The Very Special Episode: Hawaiian Style.

August 22, 2014August 22, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 2 Comments

Hello Very Special Readers!

Summer is winding down. (Well, technically I guess we have another month before it’s scientifically over, but Labor Day looms just a mere nine days away.) In order to celebrate the end of the season, I’m engaging in the ultimate very special sitcom analysis. The Very Special Episode: Hawaiian Style.

Take a look at the full bracket here and don’t make fun of my slanty lines:

Here’s a pdf if you want to fill out your own bracket because obviously this is way more important than March Madness, and I expect all of you to start office pools: VSE-Hawaiian Style

All episodes will be graded on a 5 point scale and the winning episode will have the higher score based upon which categories it wins:
Overall Plot–2 points
Music–1 point
Vacation Attire–1 point
Integration of Hawaiian Setting–1 point

Here is a list of the full episode titles (as you can see the writers were not too creative with these episode titles):

Growing Pains: Aloha
Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style
Step by Step: Aloha
The Brady Bunch: Hawaii Bound
Full House: Tanner’s Island
Boy Meets World: The Honeymooners

Stay tuned this Monday for the first showdown Growing Pains vs. Saved by the Bell!

Braceface: Skin Deep

August 20, 2014August 20, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 6 Comments

Someone in the early 2000’s decided that a cartoon television version of Clueless set while Cher was in middle school (and had braces) would be a great idea, and thus Braceface exists. They did get Alicia Silverstone to voice “Sharon” so it is actually pretty cool. But I don’t understand why they changed Cher’s name to Sharon. Alicia Silverstone (Cher/Sharon) clearly states in Clueless that she and Dionne were both named for singers. I guess I should not expect continuity between a cartoon prequel show and the clearly superior, genius film that inspired it, but this really bugs me. Since “Shar” is a stupid name that looks like the beginning of the world shard, I will henceforth refer to the lead character as Cher.

I find this episode especially confusing because Cher is going to model in a fashion show in which Dionne is the designer. I did not remember Dionne being in the cartoon, but they said that she is designing something for the fashion show so she must be a character. I kept looking around for a cartoon version of Dionne and I was like, “Ugh, where is she? I know I need new glasses but come on!” It turns out that the cartoon version of Dionne does not exist and the fashion designer is actually a male named Dion (as in Dion not Dionne).

Anyway, Cher gets to wear this great dress designed by Dion for the annual fashion show at her school. Unfortunately, Dionne does not go to Cher’s school but that mean girl Amber does. I guess she’s technically “Nina” but if Cher is “Sharon” then this must be Amber. Cher has a little trouble fitting into Dion’s dress and instead of just altering having him alter it, Cher decides to stop eating in order to fit into it. This mostly happens because Amber tells Cher she has baby fat. Baby fat is the tamest form of fat but, since Cher is thirteen, it totally sucks to be called both chubby and a baby.

Cher’s friends (not anyone you would know from Clueless) stage an intervention when Cher refuses to eat the baked tofu that her mom made her for dinner. Cher thinks diets cannot be bad for you because magazines always promote them. Her friends are like Cher, you are so dumb, the pictures in magazines are photo-shopped. So Cher humors them and eats some baked tofu. If this was your run-of-the-mill very special episode, then we would end with a nice freeze frame because all compulsive behaviors are cured with a conversation.

Instead, it’s all a clever ruse on Cher’s part and she stops eating again as soon as they leave. Hah! You did not even expect a cartoon to have an eating disorder did you? Let alone resist the very special episode resolve! It is only when Cher passes out on the runway that she realizes she has a problem. She and her friend Maria (the middle school version of Dionne) decide to go out and have some burgers and fries and giggle about how silly Cher was.

Very Special Lesson: If you realize your crash diet was dangerous, you should immediately binge on fast food.

I don't understand why she's worried about her waistline when her face is literally full of hard angles. Don't her cheeks hurt? She needs some cheek fat! — I don’t understand why she’s worried about her waistline when her face is literally full of hard angles. Don’t her cheeks hurt? She needs some cheek fat!

PSA: A Very Special Character Actor

August 14, 2014August 13, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 6 Comments

I’d like to take a moment and pay tribute to a very special actor from the 90’s, Jason Marsden. You may know him as Eric’s best friend from Boy Meets World or Brittany Murphy’s brother from Almost Home. Perhaps, you’d recognize the melodic timber of his tenor as the voice of Binx the cat from Hocus Pocus. This guy owned the 90’s. He may have played mostly minor roles, but he was everywhere, and chances are you owe a great deal of your childhood entertainment to him.

Step by Step

Jason played one of the male lead’s best friends in this 90’s version of The Brady Bunch. Can you spot Jason in this cast photo?

Full House

Jason played DJ’s rich boyfriend and even caused some turmoil between DJ and Kimmy Gibbler. DJ broke up with him and then he went on a date with Kimmy. (gasp!)

Almost Home

Almost Home (a.k.a. The Torkelsons) was a show I watched after church on Sunday’s. I doubt anyone else watched it because it only lasted two seasons. It featured a pre-Clueless Brittany Murphy and…you guessed it! Jason Marsden. This time he was a series regular and a lead. Sorry it only lasted one season, Jason 😦 But hey, you did get to go to prom with Allyson Hannigan!

A Goofy Movie

First of all, A Goofy Movie came out in 1995. Does anyone else think that is weird? Secondly, Jason Marsden voiced Goofy’s son, Max!

Boy Meets World

Perhaps you remember seeing Jason as a recurring character in the first couple of seasons of Boy Meets World. He played Eric’s bff “Jason” and they both dating the same incredibly annoying girl.

Thanks for the memories, Jason!

The Facts of Life: Starstruck

August 11, 2014March 13, 2016 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 1 Comment

This is one of those shows that I am technically too young for but could not escape in syndication. The Facts of Life was a show about a group of girls at a boarding school. The entire series was basically a very special episode with every single show ending in some kind of big deal life lesson. I mean, they covered literally every single “ism” in the book and then some. So how have I managed to select a very special episode for this post? This episode has Jermaine Jackson.

In fact, I think this episode scripted more fans for Jermaine than he actually had in real life. Tootie (Kim Fields) is the president of the Jermaine Jackson fan club and she thinks that she and Jermaine know each other. I mean literally know each other–as in pen pals. She’s like fifteen years old but she cannot tell the difference between a rubber stamp and an actual signature. Please, I’ve known the difference ever since I received a packet of information form Gerald R. Ford for a project in the fifth grade.

Creepy cult worship activities. Can you imagine what this would have been like if he had more top 40 hits?!

But that is not the point. The point is that Tootie is delusional. Everyone is encouraging her not to be obsessed with Jermaine and so on and so forth, but no one has addressed the fact that she has essentially started the cult of Jermaine Jackson. She has a group of girls play records until midnight and then open the window and yell Jermaine’s name so that he will hear them hundreds of miles away in New York City. She is also working on a paper mache sculpture of his head that she won’t let any of the other club members touch.

Tootie gets hysterical when she cannot go to the Jermaine Jackson concert, and I mean literally hysterical. Mrs. Garret (who is basically a random woman in charge of all of these girls but like whatever do not question it) agrees to take her to the concert because she think that Tootie has had a psychotic break and she does not know what else to do to help her.

Nothing to be concerned about here... — Nothing to be concerned about here…

Is this not a school? Do they not have resources like a counselor? Or her parents? But no, it’s probably best to take her to the concert where the dude she stalks will be. Of course, she eventually gets to meet Jermaine Jackson, hang out with him, and learn a very important life lesson, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Tootie arrives at the concert and is completely shocked when she gets to Jermaine’s dressing room and realizes that he has no idea who she is. He tells her that he is too busy with his music to deal with fans. (Hahaha give me a break) She also finds out that everything she has ever read about Jermaine is essentially a lie, and frankly that is kind of sad. Tootie lives in a pre-internet world, so I guess I cannot totally blame her for believing celebrity magazines. She ends up being all sad for Jermaine because she thinks it must be hard to be famous. She ends up crying at the end of the episode and saying that he said “thank you.” I think that it’s implied that this thank you is for talking to him like a normal human event though Jermaine does not seemed stressed out at all about being a celebrity. In fact, based upon my casual observation, I’d say he’s probably the Jackson most eager to be a celebrity. Oh well, I guess Tootie learned her lesson? I mean right? No one like wants to talk to her about why she got so crazy in the first place? Guess not.

Creepy cult worship activities — Love the glitter, Jermaine.

Very Special Lesson: If you’re obsessed with a celebrity, become hysterical enough that the people who love you are scared of you and then they will take you to meet said celebrity.

Very Special Movie: Fifteen and Pregnant

August 7, 2014August 7, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 2 Comments

Hi there! I’m going to be trying a new thing where I post a “Very Special Movie” each month. This month’s movie is “Fifteen and Pregnant,” starring Kirsten Dunst.

Fifteen and Pregnant

This movie starts with them having sex, so like wow we are seriously getting down to business here. During foreplay, Kirsten Dunst is also talking about how bummed she is that her dad doesn’t live with their family anymore…so if you weren’t already thinking that this was a bad decision, you should probably be pretty sure of that now.

It’s okay though because Kirsten gets her period in the very next scene. Only, it’s probably not okay because this movie is called Fifteen and Pregnant. The next time Kirsten sees her boyfriend, he tells her that he is too busy to date her during football season. Kirsten immediately runs away to see her friend and her friend asks her if she’s pregnant as soon as she tells her that she and her boyfriend broke up. This strikes me as odd.

However, in the car ride home we see that her friend has a baby and maybe is a little hyper vigilant because of it. And it turns out that her questioning was warranted because Kirsten missed her previous period. Plus, the pastor at her church said it was bad to use contraceptive because then it meant that you had already thought about having sex…what??

As a teen, I was always paranoid of teen pregnancy, which does not really makes sense because I’m pretty sure you have to be having sex to get pregnant. But I watched a ton of lifetime moves and it seemed like pregnancy was a very contagious head cold and that pretty much everyone who had sex got pregnant or maybe you just got pregnant anyhow due to proximity to hormones or whatever. But now that I am no longer a teen, I’m like looking at Kristen’s mom and thinking “what the hell. She’s got a child who is going to have a child??” That seems very overwhelming because you still have to be a parent to your kid (and maybe their kid) no matter what they decide.

Kristen’s friend suggests that she have an abortion and Kirsten yells at her and is all like “THAT’S THE MOST HORRIBLE THING EVER. I WOULD NEVER DO THAT.” And that’s fine if you believe that, but I kind of want her friend to ask her why. I know that she has to be pregnant for the plot of this movie, but I wish that someone could at least have a real conversation about her options. Oh wait, just kidding this is a Lifetime movie. How silly of me to expect anymore than this.

There’s also a strange scene where Kirsten and her younger siblings have a shouting almost unintelligible argument about the shame Kirsten has brought upon their family while the music she lost her virginity is playing in the background. Ugh. Well ugh for two reasons 1. That’s a nasty juxtaposition 2. I wish there was some other phrase that I could have used in that paragraph instead of “lost her virginity.” I’m pretty sure she didn’t misplace it and I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t stolen or given away. But yeah the same music that played when she first decided to have sex is also playing when she’s arguing with her siblings about her pregnancy. I think this is meant to highlight the consequences of her actions?

The mom’s of the two teen mom’s end up going to the gym and have a more in depth discussion about Kirsten’s choices than Kirsten does. God forbid anyone like actually talk to the pregnant teenager here, right? The absentee father shows up (oh sorry, absentee from the original nuclear family—not from the one Kirsten is starting) and says that Kirsten and her mom can “probably” raise the kid on their own (“probably” that’s great) and that if they decide to go down that path he hopes they’ll consider letting him help. And Kirsten’s mom yells at him and is all like No, I hate you! So…she sounds like she’s going to be a great grandma.

Kirsten has to go to school in a trailer now on the edge of the public school property. I can’t believe this is legal. I used to work at a public high school and there were unfortunately many pregnant teens wandering around. But at least they weren’t hidden away, I suppose. This feels sort of archaic. What backwoods town does she live in? Or am I just uninformed?

Eventually, no one shows up to her baby shower and it’s very sad. After the party, Kirsten and her mom have this heart wrenching conversation in which Kirsten says that she wanted to know what love feels like from the inside, and that she finally has something that belongs to her that she can look forward to. It’s actually one of the most depressing things I’ve seen in a while, especially because her mom looks so horrified and baffled as to how her kid did not know how much she loved her. Thank goodness her family gets back together and rallies around her before she gives birth because I could not have handled it if things got more depressing in this movie.

Here are my favorite quotes from this movie:

“I just want to be a good wife and mother and make my husband happy.”—Kirsten Dunst as dumb teenager

“It’s bad enough being pregnant without having to look like a total loser.”—Kirsten Dunst as dumb teenager shopping for maternity clothes

“Well you should have thought of that before you had sex.”—Kirsten Dunst’s fictional mom who is oversimplifying the issue while shopping for maternity clothes

“I’m not doing that much with my life. Might as well have a kid, right?”—The teen father-to-be.

“We can grow up together. The three of us.”—Also the teen father-to-be.

Very Special Lesson: Condoms.

I know the issues here are so much more complex, but oh my God it would be so much easier to deal with those if someone hadn’t condom-shamed poor Kirsten Dunst before this movie started.

3 Reasons Why I Will Never Post About Jesse Spano

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 1 Comment

We’ve been together for several weeks now on The Very Special Blog, during which time you have probably noticed that I love Saved by the Bell. Perhaps, you have picked up on the fact that I scour all of the episode listings in order to find any episode that even kind of fits my interpretation of the “very special episode” so that I can share my love of said episode with you on the internet. I find that watching Saved by the Bell is my sitcom equivalent of going to Walt Disney World and thus I will find any excuse to make it happen as frequently as possible without ruining the magic that is this blissful nostalgia bond.

That being said, I’d like to go ahead and address the elephant in the room. I know you’ve probably all be wondering when I will post about the infamous “Jesse’s Song” a.k.a I’m So Excited: The Caffeine Pill Addiction. Well, the truth is I won’t be posting about it. And here are some reasons why:

I think we all need to give Jesse a break.
Sure we all know that as far as addictions go, caffeine pills are the most tame by far. But of all the Saved by the Bell characters, Jesse was totally the most likely to become an addict. I think she was the only character that ever felt any kind of actual pressure in life. I mean sure they all went through “rough times” but Jesse was trying really hard to make good grade, do 700 extracurricular activities, and overcome the patriarchy. That’s a lot of work for any seventeen year old, especially one with a type-A personality. As far as I’m concerned, we should all be grateful that Jesse got her hands on some caffeine pills and not amphetamines like Liv Tyler in Empire Records.
Liv was having a hard time in that movie.
I too am a caffeine addict.
I don’t think I’m in any kind of position to judge Jesse Spano. There have been multiple occasions where I’ve thought to myself, “Maybe I should give caffeine pills a try.” Look, I see that Jesse Spano clearly used them to excess, but I work long hours and I don’t get a ton of breaks, so I have to wonder if the occasional pill might be a little convenient for when I can’t get my hands immediately on a cup off coffee. Personally, I’m still waiting for the day where they invent an IV drip for caffeine, but I understand that is not really a priority in the medical profession. But long story short, I love coffee. I love the taste, I love the smell, and I love the eye popping affect it has when I’m falling asleep at my desk. I simply cannot judge her for hammering back the caffeine.
On all of those Buzzfeed quizzes where they tell you to pick your favorite drug and all of the options are like smoking weed, drinking alcohol, or doing coke… I seriously consider picking the cocaine option because it is the most chemically similar to coffee. And then I think to myself, “My God, what is wrong with me?!” Luckily, they usually tuck a steaming latte picture somewhere in the bottom corner of the quiz options, so I’m always able to save my dignity at the last minute. (Kids, it’s NOT really that similar. Little changes in chemical properties make a big difference in the real world and no one should become a cocaine addict because they’re sleepy.)

There’s nothing left to say.
I don’t feel that I have anything interesting to add to the I’m so excited discussion. In the years since the episode aired it has become one of the most talked about and most parodied very special episodes of all time. My personal favorites are Bayside! The Musical! and that time Elizabeth Berkley herself recreated the scene on Dancing with the Stars.
The ladies of Bayside! The Musical!

If you were not wondering why I haven’t posted about Jesse’s caffeine pill addiction and subsequently are wondering why I am writing this post about not writing a different post, then I hope you enjoyed the list either way.

Saved by the Bell: Running Zack

August 4, 2014April 7, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 10 Comments

When I was looking for this episode of Saved by the Bell, I totally missed it at first on Netflix. I thought with this kind of title it must have be about an athletic event and could not possible have anything to do with Native Americans. They wouldn’t use such an insensitive title for a very special episode, right? Well, I was wrong.

So you are in for a real treat with this one.

As it turns out, this episode does involve a track meet, but this only bookends the story. Also, the entire gang is on the track team except for Kelly who is a cheerleader (for track and field?) and Screech. I guess they left Screech out of the sport because he is a nerd, but he looks way more like the track kids I knew in high school than anyone else on this show does.

Anyhow, the crux of the episode is that the gang has to do a history report on their ancestors. Slater’s ancestors were bullfighters, Screech’s ancestors were Italian spies, and I seriously feel like they did not mention Kelly’s ancestors at all. Perhaps, they were cheerleaders at the Circus Maximus. Lisa’s ancestors escaped slavery and helped others to do the same through the Underground Railroad. Lisa says, “My family calls this underground railroad the original soul train.” Lark Voorhies breaks for a second and scoffs at this line because what writer ever decided to compare escaping slavery to a dance show? Seriously.

In this episode, Jesse has a lot of white guilt because her ancestors were slave traders. To make matters worse she has to present immediately after Lisa and right next to her poster of the Underground Railroad. I know you might want to give Jesse some credit for being aware of her white privilege, but that is not even the case here. She basically spends the entire day harassing Lisa because she feels bad and wants Lisa to make her feel better by letting her do random things for her. Lisa eventually threatens to beat her up if she does not leave her alone, and seriously no one could blame her if this thing came to blows. It’s like all of the energy Jesse usually devotes to flirtatiously calling Slater a misogynist is suddenly devoted to bribing Lisa and it is super annoying. Then it is Zack’s turn to present about his Native American forefathers. Screech helps him present by “being” a Native American prop, I think…

Luckily, his teacher calls him out on being a total jerk. He obviously knows nothing about history—he says his family is Cherokee from Burbank—so perhaps she should also be pissed at her own lack of efficacy. His teacher conveniently knows a chief, who educates Zack on his ancestors. On their second meeting he greets him as “Running Zack.” He says, “You run, you’re Zack, it works.” Then he offers this valuable lesson in cliches and offensive statements about why the “Indians” and the “white man” have such a gruesome history:

Zack finally gets his A when he comes to class in full stereotypical Native American garb. Poor Mark-Paul Gosselaar. What sixteen year old wants to dress up as a stereotype of a culture to which he has no actual relation? And as a job requirement? The worst part of all of this is that I truly feel like Saved by the Bell‘s heart was in the right place. They set Zack up with this whole it’s bad to stereotype, it’s important to know where you come from, and we need to respect other cultures plot-line. But then the writers/producers/tween Saturday morning audience either had or expected so little actual knowledge of history and culture that this episode ends up confronting one cliche with another cliche.

But then, things really get heavy when Chief Henry dies. There are only six minutes left in the episode! How are we going to wrap this up? Oh, of course, a dream sequence. And what do you suppose happens in said dream sequence? Chief Henry gives Zack a message on a handmade headband: Beat Valley. [In the track meet, you guys. Maybe you already figured that out, but I wanted to clarify just in case I skipped over the track meet part of this episode a little too much.]

Very Special Lesson: Sometimes Very Special Episodes are just so misguided, you guys.

This Is Your Brain on Drugs

Image ~ July 31, 2014July 31, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ Leave a comment

This Post Is Brought to You by the War on Drugs

July 28, 2014August 17, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 2 Comments

In elementary school we had a class called “Values,” in which we discussed good behavior, moral codes, and not doing cocaine. Our “Values” teacher –a woman with no training in mental health or prevention-based programming aside from (maybe) a certificate—for some reason liked to regale us with Nancy Regan-esque warnings of PCP blunts that she saw on TV and cocaine supposedly offered to her from a compact in a public restroom of. Then there was the infamous day in which she told us all that she knew none of use would ever do drugs so she felt no problem telling us that we could easily buy some in any one of the abandoned warehouses near the waterfront.

This woman largely shaped my knowledge of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol from the first through fifth grades, so I spent most of my pre-teen days convinced that someone was going to hop out from behind a dark corner and force me to smoke a cigarette at gun point. I asked one day in class, “If someone smokes a cigarette…just one time…and they didn’t want to do it…but they did it anyway because of—you know—peer pressure (AKA GUN TO THE HEAD) how will they know that they are addicted to cigarettes? Like if they just did it that one time and then forgot about it, how do they know that they have to smoke them forever?” She calmly replied, “Well, I would imagine that they would remember the way it felt and that they would want to get that feeling again. But you can just say no.”

Based upon the fact that she had provided us with little actual knowledge about drugs, I can see how this was the least helpful education ever for my classmates who (most likely not afraid of being held at gunpoint and forced to ingest carcinogens) maybe did not feel so good about themselves or were innocently curious about substances, and then suddenly entered adolescence with absolutely no useful knowledge about substances that were now readily available. But I digress.

I promised you that this would be a blog about very special episodes, and I have one for you here. This blog post is about the ultimate very special episode. In the fifth grade, I was sick one week on a “Values” day, and when I returned the following week, the class was already engaged in an educational video. I spent the class sitting behind my crush while he enthusiastically caught me up on everything that I had missed in the previous video installment. I was a shy eleven year-old and I loved having a reason to talk to him. And I loved even more that he was so excited to talk to me about what I had missed. As much as I would like to imagine that he totally like-liked me and that I had returned to school–having triumphed over my respiratory virus–as a more mature and cooler fifth grader, the truth is that this video was so ridiculous that it served as a unifying factor for everyone in that class from that day through the end of high school.

Straight Up (funded by the United States Department of Education) was the great equalizer of my graduating class. Loser and cool-kid, brain and burn-out for years after could share a laugh over “give me that headband!” while those who had joined us later on in school looked confused and left out. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Straight Up is the story of a boy who just wants to fit in with the cool kids. It’s a classic tale really. He’s bad at skateboarding, while the cool kids excel at it. You know the drill. The cool kids all happen to have a ton of booze, cigarettes, and a quart sized Ziploc bag full of pot. I mean FULL. We are talking a clear possession with intent to distribute charge here, people. This boy, Ben (Chad Allen), just wants to be liked, and he thinks that handing out with this group of twelve year-old druggies will makes his life better.

"This grass is great, Sue." — “This grass is great, Sue.”

Luckily for him, he meets Cosmo (Lou Gosset, Jr.) who has a thing or two to teach him about peer-pressure and healthy life choices, which he does by using tools such as a magic headband, magic glasses, and an amulet. The headband spews facts in Ben’s own voice when others pressure him into doing drugs. The eyeglasses show been the true dark nature behind the glamorous facade of heavy drug use. The amulet is known as the “chain of command” that gives Ben the power to (all together now) JUST SAY NO!

Yeah, definitely no drugs around here... — Yeah, definitely no drugs around here…

Along the way, the kid meets “gateway” drugs, booze and pot, and then must face the added struggle of saying no to harder drugs, cocaine and heroin. And when I say meets, I mean literally meets. They are personified. Oh and did I mention that this is a musical? It’s a musical.

Here’s a direct quote from the recap the video plays after the first section: “Thanks to the knowledge that his magic head band gives him, Ben is able to keep out of danger. But when Pot steals the headband, Ben finds himself hanging over the edge of a deadly snake pit.” To be fair, the guy who plays heroin is very scary and has syringes in his hair.

Yep, those are syringes. — Yep, those are syringes all right.

In the interest of full disclosure, Straight Up is 90-minutes in total and I’m concerned that if I review the entire thing I will write a 5,000 word blog post about an anti-drug video and the internet will hate me forever. But you don’t have to take my word for it…you can watch the full series of three, 30-minute episodes on the National Archive YouTube channel. It’s available for you to watch online at your convenience because it is such a helpful learning tool for Americans of all ages and every walk of life.

Very Special Lesson: Guys, what is happening with our anti-drug education in this country? Seriously. Who thought this video was a good idea??

Clarissa Explains It All: Hero Worship

July 24, 2014July 11, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 2 Comments

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 8 — (Poor Melissa Joan Hart has been in some lighthearted sitcoms with weird hallucination.)

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.

That's not Clarissa, it's Eve. And her mom is super fine with it. What?! — That’s not Clarissa, it’s Eve. And her mom is super fine with it. What?!

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.