BraveStarr: The Price

October 9, 2015October 24, 2020 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 7 Comments

First of all, I would like to thank very special reader, DT Nova, for informing me that this exists. From the title alone, I would have expected it to be some weird 70’s porno and thus we would never have had this post. This post is brought to you by the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and by readers like you (well, actually only the last one).

Looking at this as a total outsider/new viewer, I would say that BraveStarr kind of throws a Jem vibe–except if Jem were filled with cultural misappropriation. So basically they live in a futuristic space-cowboy land. It’s a space-version of the wild west complete with fringed tops and bolo ties. And BraveStarr is the marshall of this space town.

Things get pretty intense pretty quickly. Like 3 minutes into the show, some dude is flipping out and ready to kill everyone because he thinks there are spiders everywhere. There’s also a line that I swear sounds like “You want to eat me, but I’ll let you.” What is the rating on this? Am I old enough to be watching this?

So then Bravestarr’s horse/partner restrains the hallucinating guy, who is apparently high on a drug called “Spin.” All’s well, right? Nope. We cut to a personified wolf selling Spin to kids. They probably trust him because of his British accent and three-piece suit, but one of them is smart enough not to let him pour the effervescent/seemingly on fire liquid that is “Spin” into the palm of his hand.

Yep, that’s how you do Spin, kids. A creepy wolf-man will pour some magic liquid into your palm, and nope you are not yet high on drugs. I will say that this episode is probably the best personification of the “drugs as black magic” motif that seemed to haunt all of my “educational” anti-drug lessons as a child.

With each passing moment, the people of space-cowboy-town are dying from the Spin epidemic. The little kid who was like hell no, I am not doing Spin, almost tells the marshall about the wolf-man pusher. But he remembers that he promised he wouldn’t tell. So then his friend keeps doing drugs, and then he starts to speak in a creepy voice. He literally sounds like he has had a lobotomy and like spin is the only word he can remember how to accurately pronounce.

But the straight-edge friend is still trying to keep his promise, so he leaves his friend to hallucinate alone in a room while he goes off to think. The kid’s just kind of like well, my friend is in trouble but I promised I would keep a secret. But he might die. And the shaman is like promises are important but so are lives. And the kid is like omg, yeah! But he doesn’t tell the shaman. Instead, he runs off to find BraveStarr but he just narrowly misses him. See, it seems like maybe he should have told the shaman.

OH my gosh those wolves are dingoes! Okay, so are we in Australia? I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with this galaxy, but BraveStarr arrests a lot of dingoes for selling Spin. Finally, the kid gets in touch with BraveStarr and they try to save his friend, but it’s too late. This death is supposed to remind us all not to do drugs. But I feel like maybe it’s just reminding me not to take weird liquid from a wolf-man. I’m pretty sure that I would never do that anyway.

Very Special Lesson: I feel like I should let you watch this PSA for yourselves:

Captain Planet: Mind Pollution

September 23, 2015October 19, 2021 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 7 Comments

I’m so fatigued right now that my brain is probably working at like 25% percent (yep, that just happened) capacity, so a show entitled “Mind Pollution” feels just about right for today’s very special episode.

On another note, I’ve become the “Customer Wow Champion” and recently achieved 200 bonus points by closing out 10 tickets with a rating of “Awesome” in a week. In fact, I shudder that I just shared that with you because I fear I will have jinxed my streak and it’s such a major point of pride for me right now. What is my life that being “Customer Wow Champion” could make or break my self-esteem?? There’s so much pressure when you’re at the top! Things can only go down from here!

But for now, we turn to Captain Planet. For those of you that grew up under a rock (or those younger millennials craving the nostalgia of the 90’s you can’t remember, hello welcome) Captain Planet was an educational cartoon all about saving our great and environmentally-threatened home, the planet Earth. But it was the early 90’s and we’d all been conscripted into the War on Drugs. And that’s how we got this episode with a cartoon teenager buying drugs from a man with a tale in the back streets of Washington, D.C.

This is a drug called “Bliss.” Now, Bliss is a kick-ass drug name and sounds like something I would definitely want to sign-up for. But do not judge a book by its cover because this shit is scary. I’m pretty sure this dude, Boris, tried Bliss once but he’s suddenly dressing like an extra from Miami Vice. He’s also got a pretty nasty gash on his head–presumably from drugs–which his cousin (Linka, for the Captain Planet connection) tries to help him clean up. But he accidentally knocks it out of her hand (again, from drugs) and it lands in the middle of the stove where their uncle/father is preparing blintzes. The moral of this story is that drugs will set your kitchen on fire, and if Captain Planet taught even one child that very important lesson, then this episode was all worth it.

Soon, Bliss-addicted Boris is back in the alleyway buying more drugs from the rat-man (theVillainous Skumm) because Linka threw his drugs down a storm cellar and now he’s illin’ like nobody’s business. Boris claims that Bliss can make you happier than anything else in life and the rat man agrees, saying that “when you’re used to Bliss, anything else is a real pain.” I’m thinking that Bliss must have been an early form of Crystal Meth, especially because Boris is now considering trading his cousin for more Bliss. Yep, that’s right. You thought you were getting an episode about drugs and you’re actually getting a lesson about the dangers of human trafficking.

You see, Boris unwittingly revealed to the rat-man that Linka is a Planeteer and now the rat-man will only sell Boris the Bliss in exchange for Linka. But what does this all have to do with the care-and-keeping of Earth, you say?? Well, as Whoopi Goldberg explains to the rest of the Planeteers, “It’s the most insidious kind of pollution. These kids are polluting their minds and bodies with drugs.” If you thought chlorofluorocarbons ruined the ozone layer, then you were wrong. It was drugs. And we’re all responsible.

Luckily, the Planeteers head to Washington, D.C. to save Linka (who has been force-fed Bliss) from the rest of the addicts/zombies. I mean we’re talking straight-up apocalyptic scenario here. The Planeteers are throwing fire and water like nobody’s business, while the addicts wander around like the living dead in search of more Bliss. The Planeteers need Captain Planet to get out of this. But they can’t call him without Linka, and she’s too high on Bliss to help them.

The Planeteers barricade themselves in a building by placing a thin branch through the handles of some double glass doors–that ought to hold them. Meanwhile, Linka has snuck away to let Boris into the building (so he can provide her with more drugs). Boris attempt to jump through the glass window and starts bleeding out from both wrists (and only wrists, he’s totally unscathed otherwise). This is insanely dark for a children’s cartoon. Luckily, the Planeteers are on-point with their tourniquet techniques. Then they all evacuate the capital. Okay, well maybe they’re not that great at first-aid because Boris dies mid-evacuation. But this is enough to sway Linka to call Captain Planet with the rest of the Planeteers.

The Planeteers support Linka as she goes through a harrowing drug withdrawal. Meanwhile, Skumm accidentally eats some of his own Bliss, ending the episode with a soliloquy, “I’ve polluted myself. No! No!” Alls well that ends well.

But seriously, this is the freaking Grimm’s Fairy Tale of Captain Planet. I feel like I need to curly up with a teddy bear and hide from the scary drugs of America. My friend is an emergency room Social Worker and she literally just posted a PSA begging people to stop doing K2. The appeal of synthetic marijuana is just so lost on me. I know drugs get out of hand, but I feel like ultimately drugs are supposed to be fun. Like even if you’re beyond the point of recreational use, I feel like they’re supposed to provide you with at least a modicum of enjoyment and yet it seems like everyone who uses K2 is just electing to put themselves into this very, very awful episode of Captain Planet.

Very Special Lesson: If you chose to do drugs, do not chose to do any drugs that look even vaguely like they share any of the highs depicted in Captain Planet, Jem, or Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue. You people, are making an honest woman out of Nancy Reagan and I weep for us all.

The Facts of Life: Dope

July 10, 2015December 27, 2019 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 3 Comments

Guys, we’re finishing up our first week of The Very Special Summer! How dope is that? Okay, bad pun. Anyhow, today’s episode is about marijuana. The first season ofThe Facts of Life had approximately seventy-two characters, but the names you need to know for today are: Blair, Sue Ann, and Helen Hunt. Yes, that Helen Hunt. This episode guest stars Helen Hunt.

Blair gets Sue Ann into a cool clique called “The Group.” (Helen Hunt is in The Group). But they all smoke pot. Meanwhile, sixth-graders Natlaie and Tootie have a plot to crash The Group’s hangout because Tootie overheard Blair discussing their secret knock. So Tootie rolls into the room on her roller-skates under the guise that she needs to ask Sue Ann and Blair whether they prefer an 8-track or a cassette player on the new dorm stereo. The leader of The Group tells Tootie that Mrs. Garrett can buy her super expensive stereo at a very low price.

While Blair and Sue Ann are trying to get rid of her, Tootie notices the bong and asks what it’s for. They tell her it’s for jelly beans and run her out of the room while the leader of The Group is trying to tell her what it’s really for. They freak out and want to know why she offered a twelve year-old pot, and she says she was just kidding. Then Helen Hunt starts talking about how cool pot is and Sue Ann is like hey, I might actually be down for this. But Blair realizes she actually doesn’t want to get high. She’s looking at everyone around the room and she decides that it doesn’t look like something she’d be into, so she tries to say no. When they peer-pressure her into trying it, she’s like fine I”ll just go home then, you jerks.

So then things get kind of weird. The cool girls are all like, Sue Ann we like you for you and not because of Blair so you can hang out with us all by yourself. And Blair is all like they’re lying to you so you’ll smoke with them and they really only did invite you because of me. And the cool girls are all like that’s not true. Blair is just chicken! And I would like to know in what world–especially a world where you’re selling your cool stereo to buy better pot–are you peer pressuring some chick to smoke with you? From the looks of this, I’d say they were trying to get her involved in some high stakes amphetamine ring. I feel like in the real world, they’d just be like bye and keep the pot for themselves.

The next morning Sue Ann feels a little sick. Pot hangover? She’s also very proud of her book report, which she finished all 20 pages of in 30 minutes. She asks Mrs. Garrett to read it and share her opinion. But it’s like one sentence per page and kind of weird and rhyming and ridiculous. Blair (who I think I actually did like better in the early episodes) covers for her and tells Mrs. Garrett that Sue Ann has been playing a joke. The book report is pretty funny, so it does play well as a joke and no one is none the wiser…until Tootie and Natalie come in with three bongs that they bought at the record store.

Natalie and Tootie have purchased one each for themselves and one for Mrs. Garrett. “We’re a three bong family,” Natalie says. Hahahaha. Mrs. Garrett is horrified. Of course, the girls still think they’re for jelly beans. Well, Natalie says she’s going to use hers for root beer because “it comes with a built-in straw.” [You can see why these girls got to stick around for season 2.] Mrs. Garrett asks why they bought the bongs, and Tootie tells her about seeing one when she went to visit The Group. This leads to a massive raid and those cool girls get kicked out of school. Sue Ann decides never to smoke again and Blair says, “I’m going to stick to being high on me.”

Very Special Lesson: Pot kills (your ability to write book reports).

Jem: Alone Again

May 26, 2015May 24, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 3 Comments

There’s a new girl in the Starlight Home. Jerrica finds her crying while cradling a ping-pong paddle like a baby doll. Laura says no one understands her and she doesn’t “measure up” to all of the other abandoned children at the Starlight House. They’re so cool with their fashion sense and talents. Jerrica tries to tell her that everyone is good and something and Laura’s all like everyone but me! Then she goes off to film this music video:

Jem and The Holograms enter the room and are all like you’re so talented! They ask her to play at their concert with them, but she says she’s not good enough. Finally, she accepts under protest and then she starts to crack under the pressure. A drug pusher overhears her talking to herself on the see-saw at school. He offers her pills that will make her “play great.” Then he tells her he’ll be at the concert and hopes she will play her best. This makes Laura be all like, okay if the cute boy wants me to!

I’m not sure what kind of pills this dude gave her. She starts of feeling “lighter and faster” but then she starts hallucinating like crazy. She sees the thermos in her lunch box turn into a bird. Then she decides she’d like to fly like a bird and climbs out on her ledge. She yells at Jerrica, who is below the windo begging her not to jump, angrily and says, “You may be prettier than me and smarter. But I can fly. I can fly!” Okay, so I’ve narrowed down the drug options here to PCP. If I were Jerrica, I’d call the paramedics and then seek shelter immediately. But Jerrica’s a rescuer, so she runs upstairs while Laura is doing a countdown to blastoff and reaches the window just in time. Laura ends up slipping, but Jerrica has super human strength, so she catches Laura by the arm while also maintaining her own balance and then uses her core strength to lift Laura up into a standing position as she pulls her through the window.

Right at this moment, Laura seems to be coming down from the drug and is genuinely shocked and depressed that neither the thermos nor she is a bird. Jerrica says a lot of things like let’s talk but she never actually says anything of substance other that “WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?” and Laura says “THERE ARE NO DRUGS!” So then she goes back to school and gets more drugs from the pusher/boy she has a crush on.

This drug seems more like cocaine. She can’t sleep and all she wants to do is play guitar ALL NIGHT! One of the other Starlight Girls beats her up because she’s being so annoying. She’s like totally pummeling her but they’re only grounded for a week each. The next morning, Laura is extremely irritable and cannot find her drugs. She starts destroying the house because she can’t play her music or live without the drugs she’s taken like twice now.

Screen Shot 2015-05-24 at 5.52.48 PM Jerrica finds her stealing money from her purse (the pusher has started charging now). Laura looks all around school for the drug pusher, but when she overhears him giving the same sales pitch to another starlight girl she starts subbing because he didn’t love her at all! Jerrica finds her outside of the school and takes her for a drive to talk her into going to rehab. She fails to mention that the drug pusher was selling to another Starlight girl literally moments earlier, but she does agree to go to the group, and also to participate in a sting operation to catch the drug pusher. (Luckily, the other Starlight girl didn’t want the drugs and gave them to the police right after the drug pusher gave them to her.)

Now Laura is immensely more confident, and just in time for the concert!

Very Special Lesson: Taking drugs won’t fix your stage fright. But becoming addicted to drugs and kicking the habit in a week will make you feel badass enough to play an arena concert.

Very Special Movie: Go Ask Alice

February 25, 2015March 17, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 7 Comments

Ladies and germs, I bring you the the most screwed up thing I have ever written Screen Shot 2015-02-21 at 12.45.44 PM about on this blog. In light of how I’ve dedicated the shortest month of the year to the 70’s, this week’s very special movie of the month is the most very special movie of them all, Go Ask Alice. Based upon the “anonymously” written (by Beatrice Sparks) “non-fiction” book of the same name, this pack of lies tells you all about the freaky-deaky world of drug addiction.

As you know, all drug-addicts are friendless losers, so we start off this movie by having “Alice” establish that she is sad. She’s also concerned about boys becoming “instant sex maniacs,” and her mother tells her to “be aware of her own desires too.” YUCK where is the acid?

“White Rabbit” is playing, so things should start to get good soon. Eventually, Alice makes friends with Beth. Beth is a super nerd, but it’s okay because she’s smart. It’s not okay that Alice is a super nerd because Alice is not smart. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard because being a super nerd is awesome. Then Beth goes away to summer camp and Alice is lonely and bored.

Alice meets a cool girl from school at a clothing store and the cool girl invites her to a party. Here we go! This is not a drill, people! They play a game called “button, button.” This game is really just that everyone but one dude gets soda with acid in it. Everyone knows the game but Alice, so she’s super naive and doesn’t know she’s tripping until the cute boy next to her explains everything. At this point, she’s become a drug addict. Obviously.

She also starts taking tranquilizers every month to get over her “monthly pregnancy scare.” Additionally, she is now anorexic. That’s another bi-product of acid addiction. But being an addict, really improves Alice’s fashion sense.

That fall, Alice celebrates her sixteenth birthday. She and her friends do lines of coke just moments before her parents bring in the bday cake. Only Alice’s brother kind of gets that something is off whereas Alice’s parents are so naive that they’re just like hah teenagers are weird! Soon feelings become too much for Alice, so she starts balancing out her days with pills.

When one of their friends gets arrested, Alice and the cool girl (what’s her name?) take over as drug pushers at the junior high. And now it’s time to try Speed! Additionally, Alice’s boyfriend is only into her when he is high, which is a major bummer. Then Alice really compromises her morals by selling drugs to a twelve year old who is pushing them into grade school.

Soon after, Alice discovers her boyfriend having a threesome with a random girl and the cool girl’s boyfriend. Then she and the cool girl (Chris) run away to California. They only have $200 and cannot stay off drugs in order to make the money last. At some point, off camera Alice and Chris move in with a creepy couple who keep dope in candy dishes and hold them as prisoners.

Then Alice meets Andy Griffith at a Catholic mission. She’s been referred there by The Diggers (so 70’s). She gives him her diary because that’s pretty much her only way to communicate at this point. Andy Griffith helps her keep clean, and it comes to light during all of this that Alice has also pretty much sold Chris into sex slavery because she wanted drugs/didn’t want to be a sex slave herself. (We do hear from Alice that Chris eventually makes it home, but we never see her again.)

The moral of this story is that you should always listen to Andy Griffith. Anyway, Alice gets home and everyone seriously tries to get Alice to do/sell drugs again. Someone even passes her pills while handing back a graded paper. Beth won’t invite her to her party because of her “reputation.” The girl can’t win!

Things break down into a weird altercation, in which Alice is babysitting an infant because the original sitter did not show up. Then the original sitter rushes in from a rainstorm, high out of her mind. She freaks out and attacks Alice for stealing her job. Alice calls the girl’s mother because she’s about to straight up murder her, and the next day at school all of the drug addicts harass her. Then the crazy girl from the night before (who is at school right now??) tells her that she’s going to trick Alice’s little bro into doing drugs by giving him “candy.”

While Alice is babysitting again, someone doses her coke. The level of access that these creepy child addicts have is phenomenal. Alice ends up in the hospital and can hardly communicate. It was time to move to a new town like two months ago, parents!

Anyway, things do end up pretty good for Alice. She goes to rehab, rekindles her friendship with Beth, and dates a really nice college boy. And then she dies. Of an overdose. And no one knows if it was murder or not.

Very Special Lesson: I think the real message of this movie is not that you should avoid doing drugs. I think it’s that you should never drink a soda that you didn’t open. First of all, it is rude to take open drinks from homes where you are babysitting. And secondly, that drink may be full of way too much acid for anyone to possibly handle. Also, if your parents won’t let you transfer out of the school where people are trying to murder you, then it’s time to run back to California and hang with Andy Griffith.

21 Jump Street: 2245

November 19, 2014November 19, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 8 Comments

This episode starts off like a slasher movie. It’s a prison break, but it looks like a horror film version of a prison break. A picture is worth a thousand words so: Screen Shot 2014-11-15 at 7.59.07 PM

But it turns out that it is all just a dream and the horror movie villain is really a guy named Ronnie who is on death row for killing an undercover Jump Street cop. (It’s not someone we have ever seen before, unless you watched the two-part episode with the original murder, so don’t worry about your favorites being killed off.)

And at this point, the episode actually manages to subvert its very special trappings and become a really intense social commentary. I wish I had a pint of cookie dough ice cream right now so that I could eat my feelings is what I am telling you. This episode is genuinely sad.

We flash back to the night of the murder and basically the Jump Street cop showed up at this dude’s home while he was busy chilling with his girlfriend (Rosie Perez) and tried to push him into supplying him drugs immediately. The cop is so heavy handed that it’s surprising that Ronnie doesn’t make him, but he’s so into defending his turf he flashes his gun (still in his waistband). It seems more like posturing than anything, but this Jump Street cop is a rookie, so he immediately goes to grab his weapon. The drug dealer is a faster shot and fatally wounds the Jump Street cop.

Then eighteen hours before his execution, Officer Hansen (Johnny Depp) tries to convince him to make a video encouraging other teens not to commit crime.

So it turns out that Ronnie and his girlfriend are both illiterate (guess they never saw that episode of Jem) and they can’t read the newspaper article about the Jump Street cop murder. But Ronnie recognizes his name in the paper and they see the cop in uniform, so they put two and two together. Well, sort of. Ronnie doesn’t seem to realize how bad killing a cop is. He thinks he can easily hide from the cops as per usual. He’s wrong. Obviously.

He and Rosie Perez commit and armed robbery in order to be able to finance their new life together. This is probably the exact opposite of laying low. However, the clerk at the store they rob has already alerted the cops via a secret button. It’s odd that he has a secret button since this is convenience store, not a bank. Then Rosie Perez shoots the clerk as he is trying to reach for the key to the register because Ronnie is trying to bust it open with a screwdriver.

Oh man, then things get really sad when Ronnie has to have a corrections officer write a final letter to Rosie and just hope that someone can read it to her. Then we flash back to Rosie confessing to killing the guy, but she only did it because she thought that he was reaching for a gun. So really they both only killed because they feared for their own lives!

They don’t have any evidence on the cop murder, and they decide to pin the convenience store murder on Ronnie because they know Rosie was just scared and that Ronnie has a lot of prior arrests. They decide that it’s ultimately his fault because he orchestrated the entire thing. Johnny Depp tries to tell the DA that it’s possible that Ronnie killed the cop in self-defense and never intended for Rosie to kill anyone. But Peter DeLuise and the DA want to get Ronnie on other things that they do not have evidence for. The justice system is so flawed!

Ronnie supposedly has a lot of drug money, but he must have a shitty lawyer. The DA is able to try him as an adult (ugh) and then he ends up on death row with Johnny Depp trying to get him to make a PSA about crime. He refuses to do it though, and I think this episode becomes more of a PSA about the poverty/crime/disenfranchisement cycle than one meant to deter teens from criminal activity.

But in a heartwarming twist, Rosie has learned to read and is able to read the final letter herself. I mean I guess that’s as heartwarming as an utterly depressing episode can get.

If this episode made you sad and you want to do something, here are some resources:

http://booksthroughbars.org/

http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Home Improvement: What a Drag

November 13, 2014April 9, 2015 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 5 Comments

Home Improvement was not a show known for high drama or life lessons. It was pretty much a ridiculous (ridiculously hilarious) show about an incompetent handyman and his witty family. But (as you well know) it’s not an 80’s/90’s sitcom without a very special episode.

Can you guess what this episode is about based on the title?

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, this episode is about weed! During an on-location shoot for Tool Time (the show with in a show) Tim scales a tree in his backyard to demonstrate the hazards a blizzard can take on suburban homes. Turns out blizzards also damage trees, and Tim (the incompetent handyman) falls into the rough of his gazebo/all of the wooden lawn furniture.

As Tim and his sidekick, Al, are sifting through the wreckage, Al finds a baggie of “oregano” that he assumes Jill (Tim’s wife) keeps outside in the cold to maintain optimum freshness. Tim tells Al that what he’s holding is a bag of weed, and Al freaks out because his “prints are on the bag.” Naturally, at this point the only thing to do is to stage a stakeout behind next door neighbor Wilson’s fence. Wilson expresses his shock that drugs were found in his very own neighborhood because he has only ever heard about “kids and drugs in the newspaper.” Clearly, Jill and Tim are the only adults in this show who are edgy enough to have any experience with illegal substances. After a Friday night spent in ten degree weather, Jill and Tim finally see their eldest son Brad go into the gazebo to retrieve the pot.

After lecturing Brad on how pot could ruin his whole life, they send him up to his room while they figure out how to deal with them. But Jill is left reeling because Brad accused them of being hypocrites since they probably smoked too when they were his age. Tim is all like no way all I did was drink beer! but Jill is all like omg I smoked so much pot. I should have helped my son learn from my errors. Then Jonathan Taylor Thomas (as middle child Randy) accidentally stumbles onto his parents freaking out. At which point his dad accuses him of smoking too, and JTT is all like “what no way!” and he really means it because JTT is a golden boy and above the influence and funny and the greatest 90’s heartthrob ever.

So then JTT goes upstairs to talk to Brad because he’s shocked that Brad smoked and he didn’t even know it. The Brad is all shocked that JTT has not smoked and JTT is like clearly too intellectual to get high and then have pseudo-intellectual conversations. Then you hardly see JTT anymore for the rest of the episode because you can tell by this point in the show’s run that he’s pretty much over acting and ready to enroll in Harvard.

Finally, Jill and Tim agree that the best way to handle Brad is to come clean about their own experiences (and ground him for months). As it turns out, Jill was a huge pothead in high school. One time she went to a Led Zeppelin concert, smoked some pot laced with something weird, and ended up in the ER thinking that her name was Charlene Fogelman. Personally, I think that sounds horrifying and like a terrible waste of a Led Zeppelin concert. I’m also glad that this stuff is slowly getting legalized, so that people in real life will be able to purchase from reliable (legal) sources that don’t mix PCP into their product. But I digress. After this, Jill ends up in jail and Tim has to bail her out because her parents won’t even speak to her. How lucky is Jill that she was still a minor, right? I don’t even think we could have Home Improvement if Jill had been a mom with a criminal record! It would have been like Orange is the New Improvement. Ultimately, Brad decides that smoking pot is not worth the risk of his soccer scholarship. Well, like no shit it isn’t.

Very Special Lesson: Don’t do anything that will make you think you are Charlene Fogelman. I hear she’s a convicted felon.

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue

October 11, 2014October 12, 2014 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ 6 Comments

Taking over the War on Drugs from Reigning Queen Nancy Reagan, is no easy task. But Barbara and George H.W. Bush pulled out all of the stops for Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. In light of the recent death of Saturday Morning Cartoons, let this post be a requiem. A snarky, nostalgia riddled requiem for the wistful charm of a more innocent time.

cartoon 3 Your favorite cartoons are alive and well, living secretly in your home. They are the only witnesses to your drug-addicted brother robbing your piggy bank. You see, poor teenage Michael is addicted to marijuana, so the cartoons set out to help him kick the habit, while Winnie-the-Pooh stays behind to comfort Michael’s little sister and her crushed piggy bank of dreams.

They follow Michael to a cool teen hang out where his friends offer him some white rocks, and he almost takes them because MARIJUANA IS A GATEWAY DRUG and OMG PEER PRESSURE. But the cops bust the place and Michael runs away only to be corned by Bugs Bunny with a time machine in the alley.

cartoon 1

You see, it all started two years ago when Michael was seriously peer pressured at the park to the point that he had to do drugs with his friends. That’s when he started to be haunted by a creepy ghost-death-cartoon, who is the proverbial monkey on his back but if the monkey was some sort of evil genie.

One day, Michael’s friends pressure him into giving them money for crack rock. He hesitates because that is “hard stuff,” so his friend runs away with his wallet, and Michael falls into the Ninja Turtle’s open manhole while chasing her. Michelangelo is only there for like two seconds as the token Ninja Turtle and quickly hands Michael off to the Muppet Babies, so that they can show him what drugs do to his brain.

This is the trippiest shit I have ever seen—way trippier than most surrealist films. Also, now I’m just thinking about things and like if we are in cartoon world and the cartoon all-stars are the rescuers, then why are the people drawn as cartoons too? Who are the cartoons and who are not the cartoons? ARE WE ALL JUST CARTOONS??

Oh thank God, it’s Huey, Dewy, and Louie. And now everyone is singing about how to say no to drugs. Woah sensory overload…I cannot even tell what they are saying. Miss Piggy just ninja kicked the camera and shattered the glass. And it was all a dream? What? Michael wakes up from a dream?!? Ugh, I am SO sick of the dream sequence! Wait, no. It could not have been a dream because A.L.F. just pulled Michael into the inside of a mirror. Oh man, I am so confused. Am I on drugs? It’s hurting my brain!

Aw man, now Michael’s little sister is being pressured by the scary ghost to do the drugs that she found in Michael’s room. He throws Pooh across the room when he tries to stop her from doing drugs. Then she’s all like “Woah, what is this stuff??” NO, if a creepy ethereal creature without any lower half to his body throws your Winnie-the-Pooh across the room, then you should no longer listen to anything he has to say or take anything from him!

Meanwhile, Michael is bouncing around inside the mirror, which is some kind of Carnival from Hell. At one point he is in Baby Piggy’s soda cup and she spits him out of her mouth…what? Also, at the carnival, Daffy Duck shows Michael his future, in which he becomes a drug-addled zombie. This scares him straight just in time to stop his little sister from doing drugs too.

Very Special Lesson: This really freaked me out. I think he was on something really scary. What the heck just happened?

7th Heaven: Who Knew?

October 1, 2014September 1, 2020 ~ theveryspecialblog ~ Leave a comment

7th Heaven has to be the most saccharine, didactic, and unrealistic show ever—in other words, it’s perfect for The Very Special Blog. To be honest, I usually cannot stand this show, so there is a good chance that I will never post about it ever again. Yet every now and again the stars align and I get interested in an episode. Here is a math equation for why I am sitting here and watching this show right now:

Barry Watson (handsome and much too authentic for this melodramatic crap) + parents reacting to joint as if it is PCP blunt + Family dog holding said joint in mouth for “profound” emotional effect =
A great way to spend a weeknight.

Matt (Barry Watson) gets a joint from a friend at school. This guy just kinda says something like, “Hey buddy, sorry you can’t hang out with me and the guys tonight, so here’s a joint, Bye.” Matt’s a “good” kid but he hangs on to it anyway because all teenagers are tempted by the forbidden fruit of rebellion, or something like that. When he comes home from school, the joing falls out of his pocket, and the family dog, Happy, picks it up. She does not devour it but simple holds it gently until the patriarch of the Camden family can come home and dislodge it from her mouth whilst cas Screen Shot 2014-09-29 at 9.10.32 PM ually greeting her. Dog as plot device. We are off to a good start.

The Reverend Camden joins the family in the kitchen, eager to begin the witch hunt. He’s playing his own private game of Clue as he suspiciously eyes all of his children. Has Happy been outside today? No. Mary’s eyes are red from allergies (she claims). But she is not the one devouring cookies. Was it Lucy in the hall with the marijuana?

The reverend is certain that the culprit is eldest son Matt, but –like any good mother—his wife attempts to convince him to consider accusing all of their other children as well. Finally, they decide to let their kids invite friends over, so that they can interrogate them as well. In the meantime, the matriarch of the family stashes the joint in her dresser.

In a shocking twist, Lucy discovers the joint while borrowing clothes from her mother’s dresser. Of course, she assumes that her mother is a pothead. Meanwhile, the reverend Screen Shot 2014-09-29 at 9.29.29 PM gives all the kids a good talking too with some real facts about marijuana, such as junkies with “needles in their arms” all started off with someone giving them a joint at a party.

In another shocking twist, the reverend’s wife reveals that she smoked pot as a kid. It’s been decades, but he gives her the cold shoulder because she defied his expectations before he met her.

“How could you just drop a bomb on me like that and then serve eight people and a dog a meatloaf like nothing happened,” he asks her. At this point, you must be wondering, how this could escalate anymore. Well, let me tell you.

The reverend proceeds to ask everyone at the dinner if they think that Lucy’s new friend–who rides a moped and likes reggae music–uses drugs. Then, in an effort to figure out how other parents handle this looming drug issue, the reverend asks Mary’s boyfriend, Wilson, what his father would do if he suspected he was on drugs. Wilson replies that his father periodically drug tests him because he lost all trust in his son when he became a teen father at sixteen. So you know, if you happen to get your girlfriend pregnant in high school, you are probably also a drug user. And if you are incredibly responsible and care for your child even though you are still a teenager…you’re probably still using drugs. Also, can we just take a second and look at Wilson’s backstory? He is eighteen years old, widowed, and father of a two year-old. How did his teen wife die? Was it in childbirth? It would be in childbirth wouldn’t it…

“Some mistakes are like jumping out of a plane.” Wilson says, “Once you do it you can never take it back. It stays with you forever.” So just in case this was not clear to all of you– parenting a tiny human that needs your constant attention and support for the next eighteen years is just as significant as experimenting once with a non-addictive drug.

Finally, it’s time to drive the point home with one of the most terrible stories I have ever witnessed in a sitcom. Matt’s mom confront him directly (such a novel idea) and tells him that she is concerned because she used to smoke pot when she was a teen. She tells him that one of her friends drove home stoned and was killed because he did not stop in time for a red light. Don’t drive under the influence is always a good lesson, and she actually manages to redeem the plot by genuinely relating to her son—except that everything that surrounds this conversation is so ridiculous that it makes it hard to be affected by this heart to heart.

And I say that especially because of the next part, in which the reverend decides that it is best to tell everyone that he will drug test them in order to find out who the druggie is. He then proceeds to shame Matt into admitting in front of the entire family that he brought a joint home from school. This includes shocking eleven year-old Simon into believing that his brother is a total burnout and loser. So even though Matt never smoked the joint, he has been totally vilified—even accused of not being able to keep a job because of his (presumed) drug habit. But by the end of the episode, the only person who has ever done drugs in the Camden family is the mother…twenty-five years earlier…

Very Special Lesson: I just feel like there was a much more reasonable way to handle this. Like what just even happened right now.

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.