I’m honestly SHOCKED it took The CW this long to reboot Sweet Valley High. I have to think it’s the pandemic’s fault because 90’s reboots have been all the rage for a while now. And yet here we are in late 2021 and we’re only just now getting a Sweet Valley entry into the reboot craze.
According to TVLine, the Sweet Valley adaptation will be helmed by Gossip Girl‘s producers and writers — which is probably the right vibe for this content.
If you never caught the original tv series version of Sweet Valley High in the 90’s — think 90210 subject matter for a 7th Heaven audience with the production value of Clueless (the TV series). The Wakefield Twins are played by real life twins, Brittany and Cynthia Daniel.
If the original series is any indication, there’s a lot of room for creative liberty. One first season adaptation of the second entry in the book series, Secrets, takes a plot about winning queen at a school dance and turns it into winning the opportunity to be an anti-drug spokesperson.
In the episode, a student worries that she’s not going to be a good anti-drug spokesperson for the school because she did drugs one time (and only one time) and was a passenger in a car accident (I repeat, passenger) while under the influence. This caused her parents to move the entire family to Sweet Valley.
She’s worried she’s not “the right person to be telling people not to do drugs.” But idk Magic Johnson told everyone not to have unprotected sex after he got HIV and I feel like he was a pretty good spokesperson for that. But maybe they don’t watch basketball in the town she moved from. MAYBE this is something a Gossip Girl writer could put a better spin on.
Oh I also forgot the part where the prize of being anti-drug spokesperson includes touring the country with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler — so shaming this young, one-time drug using teen girl makes even less sense in that context.
Also apologies in advance to whoever visits this page and finds broken links when/if The CW picks up this show and wipes all other Sweet Valley productions from the free web.
TIL Arthur is still on television. And you know what? That’s just great! Being a kid in the 90’s was pretty freaking amazing. I feel like being a kid now would be less amazing. I mean Sesame Street isn’t even on public television anymore. We now live in a time where your parents have to be rich enough to have HBO for you to watch Big Bird. And that’s just wrong man, that’s just wrong. So yes, it cheers my heart to know the youth of America still get to see Arthur (the aardvark? Was he an aardvark? Woah, I just looked up what an aardvark actually looks like. Crazy.)
When the lunch lady cannot read most of the ingredients on the label, she insists that Buster eat an apple instead. (I don’t know why he like asked the lunch lady to read his candy bar wrapper, but whatever.)
Buster and his mom head down to the corporate headquarters of the candy bar company to find out what some of the agreements are. The “Supreme Dog,” as it were, tells them that it’s a trade secret. But he does explain what happens to your brain when you eat a Rabid Dog candy bar. And it’s meth. It’s literally meth.
Scooby-Doo has more franchises than I can even keep track of. One of those was the late-80’s/early-90’s A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. The gang is adorable a group of adorable children solving mysteries with the titular puppy. Since, the original Scooby-Doo was set in the late 60’s, I’m pretty sure this show is supposed to be set in the late 50’s/early 60’s. But really the only evidence of this other than the characters’ ages are Freddy’s flat top and the fact that Daphne is sporting a neck-kerchief.
In this episode, the gang has taken a trip to the beach where Velma’s aunt works at some sort of marine institute’s “dolphin corral.” The dolphins have become un-corralled (read: stolen) and the gang is there to help find them. Or maybe they should just go on their merry way because who corrals dolphins anyway? That’s messed up. Leave the dolphins alone!
Anyhow, while trying to track down the missing dolphins, the gang is continually terrorized by “The Headless Skateboarder.” They’re all like meh, it’s a monster in a mask. But I’m not so sure. I think this one may be the real deal. Do you have any idea how hard it would be for a human to skateboard on sand??
Everyone gets really offended that Al would do drugs, so they head back to his store to question him. He immediately breaks down crying. Yes, A Pup Named Scooby Doo shows a grown man break down and cry when confronted by a group of children about his addiction. But it’s okay because he’s a cartoon so it makes it not really that depressing.
Velma has somehow solved this mystery and takes the team back to Al’s shed to look for more clues. They plan to drop a dolphin’s harness on the headless skateboarder and control his every move, thus leading him directly to them. Sounds like a good plan. Except he doesn’t have a head. So he probably doesn’t have a neck. How will you harness his neck if he has no neck, Mystery Team??
This post is a little bittersweet for me. As you may know, I’ve already 
Kelly Kapowski (who did not participate in said rap) runs in looking for Johnny Dakota, who has just departed on a tour of the school with Class President/Editor of the School Newspaper, Jessie Spano. Kelly is wearing, I kid you not, an orange unitard with a floral jacket, popped collar. This is weird even for 1991. Anyway, Johnny Dakota is smitten with orange unitard clad Kelly and therefore decides that he should film his commercial at Bayside.
Everything is great until one day, Zack and Slater smell pot in the boys’ room. (Hmmmm how do you innocent Bayside students know what pot smells like.) Soon after Zack has identified the mystery smell, Slater spots the culprit lying on the floor near the sink. They decide they need to hide it because if Johnny Dakota sees it, then he won’t film at Bayside. Unfortunately, Johnny walks in while they’re holding the joint. But he believes that it isn’t theirs, flushes it down the toilet, and offers them parts in the commercial.
All of this anti-drug talk leads Zack and Slater to enact some vigilante justice on a random guy they saw leaving the bathroom around the time they found “the roach.” But there turns out to be no reason to worry because it’s JUST a cigarette. After this Zack and Slater kind of let the whole Starsky & Hutch thing go for a little while. They’re also distracted by a party that Johnny has invited all of them to–even Screech, who somehow throws his back out. Slater’s going to take him home because none of the girls at the party will talk to him, which is weird because Mario Lopez is easily the most charasamtic person on the planet. This is played for laughs, of course, but it mostly just removes any shred of plausibility this show actually had.
While all of her friends are loading Screech into the car, Kelly is left alone with Johnny, who starts smoking and offers to share with Kelly. She’s totally destroyed that her anti-drug teen idol hero is just another casual drug user. Zack comes back in just as the entire room of party guests laughs at Kelly for “just saying no.” This was always my worst fear as a child. The crowd-mocking drug pushers masquerading as friendly people at a social gathering. And while the kids at my high school were most certainly no strangers to heavily mocking others, this never actually happened to me.
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