Ferb (it’s her goal this summer to get them in trouble for… whatever they do). The backyard is empty, however, except for a set of barbells, a light, and a mirror.

Candace wonders what the barbells are doing back there and picks them up, with absolutely no effort. This strikes her as odd, and she says it’s almost like she has vampire superstrength. She takes a few steps to the right/her left, and floats into the air. The power of flight! Then she lands in front of the mirror, and… no reflection! That could only mean…

The show flashes back to two minutes earlier. Phineas and Ferb have put together four things at the request of their friends. There’s a super grow light to help Isabella’s plant, a set of barbells that aren’t heavy, or something, for Baljeet, anti-gravity sensors are in the lawn so Buford can experience flight, and the mirror has a projection rig in it so Irving (a nerdy fan of Phineas and Ferb’s) can be invisible.

Back to present time, Candace worries that she must be a vampire, when the grow light shines on her for no reason. It’s a bright, intense light, one that would hurt anyone’s face, but she feels like it must be the sun that’s harming her because she’s a vampire, forgetting the fact that she walked all the way from the movie theater to her house without the bright summer sun harming her at all.

Back with Perry and Doof, Perry just jumps to attack Doof, even with his feet still stuck to the floor tile. They fight, like they always do, and Doof is defeated.

Candace runs around the town, looking for Phineas and Ferb to get them to change her back into a human. Eventually she ends up back at home, and tells Phineas all the strange things that indicate she is now a vampire. Phineas asks if she was in the backyard when she discovered she was a vampire, and when she says yes, he chuckles and tells her no, no, she’s not a vampire. He pulls her dark cloak and sunglasses off to show her how the sun won’t harm her.

Then she dissolves into a pile of ash.

And that’s the end.

I like how the first half of this episode ends with “isn’t this normally where something supernatural happens?” and then nothing does, and then the second half actually does end with something supernatural, that actually either contradicts the rest of the series or must be the last episode, since Candace pretty much died onscreen. You know, for kids!

Well, Happy Halloween, everybody! I actually meant this ‘cap to go up on the 30th, with some big conclusion on the 31st, but I got sidetracked, and then my 31st was just AWFUL, so it’s technically still Halloween where I am, but most of you won’t see this until November 1. So… Happy All Saint’s Day!

I’m hoping to work far enough ahead of December to have my Christmas Movie Madness done in time so there won’t be like 4 reviews for it or something. In the meantime, back to Boy Meets World!

HEY NOVEMBER 10TH IS THE DAY I’M WRITING THIS EVEN. WHOA.

So here’s yet another episode in which we learn the value of the truth. Enjoy.

Cory and Shawn have done a project about how the school cafeteria food is made, for their media class. Their teacher, um… I think his name is Eli, agrees with Cory and Shawn that it stinks, and tells them to redo the assignment. They were supposed to be looking for a new and exciting story. And apparently they’re going to air everyone’s videos on a public access channel in four days! Oh no!

Shawn calls Cory over later, to film something exciting for their report. Some lady in the building across from Turner’s apartment is dancing in a towel. Turner comes in and catches them, telling them that’s not appropriate to report on, and they should watch the real news to get ideas. They turn on the news, and there’s a report on breast augmentation. Once again we’ve reached a joke that is sadly still completely relate-able nearly 20 years later.

The next day at school, Cory and Shawn decide to find some scandal to film. Cory doesn’t think there’ll be anything too scandalous, right then Joey walks in carrying a bunch of tires.

They decide to follow Joey to find a scandal, and then he reveals he’s also carrying a bunch of tube-socks to sell.

Meanwhile, Feeny’s in the process of hiring someone to replace some lady, and Eric has volunteered to participate in a dream research study – that is, a research study about dreaming – because he’s totally up for being paid to sleep. For some reason this study is being held in the school, during school hours, in what seems to be Turner’s classroom, rather than, say, the nurse’s office, or at a college.

Suddenly it’s the day they’re broadcasting the stories on their public access channel. Suddenly I wonder if I need to explain about public access tv. It definitely still exists. We have like 5 different public access stations here, at least two of which are run by the big university, and one has this hilariously awful program that’s set up like part reenactment and part interview/talk show, featuring historical persons such as Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln.

Topanga is the news acnhor, and is very nervous. Also Cory’s parents are there in the studio to watch, and not, say, Topanga’s parents, or anyone else’s. Because… the casting budget was too low or something.

Feeny finds out Eli hasn’t even watched all of the reports they’re airing, and understandably worries this is a bad idea. The show goes well, though, with Topanga somehow getting over her anxiety and shining like a professional newsperson… not necessarily an actual tv anchor, because… well, you know.

Cory finally rushes in at the last minute with the finished tape, which is on Janitor Bud. The film has caught him leaving a little over two hours early.

Shawn: “Dun dun DUNNNN”

And also that Joey shows up at the time Bud is supposed to clock out, to clock out for him. For some reason the employee clocker… thing is just in the hallway and not, say, in the staff room, or Feeny’s office, or something. I’m also not exactly sure that school staff would even clock out, especially if, like Janitor Bud, there’s a specific time he’s supposed to leave. But I honestly know little about card punching and all that, since by the time I was old enough to enter the workforce, pretty much everything switched to being done totally with computers.

Cory and Shawn’s video report ends. I think their earlier piece on cafeteria food was actually the better composed of the two videos. This one it’s just like “hey look Bud skipped out early, and Joey punches in him for him!” There’s no interviews, no nothing, and it just covered something that happened on one day.

All the adults (and Topanga) don’t really know what to say, except Feeny says unfortunately he has to fire Janitor Bud now. Now, I know for a fact that you can’t be fired for leaving work early once. Sure it’s suggested that he does it frequently, but they only have proof of the one time. I think this would warrant a demerit, or suspension, or a dock in wages or something, not a termination. Plus, we’ve seen in at least one other episode that he stays in the school pretty late – in fact, he seems to live there, because he was sleeping in his office or the closet or something when Cory and Shawn accidentally set a fire in the chemistry lab, which was pretty late at night and not at 5 pm, which is when Bud is supposed to clock out.

At school the next scene, no one will talk to Shawn (who I just had the urge to call “Scott” for no apparent reason) and Cory.

Feeny and Bud walk out of Feeny’s office/the bathroom/the guidance counselor’s office/etc. Bud is apparently just two months from retirement (no joke), but Feeny has no choice but to let him go. Again, even though he was only caught once.

Shawn feels bad, but Cory says, hey, Bud was doing something bad that he shouldn’t have been doing, and that’s not their fault. Cory does have a point. I mean, if you were a cashier at Target, and you were caught stealing potato chips from the store, even if it was just one bag, and it was just the one time, and you were about to retire, well, you still did a bad thing. I mean, that’s not the best example – stealing from your place of employment is generally worse than clocking out early, because stealing makes the company lose money, clocking out early makes you lose money (although Bud didn’t actually clock out early… this paragraph is turning into a mess, but I hope my point was sort of clear.)

Joey arrives on scene and praises Bud, calling him a hero, a giver. He asks if Cory wants to know where Bud gives, and Cory covers his face, full of remorse, until Joey reveals that Bud was “giving” to the horse races. So he’s been leaving early to go gambling.

Then Bud comes into the hallway, reveals he knows it was the two of them who revealed what he was doing, and puts “the janitor’s curse” on them.

Back with Eric (forgot he was in this episode!), his results from the cream lab are… odd. The researcher lady asks if he can remember any of his dreams from that session, or from any time over the last few months. Eric can’t, and she asks if he’d be willing to go through some more testing. Eric agrees, but only if she takes the money he got that, halves it, then doubles it, and pays him that for the upcoming sessions.

At lunch, everyone still hates Cory and Shawn, and no one will let them sit at any table, even though there’s always an empty table when they eat lunch when no one’s mad at them. And then Turner basically says it’s Eli’s fault.

That night at the Matthews home, Amy and Alan disagree on the issue. Amy thinks Bud shouldn’t have been fired, because he was close to retirement, a pension, the school was his life, whatever, but Alan points out that leaving early when you aren’t supposed to is bad, and not only was he leaving early but he was going to the racetrack and not to, say, feed orphans or something. This kind of stuff is why I love Degrassi. Er, I mean, this isn’t Degrassi I’m watching right now, but Degrassi tends to be pretty good about bringing up both sides of an issue and not presenting anyone as being right (there are exceptions). Like in one episode, Emma is protesting genetically modified food, and argues that no one knows what eating tomatoes infused with scorpion DNA will do to people in 10 years, but the principal points out that there’s no evidence suggesting it will be harmful, and that it makes food cheaper so poorer people can actually buy fresh produce once in a while.

So, what I’m saying is, I like when shows point out both sides of an issue, and mostly leave it up to the viewers to decide what’s right.

Eli talks to Cory. Cory says he’s sad he got Bud into trouble, but he was doing wrong. Eli is like “yeah, that’s how working in news is.”

Later, the two go to Feeny and demand they give Bud his job back. Feeny says the matter’s closed, nothing they can do, he had no choice. Eli says it’s all his fault, he should’ve screened the tapes before airing them, etc. Cory says he sees the error of investigative reporting, or something, but is interrupted by Feeny’s new secretary.

PLAID SUIT JACKET!!

Janitor Secretary Bud.

During the credits scene, the dream research is presenting Eric to a room full of sciences. Eric apparently has zero brain activity while he sleeps. This should be especially startling when you discover that brains are actually more active when they’re asleep. The scientist lady wakes Eric up, and although it’s not brought up, the brain monitor still shows zero activity.

Eric then asks how the mouse is doing – apparently the study included a mouse for comparison. The mouse’s sleep brain monitor is going crazy.

So, in this episode, I think we all learned that… um… I guess that there’s no right or wrong answer to some predicaments. Or that if you’re a teacher, you definitely need to screen your students’ projects before airing them on a local access channel.

Also Topanga quickly kissed Cory at some point and the audience went overboard with the “woooOOOOOOooooo”ing again.

On an unrelated note, the producer of Boy Meets World said he’s hoping to reveal what happened to Mr. Turner in Girl Meets World. If you don’t know already know why revealing what happened to him is exciting, don’t worry. We’ll get to that.

Also apparently they decided to cut older brother Eliot from Girl Meets World. There’s been no explanation other than “sometimes these things happen”. Certainly Cory and Topanga having a 13 year old son about 13 years after the show ended is a little… well not impossible, certainly. And it’s too bad – they didn’t even give him a chance, for one thing. I understand that maybe Disney doesn’t want yet another show with a sibling dynamic with the oldest two siblings being so close in age, but there was definitely some potential for great plotlines with their main character being only a year younger than her brother. For one thing, if they show manages to last a while, they could have had a plot where Riley’s best friend develops a crush on her brother – like how Topanga fell for Eric, but different because Riley likes whatever her best friend’s name is, whereas Cory at the time didn’t like Topanga.

Plus the kid who played Eliot was really cute, I was looking forward to seeing him grow up. And I don’t meant that to be creepy or anything considering my age.

I’m not so sure about having a show where the main character is 12 and she has a 5 or 6 year old little brother and there are no other older characters on the show. But, we’ll see how things pan out, I guess.

Danielle Fishel says he can still call her “mom”, so at the very least, we know there’s no bad blood between the two of them. I mean, sometimes actors are let go because they can’t get along with the other cast and crew, but I’d guess that wasn’t much of an issue here – Ben and Danielle don’t seem to be the types to be all “I WAS IN A POPULAR TV SHOW, LISTEN TO ME”, and the child actors don’t have enough credits to their names to be too egotistical.

Ah, well. I guess I’d rather they get rid of him before filming, instead of running out of things for him to do and then just conveniently forgetting he exists during the course of the show (see: Chuck Cunningham, Morgan Matthews during half of season 3)

It’s that time of year again for me to present my guesses on who will win what Oscar. I didn’t do so well last year, which was a disappointment because the first year I did this (not posted on here) I nailed almost all of them. Once again, this is just for fun, and I’ve only seen 2 of the nominated movies so this is pretty much just guesswork, and not a lot of “Well I liked it so I think it should win.”

So here we go:

Best Picture: Hmmm, tough. Tough tough tough. 12 Years a Slave is a good pick, usually films about darker moments in world history and someone trying to overcome do pretty well. A lot of good reception for American Hustle and Captain Phillips and Dallas Buyers Club, though.
Hm, yeah, I’m going with 12 Years a Slave as first choice, second guess is Dallas Buyers Club.

Best Actor: Surprising nom for Matthew “Well all right all right” McConaughey in this category. My money’s on Bruce Dern, though, for no particular reason. I know everyone wants Leo DiCaprio to win, but, eh.

Supporting Actor: Also some noms you don’t normally see… Tough call. I’m going with Bradley Cooper for American Hustle first, and Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips second. Cuz I don’t know about the other three.

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, AND Meryl Streep, all nominated at once? Ouch. They can’t all tie, can they? No? I’m going with Sandra Bullock, though. I think she won the Golden Globe for her role in Gravity, and while that doesn’t mean everything, I feel like probably this would be a case where everyone gets so split between three nominees that it leaves another one with a ton of votes.

Supporting Actress: 3 people I’ve never heard of. Hm. I don’t know why, but I’m going with Sally Hawkins for Blue Jasmine. Never heard of her, never heard anything about the film, but it sounds good to me.

Best Animated Feature: Surprisingly, no nomination for Monsters University. I thought that was a good film – even though it was a prequel, it had a lot of good, unexpected moments, and I liked the message “Sometimes, you’ll find that you’re just not good at something you want to do, and that sucks, but you can find something else that you’re better at.” I mean, what a perfect message just in general, but especially for college-age kids.

Anyway it didn’t get nominated, so that’s sad. I’ve never heard of one of the noms – “Ernest & Celestine”, I’m guessing it’s French. But I’m putting all my money (figuratively – I haven’t found a place to bet on nominations yet) on Frozen. The animation was good, the story was great – I’ve never been in a theater full of kids before where every single person in the theater was quiet the entire time, other than some outbursts at a certain plot twist. I liked Despicable Me 2, but I don’t think it or The Croods have enough in them to beat out Frozen or the Studio Ghibli movie (which is about planes? I think?)

Cinematography: I’m always terrible at this category, but I’m… oooh I was going to go with Inside Llewyn Davis since it’s set in the 60s and looks like it was filmed then, but then I saw Gravity was also nominated… hrm… Nah, I’m going with “Inside Llewyn Davis”.

Costume Design: Aargh. Okay of course all the noms are period pieces, so that’s no help. American Hustle takes place in the 70s so I don’t know about that one – I mean, you can just go out and buy already-made clothing from the 70s so it’s not that big of an achievement I think to make good 70s clothes. Plus there’s still plenty of people who were alive in the 1970s who could give you advice, or photos, or whatever. I’m going to go with The Great Gatsby. I never saw that movie (well, not this version, just the Mia Farrow one), but I know it was all like “EXTRAVAGANCE, OLD SPORT”. Second guess… The Invisible Woman.

Directing: Aaargh again. I’m going with Gravity, though. I think it probably takes a good director to get a film with a cast of two where they’re just hanging out in front of a green screen for 2 hours to be a good movie.

Documentary Feature: Just like last year, I have heard of zero of these documentaries. Only one of them this year has “nominees to be determined” listed where the director/producer/whatever credit goes, so that’s nice. “The Square” sounds good. I’ll go with that.

Short Documentary: And again, I’ve never heard of these. “Cavedigger” sounds cool. I’ll go with that.

Editing: Ugh. American Hustle, just because.

Foreign Language Film: I have no idea. “The Great Beauty” sounds good.

Makeup and Hairstyling: Only 3 noms, and surprisingly not including two films I thought would be on there (American Hustle and the second Hobbit movie – I mean, it got nominated last year and it’s not like the hair is any different. Or is that the problem? It shouldn’t be, the films take place within like a day of each other).

Also a surprising nom for Jacka-I’m-trying-not-to-use-profanity-on-this-blog-ss: Bad Grandpa, although I’ve seen the makeup for the grandpa and it is well done. I’m going to go with Dallas Buyers Club, though. I can’t really see the one other nom, The Lone Ranger, winning.

Original Score: Well I’ll just leave what I said last year here: “Having heard none of the music for the nominees, well… I think Thomas Newman did the music for at least one Pixar film, and then of course there’s John Williams who you make know better as the guy who did the music for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, the first few Harry Potter movies, and many many other iconic themes. But…” I’m going with Philomena. Seems like it probably had a good score.

Original Song: Going with “Let It Go” from Frozen. Just, dang Idina Menzel, way to sing! I know something from some Nelson Mandela thing won the Golden Globe, but, again, that doesn’t matter here.

Production Design: Ooof. 3 period pieces, one movie set in the not-too-distant-future, and one set in space. I’ll go with American Hustle, though, because everyone seems to like it. I guess.

Short Film (animated): I have heard only of “Get a Horse!”, it being the short featured before Frozen. So I’ll just go with that.

Short Film (live action): Errgh… I don’t know, blind guessing here I’ll go with “Avant Que de Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything)” because… French?

Sound Editing: Finally we start to see The Hobbit get nominated for something. But I hate this category. I’m still not sure what the difference between it and sound mixing is, and usually the two categories share at least 3 nominees. I’ll pick Captain Phillips because I haven’t really been picking it for anything else. That’s a stupid reason, but, eh.

Sound Mixing: Ehhhh. I’m going with either Gravity or Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, because those both had to have featured a lot of fictional sound effects. Waait, there’s no sound in the vacuum of space, though…

Visual Effects: Here is The Hobbit’s third and final nomination. Unfortunately it’s also up against Gravity again, as well as Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and The Lone Ranger. I imagine all of these films have very much earned their nominations. It’s tough – I mean, Iron Man and Star Trek weren’t nominated for anything else, so will people feel bad and vote for them, or will they keep the ball rolling and vote for Gravity once again? Or will they show some massive respect for the killer good job they did on Smaug in The Hobbit? (You know how sometimes you’ll watch an animated movie, and there’ll be this one shot where you’re like “Wait, I thought you said this was animated, not that they pulled in a real live dragon to film with!”?) Hm…

Yeah, I’m going with Smaug on this one. Gravity for second guess.

Adapted Screenplay: Wolf of Wall Street because I didn’t see it winning anything else.

Original Screenplay: Oi, all good choices. Going with Dallas Buyers Club, though.

Sorry for neglecting Her. Obviously my guesses mean nothing, it could win something, but I just… eh.

Also sorry for neglecting this blog. I have a post that’s entirely written up and just needs pictures, that I wrote two months ago, but have never gotten around to finishing for some reason. Also I was going to make a series of 12 lists counting down to Christmas about my favorite media-related Christmas things, but I never did that either. Sorry. ;_;

So how’d my random Oscar picks shape up this year? My favorite part of this is how the names of the categories on the Academy website for the nominations don’t match the names of the categories when the winners are announced, so there’s a lot of “Well, this is sort-of similar-sounding, I guess…”

Best Picture: We start/end well (this is the first category in the nominees list, but the last category announced in the actual show). My pick of 12 Years a Slave took home the statue! I’ve never seen it, so I don’t really have anything to say, except that Hollywood is pretty easy to read when it comes to picking the Best Picture winner.

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey took the surprise nom into a (surprise?) win over my completely random pick of Bruce Dern. Secretly I’m happy Leo DiCaprio didn’t win, because I hate him and the huge number of fans he has annoys me.

Supporting Actor: I went with Bradley Cooper for no real reason, but Jared Leto won.

Best Actress: Pfft the one category Gravity DOESN’T win in… Cate Blanchett took it. Like I said, this was a tough category, it was all really great actresses. Sandra Bullock can go cry into the Golden Globe she won. Or the hugely valuable consolation prizes non-winning Oscar nominees apparently receive.

Supporting Actress: I picked Sally Hawkins, but Lupita Nyong’o won. I’ve never heard of either before, but everyone was rooting for Lupita, so good job.

Best Animated Feature: My pick of Frozen was correct. Honestly, was anyone surprised? Aside from the small number of people who hate the movie because other people liked it?

Cinematography: I picked “Inside Llewyn Davis” because period pieces tend to do well here, but Gravity won. Gravity was a close second in my picks, though. I think Gravity actually just won the Oscars. Like the whole thing. Every category. Even ones it wasn’t nominated in.

Costume Design: My guess of Great Gatsby due to the “AAGH EXTRAVAGANCE” turned out to be correct.

Directing: Wooo I got this one right! Gravity took it.

Documentary Feature: “20 Feet From Stardom” beat out my guess of The Square.

Short Documentary: I was wrong. Went with Cavedigger, and something with a really long name won instead. Oh well. Once more, I’d never heard of any of them anyway.

Editing: Gravity won. I was wrong. I wasn’t all that into this category anyway (my reasoning for picking American Hustle was “just because”).

Foreign Language Film: I got this one right! “The Great Beauty” won. I picked it entirely because the title sounded nice.

Makeup and Hairstyling: My pick, Dallas Buyers Club, won.

Original Score: Oof, Gravity won THIS one too. I was wrong – I picked Philomena, for no real reason.

Original Song: “Let It Go” won, and I was right.

Production Design: This was a tough one to pick, and I ended up picking the wrong period piece – Great Gatsby won over my pick of American Hustle.

Short Film (animated): Mr. Hublot won. I had only see “Get a Horse” out of the nominees – actually had never even HEARD of the other nominees – so I’m not too beaten up.

Short Film (live action): Helium won. I was wrong. I didn’t know anything about any of the nominees, so oh well.

Sound Editing: Gravity won here. I picked Captain Philips just because I hadn’t picked it for anything else.

Sound Mixing: Gravity won here too. I picked Gravity as a tie with Smaug, despite my “Wait, there’s no sound in space” comment.

Visual Effects: Gravity, my second guess won. I am not surprised and I do believe it deserved it, but… Man, the animation for Smaug in The Hobbit deserved SOME kind of award. He looked like a REAL DRAGON in some shots. Also all the smoke and fire effects were spectacular as well. But oh well.

Adapted Screenplay: 12 Years a Slave won. I didn’t have much of an opinion no who would this, so I’m not too beat up about being wrong.

Original Screenplay: Her won, I was wrong. Again, didn’t have much an opinion here.

Yeesh. I only got 8 right. Out of like 24 categories. I think maybe if I had done my picks a little closer to the ceremony, I would’ve done better. I’m glad I didn’t bet on anything this year, though. Animated feature and Original Song were the only ones I would’ve put money on.

Now we just have to wait and see how many of these winners are still remembered in 10, 20 years from now (one thing we should all remember, though – just because it’s memorable, doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because it’s good doesn’t make it memorable). I did enjoy all 4 movies I saw in theaters last year (actually I think I saw two of them this year, technically), and that’s all that matters.

Like I said earlier, everyone who lost can cry into their consolation packages that could easily pay off at least some of my student loans.

But congratulations to every single person who worked their butts off doing something they love, even if you didn’t win, even if you weren’t even nominated.

And congratulations to me on the off-chance any Oscar-nominated person actually made it to this blog and enjoyed it!

One of these days I’ll post a new Boy Meets World review, but today is not that day.

There’s a new, and very short, “trailer” for the upcoming Girl Meets World series. It doesn’t really tell us anything we don’t already know – actually it barely says anything – but still, it’s something.  Watch it here.

Two main notes from me: 1) Ben Savage’s nose is very distracting. I wish people would stop getting nose jobs. They rarely look good in the end. I know noses are a sore spot with a lot of people (myself included), but I mean, a lot of people just look terrible after they get their noses worked on, and you can tell they had their noses done, and… ugh. But it’s his body, I guess. He can do what he wants to his face. Or maybe it just grew naturally like that from the perfectly fine stub nose he had before, I don’t know. It’s distracting, is all I’m saying.

…So now 2) I’d been noticing this in some of the promo stills, but it’s really obvious in the video – all the sets are so… saturated. They’re so colorful and bold, it’s really weird. I guess that’s just a Disney Channel thing, because kids can’t watch a show unless it’s FULL OF COLOR or something. I mean it totally works in Riley’s bedroom, because 12 year old girls do have a tendency to want color-saturated bedrooms and clothes. But the living room and the school are like that too. Boy Meets World, everything was like normal-colored. The school was the same sort of brown, grey, and gold that most schools are, the houses people lived in were pretty normal and tame. Even their clothes were relatively calm-colored, for the 90s. But this show is just like COLOR!!! everywhere. [Okay, it's not THAT bad, but it's still kind of weird.]

But it looks pretty decent, anyway. Premiere date is still unknown, other than “summer”, which can mean any time from May to September (I’d say probably June or August, though). Still unknown is if you’ll be able to watch the show legally online. It doesn’t seem like you can watch other Disney shows legally online, except for Netflix, but Netflix doesn’t post stuff as it’s currently airing (and also requires a subscription).

One last weird thing about the show: apparently all the episode titles are “Girl Meets [whatever]“. Some of them make some sense, like “Girl Meets Friendship” or “Girl Meets School.” But then there’s “Girl Meets Marissa, Marissa, Missy” and “Girl Meets Farkle’s Choice” and “Girl Meets Home For the Holidays”. What. Fingers crossed they decide to nix that and go the route of Boy Meets World, where most of the episode titles were puns or references, like “I Dream of Feeny” or “The Last Temptation of Cory.” Especially hopeful since nearly half of the episodes listed on imdb don’t have a title at all (they’re just like “#1.19″).

Ah, yes. This is it. This is the best episode.

Okay no it’s not, but I love it.

Feeny pulls down a banner in the hallway. I can’t imagine why.

*stage whisper* Probably because of the “illegal” part.

Cory has no idea what a rave is, and Mr. Feeny basically calls him a square for not knowing. It’s always a good day when Feeny is more hip than Cory. Also apparently Eric is the one throwing the rave. Cory is hurt, because his own brother didn’t tell him about it. Eric didn’t want a little fungus hanging around him and his party, wanted to go out of senior year known as the guy who threw that gnarly wave. But Cory’s like “come onnn” and Eric agrees to let him help throw the rave. That was sure tidy. I’m sure there won’t be any hijinx regarding the rave or the brothers’ relationship.

Later at the house, they’re discussing how the rave plans are coming along. They have a venue set up, that’s pretty much it. The doorbell rings. It’s Topanga’s dad.

Goodness the quality of these screencaps is terrible. I apologize and hope I can get better ones eventually.

If you’ll recall, he makes guitars and other stringed instruments, and is played by Peter Tork, most famous for being from The Monkees. Amy commissioned him to make a custom guitar for Alan, because their 20th anniversary is coming up. Their last anniversary was in a January episode, this is a November episode, but let’s not go into that.

Cory and Eric had no idea their parents’ anniversary was coming up, even though it figured heavily in a previous plotline. But still, that’s pretty realistic that they can’t remember when it is, especially when it randomly changes to being in November.

Amy goes into the kitchen, and Alan and his old bandmate come in, carrying a new bathtub/jacuzzi. This particular old bandmate of Alan’s is played by Mickey Dolenz, who’s most famous for being from The Monkees.

If you’ll recall, he was in in that episode with a bunch of other people who aren’t famous anymore.

Cory tells Eric they ought to get their parents a present, but Eric says they spent all their money on the Rave. Cory suggests they cancel it, and Eric tells him there’s no way they can cancel their parents’ anniversary. Haha.

The doorbell rings again. This time it’s some guy Cory doesn’t know. The guy sees some physical features of both Alan and Amy in Cory, calls himself a phrenologist. Amy enters the living room, and the strange man greets her, saying she hasn’t changed a bit. She has no idea who he is, and he introduces himself as “Reg! Reginald Fairfield!” Reg is played by the late Davy Jones, who is perhaps most famous for being from The Monkees.

HMMM. How curious. Three musicians, all members of a band that they still perform as in an on-again, off-again manner… together, in one episode? Curious.

Apparently Reg knows A&A from their summer backpacking trip through Europe over 20 years ago. Alan told him if he was ever in the States, there’d be a spot on the couch for him, and now he’s cashing in on this invite. I’m impressed he was able to find Alan, 20 years later, without using Facebook.

Eric’s on the phone, still arranging Rave plans, and Amy overhears him. She mistakenly believes that Eric is arranging a surprise party for Alan’s and her anniversary. Uh-oh! And Cory overhears Amy telling Alan what she overheard! Double uh-oh!

Cory tells Eric they have to cancel the rave and somehow put together an anniversary party in 24 hours. Eric finally relents, due to guilt. The next day, Cory is having trouble getting people to show up to this party on such short notice. Reginald Fairfield is at the school, insisting that Feeny invited him for lunch.

Eric had 300 balloons printed up. Normally it takes a few weeks, but he turned on the charm and got them really quickly. Unfortunately, they read “Happy 20th, Amy and Ellen.” Cory tells Eric to get his money back, but Eric basically doesn’t want to bother going back, so Cory says “Fine! I’ll do it! I’ll do it all!” and runs off with the balloons and the food I didn’t mention and the other stuff.

Look at that girl’s shirt in the background. Somebody buy that for me. Wait, IS that a girl??

Then Eric overhears two girls who are cheesed off that the rave is cancelled. “Typical,” they say. They just want a good, reliable guy who they can trust not to cancel an illegal party for once. Ah, well.

Suddenly it’s time for the party! It turns out Eric un-cancelled the rave, so both the rave and the anniversary party are happening at the same time in the same place! Uh-oh cubed!

Cory tries to fix things, telling Frankie (who Eric hired to be the bouncer) not to let anyone in who isn’t on this list, and he runs in to try to clear out the ravers. It’s too late and things are crazy already – there’s apparently cheerleaders wrestling in chocolate in the kitchen. What.

Remember this episode for next time anyone says Boy Meets World was a very realistic, serious show.

Cory says he’ll try to intercept his parents before they come in, tell them the party’s been moved to the restaurant across the street. But it’s too late. The parents are already there, 8 o’clock, on the dot, right on time. Alan’s bandmate Gordy is there as well, and so is Reg, Reg having insisted that Gordy give him a ride.

Cory tells the ravers the rave has a theme, and the theme is “wedding anniversary,” and to act like the next two people who come down those stairs are celebrating an anniversary. They cut the lights, and two people come down the stairs.

I don’t even want to think of there being Feeny/Turner slash fiction out there.

Of course.

Amy and Alan are stuck upstairs, because Frankie won’t let them in. They aren’t on the list, and when Amy insists the surprise party is for them, Frankie astutely asks “Then how come you know about it?”

Eventually they come in, and Alan asks who exactly all the people at the party are. Eric is like “Come on, dad, don’t you recognize your family?” Alan buys it. Feeny knows what’s really going on, but is pretty cool with it, and promises not to tell as long as the guy with the neon mohawk doesn’t touch him.

Of course, Alan somehow finds out, and he and Amy confront the boys about their thoughtlessness. Eric says he just did it because he wanted one night where he would be remembered. Amy says “So did we,” and leaves, with the audience all going “awwwww.” Alan goes after her, and, well… Honestly I sort of side with the kids here. Yeah, this was really dumb and inconsiderate of them, but at least they tried. Plus, well, Eric has a line earlier about how he doesn’t think they should be expected to remember their parents’ anniversary, since he and Cory weren’t there for the wedding. Look, kids are terrible at remembering things that don’t immediately grant them pleasure. Someone else’s anniversary? Pah. There’s plenty of tv show plots involving guys not remembering their own anniversaries, how do you expect your children to not only remember when your anniversary is, but to plan something beyond making you a card and doing the dishes?

I know that sounds terrible, but that’s just the way things are. You have to remind kids of stuff like this, and guide them to plan stuff for you. Like when it comes to Christmas shopping, you send your kids into a store with a very specific list of stuff to get, they get everything, find you, and you pay while you pretend not to notice all the stuff they bought you, and try to forget it so when you open the presents on Christmas Day, you feel less like you just bought everything for yourself, because you picked it out, told your kid exactly what to get, and then paid for it with your own money.

Well back to the review!

Topanga’s dad shows up, with Alan’s guitar in hand.

What on earth is he wearing, though?

The audience cheers for some reason. He apologizes for being late, and goes inside to deliver his gift. Cory suddenly has a brilliant idea and runs inside. He finds Gordy. Gordy was apparently the best man at Alan and Amy’s wedding, so Cory asks if he remembers what their wedding song was. It was “My Girl.” Cory says that’s great, they’ll just get the band to play it – oh but Frankie sent the band away, because they weren’t on the list. D’oh.

After Topanga stops hitting Frankie for being so stupid (she’s upset, and she also had a meatball earlier that apparently made her go wacky), her dad says, since the band’s equipment is still there, he’s happy and willing to play. Gordy is like “Eh, yeah, me too.” They hop up on stage, and Topanga’s dad (his name is Jedediah, sorry) asks “How does My Girl go again?” Gordy says he remembers the melody, but is a bit fuzzy on the lyrics. So Reg! Reginald Fairfield! pops out from nowhere and says “Well I suppose if you’re asking me, I wouldn’t mind helping you out!” and hops up on stage.

Amy and Alan are about to step out, but Cory stops them, telling them to wait a minute. They aren’t going to, until that classic, familiar bassline starts. And once again, The Monkees are performing on television. Well, except for Mike (who incidentally is my favorite of The Monkees).

They perform “My Girl”, and then “Not Fade Away”, with Reg doing what Davy Jones always did on The Monkees tv show, which is “sing while playing a tambourine or maracas”. Like they just felt he needed something to do with his hands because Peter, Mickey, and Mike all actually played instruments.

So Cory and Eric are happy, their parents are happy, everyone’s happy. Especially this guy:

Whoops, he looks stoned in this cap.

During the credits, Jed, Reg, and Gordy are all like “very nice” and Reg says that Alan told him that Gordy has a house with lots of spare rooms! Gordy, not wanting to be stuck with this crazy British guy, says his house is nothing compared to Jed’s place, which apparently includes a free-standing guest house. Jed tells Reg if he even drives down Jed’s street, he’s a dead man. Hahaha… oooh… well let’s just skirt over that “funny aneurysm” moment, which won’t be easy what with me bringing it up and all. (Seriously, R.I.P. Davy Jones)

Then that guy from earlier approaches the group. He tells them they’ve got a great sound, and he would know, because he’s actually a band manager. Used to manage this family band, he’s even still got the bus they toured in! He adds that it’d be nice to manage a band that didn’t have a mother in it. He hands one of them his card, and tells them to seriously consider it – they could be bigger than the Beatles! Of course, the three of them don’t think they will be, and that ends the episode.

Shoot, the guy who played Reuben Kincaid is dead, too, isn’t he? This recap got super depressing.

Now, that whole sequence is way funnier if you’ve ever seen The Partridge Family. You might’ve figured that’s what the “family group with a bus they toured in” was referring to. It is. The thing is, the guy playing the manager in this episode? He played the Partridge’s manager, Reuben Kincaid, during the entire run of The Partridge Family.

He’s only credited as “the manager” in the episode, but I’ve decided to declare that Boy Meets World and The Partridge Family officially exist in the same universe, using Reuben Kincaid as a link. Hooray!

So where was Mike? The fourth member of The Monkees, Mike, basically quit The Monkees after their contracts were up or whatever. Although the other three used to do concerts pretty regularly, Mike pretty much never joined them. I think it’s partly because he was so tired of never getting taken seriously as an artist as a Monkee that he just can’t deal with Monkee-ing around anymore. Also his mother invented liquid paper (White-Out and its kin) so he’s been coasting on her millions, or whatever, and doesn’t need to participate in Monkees stuff. So he wasn’t in this episode. Although he was at the taping and participated in some promotion photo-taking and whatnot.

For the record, I think The Monkees tv show was spectacular, and the guys in the band are/were all really talented, and have never received the recognition they deserve.

And now, a fun fact: For some reason this post took 5 months to complete, even though I wrote and screencapped the thing all at the same time. I’ve just been way too lazy and then busy to actually put the caps in the post. Eheh.

Also I got Season 1 of Boy Meets World on DVD for Christmas, so I’m hoping to see if I can get some better-quality screencaps for the first season reviews. No promises, though.

Yes, hello, there! After some deliberating, I’ve decided to officially add three more review features to this blog.

First we have “Miscellaneous Mondays”. Mondays will be for one-shot reviews of other television shows, movies, perhaps books? This may not be a regular feature.

Next up is “Boy Meets Wednesdays”. The Boy Meets World posts we already have will go up on Wednesdays rather than Tuesdays as I’ve sort of been doing. And yes I am hoping to get back on track with, you know, actually posting them.

Then we have “Thank Glee It’s Friday”. Recaps/reviews of Glee episodes go up on Fridays. I’m starting with season 1. I’m not sure I can get it timed right so I can do reviews of the season 6 episodes as they air, or if I even want to do that anyway.

Last, there’s “Degrassi Weekends” or “Degrassi Domingos” (Domingo being Spanish for Sunday). We’ll be starting the long, long road to recapping every Degrassi episode ever. There’s currently 414 episodes of the show, from Degrassi Junior High to the current Degrassi, and while a lot of the episodes are two-parters that I’ll only post as one episode, that still means, assuming no more episodes are ever made (unlikely), it’ll take over 7 years for every review to go up. So I’m also going to try to post two episodes every week to cut down on the time.

If I ever get my hands on “The Kids of Degrassi Street”, I might add that to the lineup. However, it’s out of continuity with the rest of the Degrassi series (it features the same actors, but all playing different characers), so it’s not a huge deal.

Whenever Girl Meets World starts airing, I’ll see if I can do week-by-week reviews of it as well. That should be fun, to do reviews of a show as it’s airing instead of 20 years later when I’ve already seen the episode six times already. I don’t know when the Girl Meets World reviews would go up, probably a day or two after they initially air (which would probably mean the weekend).

It’ll be fun, having three or four tv shows featuring teenagers dealing with teenage issues all being reviewed on here at the same time. I was already planning a sort of “Glee versus Degrassi” thing to talk about the times the shows cover the same issues, and I can expand on that for whenever Boy Meets World and possibly Girl Meets World also covers the same issues (which is nearly never – like I said before, everyone like to think of Boy Meets World as this show that always covered such serious issues, completely forgetting the time Cory thought he was turning into a werewolf and the time Shawn bought a pig… actually Degrassi has an episode where someone buys a pig, too. Huh.)

So now here’s a question: Do you like the posts that have tons of screenshots, or do you prefer the ones that don’t have as many? I like them with lots of screenshots, but it’s a major pain to take the screenshots and compile them in one post.

And finally, I have a Patreon account now! What is Patreon? It’s a website that allows people to basically pay content creators for their content. So say there’s a certain tv/movie reviewer whose work you really enjoy, then you’d go on there and pledge to donate, say, $1 per post [you're only paying for posts made AFTER you pledge, by the way]. Here’s some bulleted info:

• You can donate however much you want per post.
• You can also set a maximum, so say you want to pay $1 per post but you don’t want to pay more than $10 per month, and the content creator makes like 20 posts in one month, you’d only be charged for the first ten.
• You cannot do a “one time only” pledge, however you could pledge any amount per post and put that amount as the maximum. So for instance, pledge $10 per post but cap your monthly pledge at $10.
• You can pay with debit/credit card or PayPal.
• You can also pledge for one month, and after that month’s charges have been processed, you can edit or completely remove your pledge by visiting the content creator’s Patreon page and clicking “edit your patronage”.
• You can actually cancel your pledge at any time during the month before your cards are charged, in which case the content creator will receive no money.
• You will not be charged until the 1st of the month (so if you pledge for May, you won’t be charged until the beginning of June; also I apologize, the site’s FAQ is alternately saying “the end of the month” and “the 1st of the month”).
• You do not have to be located in the U.S. to pledge or donate money.
• There is an approximate 4% credit card processing fee and a 5% fee from Patreon taken out of each donation. (So if you pledge $1 for the whole month, the content creator will receive about $0.96. The fee, as far as I can tell, isn’t taken out of your pocket in addition to the $1, it’s basically taken out on the creator’s end).
• There’s no credit card fee for creator to creator patronage (so if you’re also registered on Patreon as a creator and donated to another creator, then only the 5% Patreon processing fee would be taken out. I don’t know why that is.)

There’s also options like goals and rewards on there. The examples the website gives is if, say, you got $X a month, you would officially remove ads from your website. I couldn’t think of anything like that that would work on this blog. I can’t do much about the ads, if there are any. The only things I could think of was like buying a theme for the blog or upgrading to Pro (can you do that on here?). There’s also buying Boy Meets World DVDs to improve the screenshot quality, but I’d rather use the money to pay for food at this point.

So think of it this way: Your reward is that I won’t starve to death! All right!

Edit: I added a goal tier! So if enough combined pledges from every per post add up to a certain amount, there’ll be certain improvements to the blog. The lowest goal is for me to get enough money to buy the Boy Meets World DVD sets so I can guarantee better screencaps for the later seasons, and then redo the caps of the earlier seasons. Second goal guarantees all four or five days each week will have a post unless something terrible happens on my end. Third is an upgrade to WordPress Premium, and fourth is full-time blogging from me, which may include multiple posts per day, a guarantee that there will be new posts every other day regardless if there’s an emergency on my end (unless I go into a coma or something really tragic like that), and a new show added to the lineup as suggested by you, the readers.
I’m still fiddling with what the goal amounts should actually be. I just changed them so they’d be lower than they were because a goal of $20 a post seemed like a lot just for DVDs (since that would mean I could basically buy two BMW DVD sets with one post).

Anyway, even if you don’t donate, I appreciate the fact that you visit here and read all these posts, and that those of you who are following me thought this blog was good enough to follow.

But of course, I do like money as well, and would be very grateful to receive it. I daresay I would be more inspired to provide more content if I were getting paid for it, rather than just doing it for fun or out of obligation.

The account, again, is here. Even $1 per post would be super helpful. It’s more than I’m getting now, which is $0.

I’m pretty sure before even watching this episode that this is the one that contains one of the show’s most iconic lines.

Topanga’s sick.

Anyone who can find a place where that bedspread is on sale wins an internet prize from me.

This is despite Topanga being streets ahead of modern hippies and people generally mistrustful of organized medicine; what I mean is, she takes fish oil supplements in 1995.

Lots of girls we’ve never seen before and will never see again flirt with Cory for some reason, Missy Robinson being the worst offender.

Cory and Shawn discuss this weirdness in Feeny’s class, specifically pointing out that Missy is sitting in Topanga’s seat. Maybe she’s not trying to usurp Topanga, but just doesn’t have anywhere else to sit since there’s only like 9 seats in that classroom.

Anyway, Feeny calls on Cory to report what he (Feeny) had been saying just then. Cory doesn’t know, but Shawn answers with “Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.” Feeny nearly has a heart attack, because it turns out that was correct. But alas, no, Shawn isn’t some super genius all of a sudden (discounting his ability to speak French fluently that popped up in an earlier episode), he’s just been using that answer for two years and figured sooner or later it had to be right.

Feeny says the class had to pair up for some history project, but tells Cory and Shawn they can’t be partners this time. They object, until some hot girl asks Shawn to pair up with her. Topanga’s friend Trinie… Treeni? I forget, anyway she wants to pair up with Cory on account of she’d normally pair up with Topanga but she’s sick. Treeni’s kind of intense and crazy (she can call Topanga in the middle of the night and not say anything and somehow Topanga always knows it’s her), so Cory would rather not work with her.

Then Missy Robinson offers to be his partner. Cory, sensing a musky danger he can’t quite identify, opts to go solo, until Feeny tells him that Treeni still doesn’t have a partner if Cory’s looking, so Cory’s like “Oh, no, Missy’s my partner!”

Sounds like a solution here would be for Cory to suggest Missy and Treeni pairing up, while perhaps Cory goes solo until Topanga gets better.

Missy says something about Cory’s girlfriend and mistakes her name as “Topo Gigio“, which is a dated reference I only know of because of Scott Calvin giving that as one of his aliases when he’s arrested and asked for his real name in “The Santa Clause” (the other aliases all being other names for Santa.

Cory’s shocked because someone apparently paid for his lunch already. This is never brought up again, but I guess we’re supposed to believe it was Missy who paid for it. She calls for him flirtatiously from across the room. Cory insists to Shawn he’s only talking to her because of their history project.

Also shawarma is on the lunch menu, which is a thing that, like fish oil supplements, have recently become trendy.

Feeny wants Turner and Eli to sponsor him in some charity race or something – you know, where people pledge to donate so much money for every mile the person runs. Turner leaves for some reason, I forget why, but Eli stays. Feeny says he’s old and last time he did the race he didn’t make it and was sore and his arm’s already seizing up and he has a bad knee and old people complaints. So Eli pledges $50 per mile, so that way even if Feeny doesn’t finish the race, the charity will still get some money. I’m sure we can all see how this plot is going to turn out.

Missy tells Cory about her new moisturizer and tells him to touch her arm to feel how soft it is. He quickly pokes her and is like “Oh yeah, smooth.” Cory wants to start on their project that weekend, but Missy’s busy, because she has a party. She invites Cory and tells him to bring Shawn. Cory tries declining, saying he’d rather start working on the project, and no one brings up that if Missy’s party is on Friday they still have all of Saturday and Sunday to work on the project anyway.

Later at the house, Cory isn’t sure about going to the party, and opts to ask Topanga for her permission. Eric is taking the family photo off the wall and gives it to Shawn.

Amy and Alan come in, having wrestled the picture from Shawn, and ask Eric what he’s doing. Eric is hanging up a picture of some doughy-faced baseball player and says he’s the ticket to paying for his “college intuition.”

Eric’s plan is to buy baseball memorabilia of that baseball player, who’s close to breaking the all-time record for getting hit in the head, so his currently relatively cheap memorabilia (well, that photo cost $200) will totally be worth a lot. Aw, man, remember when memorabilia of anything was actually worth something?

Topanga gives Cory permission to go to the dance, and Cory says he’ll buy her some ice cream and give it to her at 9. 9 o’clock on the dot.

There are only four people at Missy’s party. This was intentional. I guess it’s supposed to be a makeout party. I don’t know if it’s more creepy or less creepy to have a makeout party with only four people as opposed to lots of people.

Shawn and Missy’s friend go upstairs. Missy makes Cory sit on the PLAID couch with her and confesses her like for him.

Also, heads.

Missy’s father is a hunter, but she’s “never shot a boy she liked before.”

Missy wants to know everything about Cory, she says flirtatiously, and Cory gives her his entire life’s story. She cuts him off, turns on sexy music, and makes Cory dance with her. She kisses him, mentions how it’s a shame that it’s past 9 and they haven’t even started making out, and Cory freaks out and tries calling Topanga. Missy nibbles on the ear while he’s on the phone. Rather than suggesting Missy go take a cold shower, Cory finishes his conversation, and Missy kisses him harder.

Then Missy’s dad comes home and she FREAKS. Turns out she’s not supposed to have boys over, and she encourages Cory to get out fast. When Cory asks how fast, Missy says “You know those deer up there? Faster.”

Eric’s watching the baseball game where that doughy guy is playing. He (the player) is hit in the head, and Eric celebrates – only one hit to go! But then the guy announces that he is officially retiring from baseball. Eric’s plan is ruined. But he swears baseball guy will play baseball again, or his name isn’t Eric Neil Matthews. Amy, puzzled, tells him that’s not his middle name.

Cory and Shawn have escaped danger and buy ice cream from Chubbies. I was about to question why a burger place is selling pints of ice cream, but then I remembered there are places here that do that.

Cory’s freaking out about the kiss, and then Topanga shows up behind him. She has not looked or sounded sick this entire episode even though her throat apparently hurts. And now she’s at a burger place because she wanted to get out of the house, thereby probably infecting all the burger patrons. Well,  I guess it’s not like she has measles, though. Haha, we had a measles outbreak caused by two different people a few weeks ago. One was in the airport at some point, another was at a concert, and it happened that they were both here during Emerald City Comic Con, so with that plus all the other public spaces they were in plus how airports generally work, potentially tens of thousands of people could’ve been exposed to measles germs. Haha, good stuff.

…Anyway, Cory hands her the ice cream and tries to run away, but then comes back to confess that he accidentally kissed Missy Robinson. Topanga, understandably, is a bit outraged and confused. “How do you accidentally kiss someone? Did she slip on a rug and your lips broke her fall?”

Cory says he never meant to do it, and Topanga asks if that’s supposed to make her feel better. Cory feels awful, the worst he’s ever felt, and Topanga says she feels bad as well and what is she supposed to do? Cory implies he would deserve to be broken up with, but Topanga says she has to know how Missy kissed him. She asks if it was “like this” and gives him a quick peck on the lips, or if it was “like this”:

Audience: “WOOOOOOO!”

Cory says no one’s ever kissed him like that before, and Topanga says no one ever will again if he goes around kissing Missy Robinson some more. Seems they’ve patched things up.

Technically Missy Robinson kissed Cory, Cory didn’t kiss her back, though. He was caught off guard, didn’t want to go to that party in the first place, and Missy has been really aggressively pursuing him all day… week? So it’s not really Cory’s fault anyway. Maybe that’s why Topanga was so cool with it instead of going down the typical Sitcom Female route where she gets hugely angry over something so dumb.

During the credits, Eli wonders how well Feeny did on the marathon with his bad knee. Turner doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Enter Feeny, who apparently walked ten miles. Eli owes $500. Mr. Feeny is a marathon shark. Go Feeny. His radio DJ name is DJ Smooth.

Cory’s sick with what Topanga had. He declares he’ll never get up off the couch. But Topanga, on the phone with him at school, says she’s sent something over that will get him on his feet in no time.

She sent Treeni, who apparently skipped school for this.

Her purse looks like she’s holding a bra.

This was a silly episode. I like episodes that can deal with more serious premises – like infidelity – in a lighthearted manner. Things are going to get really sad in a few episodes, though.

Hey, and don’t forget, if you like what you see here, consider donating/pledging to my Patreon fund. Every little bit helps! I added milestone goals so if I end up getting enough pledged per post, I’ll buy the Boy Meets World DVDs so I can hopefully get some less pixelated screenshots in the later reviews. Other milestone goals include an upgrade to WordPress Premium (custom domain name and NO ADS. I don’t know if the ads are really a problem on here, I use Adblock and rarely visit my own blog anyway, but NO ADS is always good), as well as a switch to me being a full-time blogger, which means reviews will always be on-time, consistent, and probably proofread, unless I get put into a coma or something.

The higher milestone goals are kind of a pipe dream, mostly since the fanbase here is so small. Unless one of you wants to pay like $50 per post or something, that’d be cool (the milestone goals add up what every patron is paying – so if you pledge $1 per post and someone else pledges $5, that would be $6 per post accomplished.)

In other news, I’ve gone back to posting these reviews on tumblr! So if you’ve got a tumblr account, you can follow the blog there instead of on WordPress. I’m also intending on reblogging and/or posting related pictures, videos, and entertainment on that tumblog. The page doesn’t look great yet, but I’m working on it.

Girl Meets World is premiering its first episode Friday, June 27 at 9:45 p.m Eastern/Pacific time, on the Disney Channel, following some original movie no one cares about.

The show will not air the following week, but will air on its regular time slot Friday, July 11, at 8:30 pm.

You can get a free download of the first episode on iTunes on Friday, June 13, though, and apparently Disney Channel’s going to air a four-hour Boy Meets World marathon on June 15. That’s eight whole episodes. WOW. Remember when Disney Channel used to air the show as its regular line up instead of just airing hours and hours of the same crappy shows and also Phineas and Ferb? (I guess Gravity Falls is good too, but I haven’t seen it).

Also, unfortunately, the theme song of the show is sung by the girls who play Riley Matthews and her best friend. If there’s anything I hate more than stars singing the theme song to their own show, it’s 13-year old stars singing the theme song to their own show. I seem to recall them saying Riley wouldn’t become a pop star on the show, so I was not expecting them to have her actress sing the show’s theme song. Ugh.

Also they’ve named the younger brother “Auggie”. I thought he had a different name before, but I can’t remember what it is. That’s a terrible name. I mean it’s a short version of the actor’s name, which isn’t terrible, but ugh. I wish they’d given the one kid a normal name and the other one was named Plankton or something. Also I wish they’d kept on the older brother. His actor was cute, and it definitely would’ve opened up a lot of potential stories – I mean, one I already mentioned would be “Riley’s best friend develops a crush on her older brother”. Depending on how long the show ended up being on the air for, she could get over the crush, and then a few years later he suddenly develops a crush on her, and maybe they date and it freaks Riley out that her brother and best friend are dating, and then they break up so it’s awkward but they get over it. And Topanga could have a bonding moment with Riley’s friend, explaining how once she fell in love with her friend’s older brother (that one episode she liked Eric, and then Eric fell for her sister who was never mentioned again).

There’s a minute-long trailer for the show, and, um… well the acting’s not great. I don’t want to judge the whole show on just the short clips and the scene they showed a while ago, but… yeesh. Or maybe it’s not the acting, but the writing? I want to stay optimistic, but… yeesh.

Also the trailer gives up a Plaid Count of 6. It’s not the 90s, Girl Meets World, let’s keep the plaid to a minimum, okay?

Well, other than more preview clips of the show, this’ll probably be the last of the news we get before the premiere. I’ll see about downloading the episode on iTunes and give an early review before the official premiere. Fingers crossed it doesn’t end up being terrible!

Ah, I always love a tv show pilot with the title “Pilot”. I hope the pilot of airport-set “Wings” had “Pilot” as its title. That’d be funny.

But, ah, Glee. Such a weird show when you come down to it. It started off with such promise – no one had seen anything quite like it before. It wasn’t a huge hit when it had an early premiere in May 2009, but the show’s single version of “Don’t Stop Believin’” became HUGELY popular, and the show ended up being very popular during its official premiere in September that year. It quickly got picked up for a full season order, Fox ordered two additional seasons, “Don’t Stop Believin’” was played on every radio station every 15 minutes for five years… It was golden.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show get so awful so quickly. Usually it’s not until season 4 or 5 that things start to go sour, get a little stale, or lame. This show managed to become abruptly terrible in season 3, although some would argue it started in season 2 (and some say it was always terrible, but who cares about them?)

But, well, let’s leave all that sourness for later, and just start with the show that made us all love and then hate Journey: the pilot episode of Glee.

Actually, first of all, there are at least three different versions of the pilot. One is the one that was originally aired in May. Second is the Director’s Cut version that’s available on DVD, which had some additional scenes and one extra song. Third is the REAL Director’s cut, which has yet more additional scenes. I don’t know where people find that one, and I don’t care to look.

20th Century Fox has a really awful habit of cancelling well-loved shows but then they leave shows that no one likes on. I’m pretty sure by now they’re probably regretting their decision to purchase a 6th season of Glee since the 5th season they bought at the same time is averaging around 2 million viewers per episode. NBC cancelled Welcome to the Family and Sean Saves the World and those both were getting upwards of 3 million viewers per episode. NBC has higher standards than Fox. Fox is a bigger Butt Monkey on the Fox network than an actual butt monkey would be. And there was at least one literal butt monkey at some point.

I am getting off-topic.

We begin with some cheerleaders we will never see again practicing to a routine. You’ll notice they are on a football field. This is important to remember for later when their coach demands use of the auditorium for them to rehearse in.

Baby face, you’ve got the cutest little baby face~

12 year old Kurt Hummel is being bullied by the cool kids in the middle of the day. Spanish teacher (teach of Spanish – he is not Hispanic) Mr. Schuester sees this and does nothing. That is very much representative of all the instances of bullying on the show – nobody does anything.

Okay, it’s HALF, actually.

This is the current Glee club. I don’t know where they’re rehearsing in, because the choir room that the later Glee club rehearses in doesn’t look anything like this.

*scare chords*

Meanwhile in the teacher’s lounge, there’s no coffee because of budget cuts. Budget cuts that went to pay for stuff for the cheerleaders. Doe-eyed guidance counselor Emma objects to this, but cheer-leading coach Sue Sylvester says that the cheerleaders (the Cheerios) were on Fox… sports net… something last year. Emma wonders since when are cheerleaders performers and Sue says her resentment is delicious.

But that’s a new one. Usually people say cheerleaders ARE performers and object to them being called athletes. I don’t know why Emma would ask why they’d be considered performers. Even if all they’re doing is cheering on the football field, they’re still performing to get the audience to cheer.

Sue leaves, and Emma puts on her plastic gloves to scrub the table before she eats lunch. She is a germophobe.

Football coach Ken Tanaka asks why she wasn’t at the singles mixer the other night, and she pretty much flat-out says those things are for losers. She just called Ken Tanaka a loser. To his face. Emma’s a stonecold beyotch.

She also mentions the glee club teacher got fired. Now all two people in the glee club will have no one to teach them how to be gleeful!

Will talks to the principal, saying he wants to take over Glee Club. Principal Figgins thinks this is suicide, and wants Will to pay $60 a month to fund the club. I don’t know why he had to calculate the amount, since if there was already a glee club, he should know how much it costs already. Also I’m not sure what the $60 is supposed to be going towards. If they rehearse at the school at the end of the school day, those lights are usually on anyway. And if they have to use the old props and costumes from glee clubs past, like Figgins tells him to… what is the money going towards?

Also, this question NEVER gets addressed: Does this school not have a choir/chorus class? There’s a choir room, but apparently the glee club is the only organization that uses it. They don’t have a school choir that uses it, I guess. The writers on this show don’t think things through.

Anyway, Schue wants to go through with it since he wants to find talent or dreams or something inside that kids never knew they had. By the time they graduate they all find out that their talent is being a diva, so good job, there, Schue. [Oh, if you've never seen the show, "Schue" is pronounced like the word "shoe" or "shoo".]

Mr. Schue thinks his first step is to change the glee club’s name from “glee club” to New Directions. He thinks up this homonym of “nude erections” while lying shirtless, perhaps fully naked, in bed with his wife. They ended up making Schue unintentionally creepy throughout the show. Or maybe it is intentional. Schue is an ephebophile. Actually considering he’s married to his high school sweetheart and he still thinks of her as the sweet high school girl he dated, that would actually add some layers to his character if he found himself attracted to his students. I guess that would warrant this show an MA rating or something, though. When Glee was going to be a cinematic movie, they WERE gonna have some teacher-on-student action, though. I may be on to something here.

Uh, anyway, auditions for New Directions begin. This begs the question – what happened to the previous Glee Club? Was it really just that black-haired guy and Rachel who I haven’t mentioned before? Were there other people in the club who got scared off when Sandy Ryerson was fired? Why did the kids who audition for glee club this time not join the previous glee club, besides Rachel? Why are there only 5 people in the entire school who want to join glee club? What happened to the black-haired guy from earlier??

Well, anyway, first to audition is Mercedes Jones, aka the only non-evil recurring character with dark skin on the entire show. I don’t count Alex Newell from season 5 because he is a terrible actor and I hate his character. I will explain why when he first appears, since we’ll probably get to him before the Degrassi equivalent.

Anyway, she sings “R-E-S-P-E-C-T”, and wails on the last note. She should not have done that, because now that Schue knows how good she is at it, he will make her wail on the last note in every song the glee club ever sings.

Baby face, you’ve got the – oh wait I did that joke already.

Next up is Kurt Hummel, the kid we saw getting thrown in a dumpster earlier. He sings “Mr. Cellophane” from “Chicago”. Then there’s Tina Cohen-Chang, who sings “I Kissed a Girl”. Artie Abrams also signed up for the club (curiously, his name on the sign-up sheet is in different handwriting from anyone else’s, but it looks like it’s written too high up for him to have been able to reach. Since he’s in a wheelchair).

Finally, is Rachel Berry, the girl we saw earlier who I didn’t mention at all at the time. She goes into an internal monologue while she sings, and we learn she reported Sandy Ryerson for inappropriately touching black-haired guy, thereby getting Sandy fired, all because he didn’t give her a solo. I don’t know why he wouldn’t, since there was literally only one other person in the glee club anyway.

Rachel explains that she was born out of love – her Two Gay Dads hired a surrogate specifically to breed a little Broadway baby, and also they mixed their sperm together so they wouldn’t know which one was her biological father. These are her dads:

Later in season 3 we get to actually meet her fathers, and neither of them look like anything like this. I was disappointed, one because it kind of ruined the joke that was set up here, and two because it ruined the joking theory that Rachel had killed both her fathers and was living alone and that’s why we never saw them.

Rachel claims the reason no boys want to date her is because of her MySpace schedule – she likes to post a video every day. In reality it’s because she’s extremely annoying.

The Cheerios like to watch her videos and leave really mean comments, including “Please get sterilized.” I don’t know who’s the real loser here, the girl posting videos to MySpace or the girls who also have MySpace accounts and leave mean comments on there. It’s 2009, why do you all still have MySpace accounts?!

Oh, Rachel sings “On My Own” from the seminal Broadway classic, Les Mis. Rachel refers to everything as “seminal”. Also Lea Michele, who plays Rachel, sang that as her audition song for the show, and played Eponine on Broadway in Les Mis. Also, fun fact, Lea Michele appeared in the 2004 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof with Alfred Molina, the lady who played Fantine on Broadway’s original run of Les Mis, and Molly Ephraim, who played the teenaged daughter in Paranormal Activity 2 and plays one of the daughters on that awful Tim Allen sitcom. Also Jenna Ushkowitz (Tina) and Matthew Morrison (Schue) are both Broadway vets as well, which makes the show getting stuff about Broadway horrible wrong later on extremely confusing.

Tina’s arm is the only thing of hers in-frame. This is a metaphor for her character on the entire show.

The club sings “Sit Down, You’re Rocking The Boat” from the show ‘Guys and Dolls’. Rachel thinks it’s ridiculous to sing a song about sitting down to a kid in a wheelchair. Artie, the kid in the wheelchair, thought it was ironic and interesting. Rachel claims there is nothing ironic about show choir. So are they a glee club or a show choir? I mean, the phrases are sort of interchangeable, but they have different connotations in my mind. Like a show choir does the sorts of performances they do on the show, while a glee club mostly stands around singing public domain songs while smiling.

Rachel storms out. Schue somehow tracks her down and finds her on the bleachers watching the Cheerios practice. She’s tired of being laughed at. Schue tries to cheer her up, saying she’s smart and the most talented kid in the glee club (which is a whole different can of worms that will not be addressed right now), but Rachel counters with “Everybody hates me.” Schue doesn’t see how glee club will help that – and actually it seems to make it worse, in the end.

Rachel wants a male lead who can keep up with her vocally. I don’t know why, since she wants to sing solos all the time anyway. Plus, Artie was a great singer. They need to have Rachel and Artie do a duet on the show. Artie’s certainly better than the guy they bring up to be the male lead. Heck, Mercedes is a better male lead, and she’s a woman!

Rachel then utters a line that is oddly prophetic of the feelings of many viewers of the show.

I can’t keep wasting my time with glee. It hurts too much.

I am 11 minutes into the episode and this review is longer than an entire Boy Meets World recap.

Figgins wants to cancel glee club, because he needs the auditorium to host Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, because they get money from that and they can’t host the meetings in the gym or the cafeteria or any of the classrooms or just schedule it so the glee club doesn’t rehearse there while the AA meetings are being held. Schue makes Figgins keep the club on – if they place at Regionals or Sectionals or whatever, the club stays. But Schue has to host detention for free to make up for it.

Schue visits high-strung wife Terry at Linens’n’Things. It sells linens and things. Schue runs into Sandy there. Sandy reveals that he gets medical marijuana from his doctor by claiming he can’t sleep, and he sells the stuff for a huge profit. He asks Schue if he wants some. I don’t know enough about Sheets ‘n’ Things to make a joke about drug deals going on there, or at its fictional equivalent.

Schue wants to take to the Cheerios about joining glee club, since they’re disciplined performers already. Sue refuses to let him, because of the high school caste system. Emma tells Schue if he can get one popular kid to join, the rest will follow. Schue turns to the football team, and Tanaka agrees to let Schue talk to the football players if Schue puts in a good word to Emma about Tanaka.

These are the least exciting shirtless boys I’ve ever seen, except that one kid who’s leaning over a bit. Also I got excited and thought Stiles from Teen Wolf was there, but it’s not him. I guess he would’ve been too young to be on the show. I mean he would’ve been high school-aged, but that’s too young for the show.

Schue is about to give up on glee club. He is not considering that maybe there really was a kid named Gaylord Wiener who wanted to be in the glee club. Schue thought it was a joke and now Gaylord cries himself to sleep every night because he couldn’t get in to the one club he thought would truly accept him.

Schue has some internal monologue about finding a talent inside a kid they never knew they had when he hears mediocre singing coming from the showers. Finn Hudson is in there singing “Can’t Fight This Feeling”. He is the only one in there. Why is that? Where is everybody else? Why is Finn showering alone in the locker room? Why is Schue so interested?

A+ awkwardly-timed screenshot.

Schue calls Finn into his office, claiming to have found marijuana (which he got from Sandy earlier) in Finn’s locker. Finn denies ever having seen the stuff before. Finn can either be in detention forever or join the glee club. He’s lucky he’s not being arrested. It’s nice how hilariously uncomfortable this scene is now, because apparently Cory Monteith dropped out of high school due to drugs. And also died because of them (don’t mix heroin and alcohol, kids. It’s one or the other, or neither). I bet his friends can’t watch this episode because of this scene. Although actors don’t really like to rewatch the things they’re in anyway. And actually I didn’t even remember about all that while I was watching the episode anyway.

Finn goes into a flashback internal monologue. His mom is a single mom because “his dad died in Iraq when we were fighting Osama bin Laden the first time. That would make Finn at least 18 right now, but it turns out he’s a sophomore, like Rachel and almost everyone else. It’s not that unbelievable that Finn would’ve gotten held back a bunch of times, though.

Finn’s mom dates a guy who runs one of those businesses where they spray chemicals on grass to make them green, but he leaves her, and Finn becomes determined to always make her proud. Also, lawn spray guy is a fan of Journey.

Finn joins glee club and is put on the male lead for “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, even though he is a terrible singer. Seriously. I just… ugh. He gets better as the series goes on, but right off the bat they treat him as the best male singer in the group, even though Kurt has a better range and Artie has a better soul to his voice, and both have better pitch and timbre. Finn always sounds like he’s straining really hard to hit any of the notes. He seems to do better on songs in a lower register, or that have a slower tempo, but he’s just generally awful right now, and we unfortunately have to put up with it – or at least, I do, if you’re not watching at home. I want to hear Artie sing the male solo on this song.

Um also Rachel scares Finn with how intense she is towards him, and she pushes Artie across the stage. This is the second time she’s pushed him while she’s singing. I think she knows he’s actually a very competent male lead, she just thinks it’ll be embarrassing to do a duet with a guy in a wheelchair. She doesn’t want to have to bend over to be on the same level as someone, and she’s pretty short already.

Mercedes objects to being backup. Schue is just like “Come on!” and Kurt, who incidentally looks way shorter than he actually is, convinces her with “It’s the first time we’ve sounded kind of good.” It’s exactly the second song they’ve sung together as a club, and the first one sounded a lot better. Everyone on this show is a moron. Mercedes is just like “Fine” and doesn’t object anymore in this episode.

Later, Schue and his wife (Terry), have a fight about money. Terry also accuses Schue of trying to relive his high school years with his glee club, which, to be fair, is what he’s doing. It’s not so clear in this episode, but it comes up a few more times after this.

Finn has to miss football practice on Saturday because his mother is having surgery to have her enlarged prostate removed. I did not make that up. That’s a lie he tells fellow football player Puck to cover the fact he’s going with the glee club on a field trip to see another high school’s glee club showcase.

Meanwhile, Tanaka is mad at Schue for stealing his quarterback (Finn, that is; Schue did not pickpocket Tanaka. Haha, I’ll be here all night.), and also for not putting in a good word with Emma.

Flashback to Tanaka talking to Emma at her car, saying he got them tickets to a monster truck show. Emma says that’s not her thing, but Tanaka is like “Come on!” Tanaka cannot take a hint. She explains that she’s been trying to be nice, but all the excuses she’s made before – like she’s always on her period, or allergic to nighttime – aren’t really true, and she just doesn’t like him. She likes someone else, but he’s married. We know of exactly one male character on this show who’s confirmed to be married, so obviously she means Schue.

Tanaka then says the other high school students will take care of the glee kids trying to be popular or something. Once I heard a story about a high school that had several of its football players also in the school’s marching band. They did the halftime show in their football uniforms. I forget where it was this happened, maybe it was Florida. Florida is ridiculous about its high school marching bands. My Florida high school’s marching band has been in like every parade ever. I mean it’s been in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade a bunch of times, but our band director declared after the one year that they weren’t ever doing it again because you apparently have to wake up at like 3 am for those things, and they have you just standing out in the street in the cold New York air for hours, and there’s nowhere to go to the bathroom or sit down or anything. You aren’t even marching in the parade yet, you’re just standing waiting for it to start or for it to be your turn. On top of that, they only showed the band on the telecast of the parade for like 20 seconds.

…Anyway, I don’t know if it’s true in most high schools nowadays that the kids who are into music are the geeks and the jocks are the cool kids. The jocks always seem to be really mean in school and so nobody likes them, and the most popular people are the ones who are nice to everybody. Maybe things are just different in Ohio. Oh yeah, this show takes place in Ohio, by the way.

Finn is a million feet tall. He is going to eat Rachel for a snack if they don’t have any Sour Patch Kids.

The glee kids have arrived at the other high school’s auditorium. It has a concession stand, even though usually high schools don’t want people bring food in because someone has to clean it all up. Rachel suggests she and Finn become a couple because they’re the leads, but Finn already has a girlfriend – Quinn Fabray, who is captain of the Cheerios and also in the celibacy club. Rachel is shocked by this, not understanding that being celibate means you can still date guys unless you’re a nun or something.

Emma, who is helping to chaperone the field trip, offers to split a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with Schue. Schue doesn’t eat peanut butter because his wife’s allergic. Emma says that’s sweet, to give up something because his wife can’t have it. Because she’ll probably die if it’s even in the house, Emma. Come on. Schue talks about Terry a bit – they’ve been married for almost 6 years, but have been together since high school. Which means they were dating for ten years before they got married. I think it would’ve made more sense all-around if they’d gotten married almost right out of high school – that would certainly contribute to why Schue still sees her as his high school sweetheart. Instead, they got married when they were like 28, so that’s weird that he doesn’t see her as an adult and didn’t get tired of her crazy in all that time.

Schue also mentions that Terry… or shoot, is it Terri? Hm. …Terry “rides him hard”, but he needs structure in his life, or something, so that’s okay.

Carmell High, the school they’re in, has lights and bells that go off to indicate the performance is about to begin. This isn’t the last time we’ll see that Carmell High’s glee club has a huge budget.

Schue and the kids assemble in the auditorium, in the middle instead of in the front or at the sides where the wheelchair seating would presumably be. Schue says Carmel’s Vocal Adrenaline is going to be the group to beat, but he believes they don’t have half the talent New Directions has. He’s saying this without ever having seen or heard Vocal Adrenaline perform. Schue is stupid.

Vocal Adrenaline sings Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” to a full, cheering auditorium. The New Directions can’t even get their own parents to come to their performances later on.

Anyway, they do great, get a standing ovation, and the NDs are stunned that a group with thirty members that have presumably been rehearsing for more than a week are more talented than they are.

Check it out, McKinley High as a steel drum band!

Why aren’t they getting bullied? Because steel drums are cool, everybody knows that.

Also Finn’s wearing the same outfit he had in the earlier scene. It’s still Saturday. Why is the steel drum band there on a Saturday? Why is Finn there? I know the football team has practice, but he said he had to miss it. So… why is he there?

Terri’s pregnant. Schue decides to quit his job as a teacher to become an accountant because that makes more money, even though you need a special education to become an accountant. Maybe Schue double majored in teaching and accountancy and so it took him a while to graduate from college so that’s why he didn’t get married to Terry until he was almost 30.

The glee kids don’t know what to do without him. He’s done pretty much nothing so far besides bring them to together, but he says he’ll find them a great replacement. He doesn’t. Rachel takes over the club in his place. Schue leaves the auditorium and then is somehow on the auditorium’s stage to sing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” with a guitar that was just randomly out. If this school had a music teacher, he would be so angry that someone left an expensive instrument just laying out like that. It would be so out of tune, depending on how long it was out.

Finn says everyone in the town are losers. He’s not wrong.

Guest-starring Outdoor Toilet and Sweatstain.

Coincidentally, lawn spray guy is spraying the school’s football field, blasting “Don’t Stop Believin’”.

Finn comes to glee club rehearsal, says he wants to make something more of himself than being the guy who throws pee balloons and whatever. Finn has a plan. He reveals that Artie plays guitar, and asks if he can get the jazz band to help them out. I don’t know, does Artie play jazz guitar? Maybe he’s more of a classic rock acoustic guy. Maybe he’s just in the school’s guitar class. Or, wait, maybe only my school had one of those.

Finn asks Mercedes if she can design new costumes. I don’t know where Mercedes being a fashion designer came from all of a sudden. Also the “costumes” she ends up coming up with are pants with shirts. WOW. Also Finn doesn’t let Tina come up with something she’s good at, which is pretty much all you need to know about Tina until season 4.

Emma shows Schue a video of the glee club he was in in 1993. It’s apparently the happiest she’s ever seen his, because he loved what he was doing. Schue says he hasn’t felt that way about anything since, until his wife told him she was pregnant. That’s a little harsh, saying he didn’t feel that happy when she agreed to marry him or anything.

But Schue still opts to change to a better-paying job with benefits. He needs to provide for his family. Emma provides this gem:

But provide what, exactly? The understanding that money is the most important thing? Or the idea that the only life worth living is the one you’re really passionate about.

Babies can’t survive on passion alone, Emma. They need food, and health care coverage.

Schue doesn’t know what to do, when he hears the dulcet “duh-duh-duh-duhhs” of the glee club. They’re singing “Don’t Stop Believin’”. I am so sick of this song by now, aren’t you? I bet the actors on the show hate it by now too. Also I like how the songs like this on the show always sound like there’s way more people singing. There’s only six of them but it sounds like at least 15.

These are the costumes Mercedes came up with.

The school colors are red and white. She didn’t come up with those, it was just spirit day and they just had those outfits on already.

While they’re singing, Sue, Quinn, other cheerleaders, and Puck spy on them. Schue also comes in and appears moved by this display. He gives them some music director-y feedback and tells them to start from the top. Schue has decided that teaching a few high school kids how to sing is more important than feeding his baby and covering his wife’s medical expenses before the baby comes.

Or Schue is just mad that they put together the whole thing all by themselves. He doesn’t want anyone to succeed without his input. He would sell his wife if it meant he could look like he did something productive with the glee club. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.

Best song: Pfff… I don’t know. “On My Own” was pretty emotional and pretty and stuff. I just don’t want to say Don’t Stop Believin. Anyway most of the songs in this episode were snippets, they hardly count.

Worst song: Eh… “Where Is Love?” by black-haired guy and Sandy Ryerson. Runner-up: Puck farting.

Final thoughts: Nice Valentine’s Day decorations, Schuester.

Apparently they filmed this pilot episode in a real school, and probably filmed in February, so that explains that. Maybe they weren’t allowed to take the decorations down. Or their set/continuity person is an idiot. Or maybe Spanish-speaking countries just celebrate pink-and-purple hearts and Cupid day in September.

Also, I liked how all the audition songs, except Tina’s, were kind of the same theme. Mercedes sang about not getting enough respect, Kurt sang about not being noticed, and Rachel sang about being alone. That’s like what they all really feel! Whoa! Deep! Then there’s Tina, singing about how she kissed a girl and liked it.

In other news, I figured out a way you can save layers of a Photoshop document into different files without having to do “File>Save As>change PSD to JPEG or whatever>rename the file>Save”, so that’ll make doing the screencaps SO much easier. I usually put them all in one multi-layered Photoshop document and then save them all individually and it takes FOREVER and it’s AWFUL, but this is way better. Only problem is it saves them in the wrong order, but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

This is the longest review/recap on here ever. I think it’s mostly because Glee has way more scenes than Boy Meets World does, plus it’s twice as long as Boy Meets World. Also if I do say so myself, I think this is the best reviewcap I’ve ever done. I need a new desk, typing for so long hurts my back.

Original airdate: January 18, 1987.

It’s come to my attention that a lot of you plucky youths these days might not have ever heard of Degrassi Junior High, let alone ever seen it. Degrassi Junior High and its continuation, Degrassi High, are the precursors to long-running show Degrassi, formerly called Degrassi: The Next Generation.

DJH (and sister series The Kids of Degrassi Street, which features problems younger kids face, and while it has many of the same actors, it doesn’t have any of the same characters and thus is not part of the greater Degrassi continuity) was created by Linda Schuyler, a former teacher, who was dissatisifed with the educational filmstrips she had to show in class. So with the help of producer/director Kit Hood, the Playing With Time production company was born, and Degrassi soon followed.

If you’re familiar with the Degrassi franchise, you probably know it as some melodramatic teen soap where sometimes people get raped and everybody gets pregnant at some point. And while that’s not exactly untrue, it’s missing the bigger picture – the kids on Degrassi had to deal with things a lot of kids go through, in the way kids go through them. Most of the time, they never get any help or advice from an adult, although they learn sometimes it’s best to go to an adult for help. A lot of issues aren’t wrapped up by the end of the episode, and many issues start popping up before they’re even addressed on the show.

And there’s a lot of issues on the show that aren’t that serious compared to the other stuff, like “character has trouble making a movie”, “character keeps getting erections after eating health food for a while”. Some episodes are sort of a mix, like this premiere episode of the series, “Kiss Me, Steph.”

Oh, but first, a content warning: Contains copious amounts of 80s style and occasionally extreme Canadian-ness. Viewer discretion advised.

The DVD menu is fabulous. (Yes I have the whole DVD set. The screen quality is top notch for 80s public television, probably, which is unfortunately pretty crappy by today’s standards)

Check out the “other products of interest”:

First we meet Stephanie Kaye and Arthur Kobalowski. They’re siblings – their parents are divorced, Arthur lives with dad, Stephanie lives with mom and changed her last name because mom did.

It’s Arthur’s first day at Degrassi Junior High, and Stephanie is totally embarrassed by him, apparently for the sole reason that he’s her younger brother. She tells him not to hang out with her, talk to her, and act like he even knows her.

Cue credits:

This show has an awesome theme song, by the way.

Fabulous.

Stephanie finds her good old friend Voula. They gush about how they’re in eight grade now, and practically adults. Stephanie then shocks Voula by pulling off her clothes to reveal much more revealing, mature clothing underneath. She does her hair and makeup and I don’t know if she’s supposed to look like a prostitute or if that’s just 80s chic.

Steph hears an announcement over the radio about class president elections, and gets disgusted when the principal says something like “so get on out there, boys!”, which is a proper thing to get upset about, and is one of the only times Stephanie is reasonable about something.

Arthur runs into Joey Jeremiah in the hallway. Arthur’s lost, and Joey decides to show him around. Joey stuffs Arthur into a broom closet.

Class finally starts for our set of eighth graders. Their homeroom teacher is Mr. Raditch.

Those of you familiar with Degrassi from ten years ago may know his equivalent on that show, Principal Raditch. He’s the same person, actually.

We also get a look at the rest of the eighth grade class.

She’s not in-frame, but it looks like Liz in their class, even though she’s a new student in a later episode.

Beautiful.

There’s a stairwell there. How did that girl in a wheelchair get up those stairs? Secret elevator?

Later, in study hall, Voula is helping Stephanie with her campaign, writing her speech and making the signs. Meanwhile, Joey keeps whistling at her from across the room, and she fluffs her hair at him flirtatiously.

Steph gives her speech the next(?) day, the speech Voula wrote, all about how if she’s elected then there’ll be more talk about family planning, better food in the cafeteria, etc. I have to say, it’s a nice change of pace from the “vote for me and there’ll be no homework, Kool-Aid in the drinking fountains, and teachers will pay US to go to school!” campaigns that are always in these kinds of episodes.

Snake, who you watchers of current Degrassi know as Principal Simpson (I swear not every character on this show becomes a principal), goes up to campaign next, by playing a rock/blues song about how you should vote for him. It’s awesome.

Then a kid later identified as Wheels says he’ll vote for Stephanie if she gives him a kiss. She says sure, so he heads over there, and also looks down her top for good measure.

All the other boys echo him, saying they’ll vote for her if they get a kiss as well. The girls watching the speech are disgusted, to say the least.

Stephanie gives another speech… later. It’s some other day, but she’s wearing the same clothes she wore on the first day, so it’s hard to figure out when exactly the speech takes place.

This speech is the kind of one I already mentioned I dislike – “more school dances, rock music on the P.A.!” She also mentions co-ed swimming in gym, and the guys are like “All right, girls in bikinis!” “I wanna see Steph in a bikini!” Wheels even says “Without a bikini!”

They all start hollering at her to take it all off. To say the girls are disgusted would be an understatement.

Stephanie just giggles, honored by the attention these creepy 13 year old boys are showering on her, and then she thanks the one person who made all this possible. Voula smiles, thinking she’ll finally get some recognition for her hard work.

Nope, Steph thanks Joey, who did literally nothing but be horny at her.

The… same? day, Stephanie is announced the winner of the election. The school vice-president talks to her about the first student council meeting and how there’s lots to discuss. Stephanie’s just like “What? Why are you bothering me with Student council business?” and Suzie, the vice-pres, is like “You’re the president, dummy, you do president things now.”

Then Steph finds out she has to make a speech to the PTA. She’s in real trouble now, because Voula was her official campaign speech-writer, and Voula has been avoiding her. Steph confronts Voula, and Voula is just mad as heck and can’t take it anymore.

Voula’s mostly mad that Steph hasn’t made any pretense of being grateful for all the work she did, thanking Joey instead. Steph basically says she only did it because boys like that kind of thing. Voula protests that girls also do, which comes off a little more, erm, gay than I think they meant it to in-context.

Voula says it’s too late for Steph to apologize now, and declares their friendship over, and calls Stephanie a baby.

Steph pouts in the washroom as she defluffs her hair and removes her makeup, returning to her earlier state. She leaves the school, to find Arthur hiding behind a tree. I forget what they say to each other, but Stephanie tells Arthur she needs his help, which I guess is supposed to make up for her ignoring him.

They leave the campus wearing the same clothes they had on at the beginning of the episode.

I wasn’t paying enough attention to figure out if everyone else had on different outfits throughout. Stephanie had on a different top and it looked like Voula had three different outfits through the episode. Is this a continuity error? Do Arthur and Steph just not have a lot of clothes? Or was this all taking place in one day and Voula just has a weird multi-layered outfit?

…

Back to the Arthur B-Plot I briefly mentioned. Eventually one Yick Yu frees him from the broom closet. Theirs is the most enduring bromance in the show’s 18 year history, more if you count the time it was off the air.

Later, Arthur frees Yick from the broom closet. They try to avoid Joey the rest of the…day/week, but Joey stuffs Arthur into a locker at one point until Stephanie orders him to let him out.

You can see why I left that out of the main post.

The issues in this episode were pretty tame by Degrassi standards. Bullying, growing up, trying to impress boys, and losing a friendship are all rough things, but this is probably a 2 on the Degrassi intensity scale (where 10 is school shooting, suicide at school, and gang rape, all of which unfortunately we will cover later).

The thing is, we don’t know anything about Stephanie or Voula as individuals or as friends, so them not being friends anymore because Steph likes boys and Voula looks like she’s a quaker (she wears really loose, dowdy clothing; we find out later she’s the child of immigrants, which explains some things), it doesn’t have a huge impact.

Like, what were they like before this episode? Was Stephanie a dowdy dresser as well? Were they both bookworms? Were they always one of those pairs where one is meek and quiet and the other is bold and flirtatious? Why are they friends? How long have they been friends? Breaking up a friendship we know nothing about in the very first episode is dumb.

Degrassi versus Degrassi: Stephanie Kaye’s closest characters on Degrassi: The Next Generation are Ashley Kerwin (who was also school president and lost her friends because of something stupid she did), and Alli Bhandari, who completely rips off the whole “wear loose, boring clothes to school and change into cool clothes and makeup in the bathroom”. Alli dials it down a notch, though, from that thing Steph was wearing in this episode that is certainly not within dress code. There’s a bit of her in Paige Michalchuk as well, who comes back from summer break with a new look, but I don’t think Steph and Paige would get along well.

Steph doesn’t make an appearance in D:TNG, although most of the other main characters do. Her actress, Nicole Stoffman, retired from acting in 1998 to become a jazz musician, got a BA in film studies, and is currently in the process of obtaining or has already obtained a degree in political studies. She’s 42 years old and looks FABULOUS. She looks pretty much like she does on the show, but grown-up and less crazy. She also seems like a very nice person, which is always great to know.

Photo taken from her Facebook page.