Before Melissa Joan Hart was everyone’s favorite teenage witch, she played the coolest junior high schooler ever on Clarissa Explains It All. Clarissa writes articles for the school newspaper, has the best clothes, and a cool best friend who always enters by climbing a ladder to her window. My dad was always outraged at the inappropriateness of a teenage boy entering a girl’s window via ladder, but they only thing that made it inappropriate was him telling me it was inappropriate. I would still enter most rooms this way if possible. On a side note, I am astounded by the number of window seats in Clarissa’s house. I counted three in this episode alone. That sounds like a great place to live! But I digress.

In the world of very special episodes, there are a few go-to topics: substance use/abuse, 30-minute eating disorders, learning disabilities, and miscellaneous peer pressure. Clarissa Explains It All was a pretty cutting-edge show and thus could not fall prey to the cliches of very special episodes. So today I bring you a very special very special episode topic: stalking.

Eve is the new girl at school (as in All About Eve). At first it does not seem weird that Eve thinks Clarissa is the coolest (because duh, she is). Plus, Eve seems like a pretty great friend to have around. She hand delivers the new Nirvana tape along with research for Clarissa’s next opinion column. (Maybe Clarissa is like the godmother of blogging…) Then Eve starts to dress like Clarissa and begins begging for the inside scoop on her articles. Clarissa’s latest cutting edge piece is how virtual classrooms will take the place of actually going to school by the year 2000. Ah, if only.

Eve really starts to show her crazy when she overhears Clarissa and her bff Sam (aka cool guy who only enters the house via a ladder) talking about how they can use Clarissa’s school newspaper press pass to ride some of the monster trucks at a car show. Eve tells Clarissa there’s a last minute newspaper meeting and Clarissa generously offers for Eve to go with Sam to the car show. It’s so obvious that Eve is lying because she wants the opportunity to go to the car show and pretend to lead Clarissa’s life. But Clarissa is super nice and trusting, so she does not even notice that Eve is a psychopath until it is too late. Suddenly, Eve has totally taken on Clarissa’s personality and it is super creepy. She gets a whole new makeover and acts like she is the queen of the school newspaper. Everyone is totally into her because she’s cool like Clarissa. I guess they’re not worried about how this girl totally ripped of Clarissa’s personality. Maybe she was so shy they never noticed her when she was just regular Eve and now they’re all like “Oh cool, Clarissa has a twin sister who suddenly transferred to our school.” The whole situation really begins to mess with Clarissa’s brain and she hallucinates that her reflection is actually EVE!

Clarissa’s mom tells her not to worry because eventually Eve will find her own path and give up on copying Clarissa. Clarissa’s mom was always super crunchy granola and maybe this attitude contributed to the warm welcome she offers to this girl who is not only stalking her daughter, but also stealing her identity. Still, this seems like such a cop-out. I’m not a mom, but Sorry, honey, I can’t think of how to help you, but I am sure your stalker will eventually get bored of you seems like the worst parenting ever in existence.

Things never get too bad though because Clarissa outwits Eve by planting a false story idea for a column that she know sucks and that she knows copycat Eve will steal.  

Very Special Lesson: Stay away from creepers.