Before there was Hannah Montana there was Jem and the Holograms. Jem was a cool glam rock version of Barbie, but she also happened to be totally normal person when she wasn’t in her glam rock makeup. Jem is also pretty interesting in that it has music videos intermingled with the plotline.
It is always surprising to me when cartoons have very special problems. I mean these are two dimensional creatures who live in a world where no matter what happens to them they can look as good as new in the next frame. But they do have problems, you see. Sometimes cartoons can’t read and it really messes up their daily lives.
What’s a show about girl rock bands without a little gang rivalry, right? The Holograms rival gang The Misfits happens to have an illiterate band member, Roxy. They all make fun of her and call her an idiot. She finally has enough of their harassment, so she quits the band and moves back home. When Roxy gets home, Jem and the Holograms are coincidentally there for a charity event to raise money for literacy programs.
Oh by the way, did I mention that Roxy wins the lottery before she moves back home? Yes, well she does win the lottery and she almost does not know it because she cannot read the numbers. This lottery money gives Roxy tons of money in which to one up Jem’s event with a big carnival. Turns out, Roxy loses all of her money, since she signed a contract that she could not read. Jem helps her pay everyone back even though Roxy has been a total jerk to her all the time.
Roxy basically never cared about reading because she always had material things. Like why on earth would she need to read if she had tons of lycra-spandex and hair spray already at her fingertips?
This episode, which is supposedly about raising literacy rates, concludes with a song called “Open a Book.” The entire music video is full people picking up random things that you can read, like a cereal box or a job application. But I feel like Jem’s viewership was always mostly kids. And while they may not have been able to read, I don’t think they would have gotten the context of the help wanted sign in a store window or scribbling on a job application. To me this is just a big montage of boring words that did not make reading look fun at all. Open a book…okay..what book? I could open the dictionary and that would be a pretty disappointing book. If this is all people were throwing at Roxy then it’s no wonder she procrastinated on her abc’s. Sure that stuff is crucial to being self-sufficient and all, but she was a rock star you guys!
Very Special Lesson: You don’t need to learn how to read until you start losing money.
re many very special moments. But things got really serious on one dark day when Lizzie and her bffs made a music video. Aspiring director, Gordo, took photos of Lizzie and Miranda as they practiced their choreography to Play’s “Us Against the World.” I vaguely remembered that song, but I don’t think it was a hit. It is very catchy though. I still have it stuck in my head and I did play it on youtube a couple of times…kinda want to play it again right now. It’s just so catchy!
been under a lot more pressure than anyone knew–mostly due to the fact that her parents for some reason demanded that their thirteen year old determine her life goals. Miranda feels so much better that she’s able to complete all of her music video choreography even though she hasn’t eaten in the past couple of days. The music video is a more innocent rip off of Britney’s …Baby, One More Time. Though it does feature Miranda and Lizzie in detention dancing on top of a very uncomfortable teacher’s desk. The teacher also dances with them and they hip bump him and it’s kind of strange. Other than that it’s pretty cute and the song is soooo catchy. Here’s a gif: 
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Once upon a time in the ‘90’s, there was this little gem of a show based on Ann M. Martin’s classic book series about a group of middle school girls who spend their free time in a club devoted to babysitting. This show must have been filmed at Astoria Studios because even Dawn, who is supposed to be from California, sounds like she’s from the tri-state region. If you were a girl child of the ’90’s you could not escape this book series. There was bossy Kristy, artsy Claudia, fashionista Stacey, California Casual Dawn, good-girl Mary Anne, ballerina Jesse, and Mallory who had red hair, wore glasses, and other than that had no defining features. I hated this episode as a kid because I thought it was a flashback episode full of clips from episodes I had never seen. As it turns out, it’s a clip show full of new material. I guess these were ideas Ann M. Martin had but never felt like turning into a full length book, and the TV show decided that these random clips would make the best series finale, which just goes to show you that not all very special episodes are about terrible topics. It’s the last day of school and the BSC is having a slumber party. Jessie is nervous about going to dance camp, Kristy is excited about going to softball camp, and Mary-Anne is totally bummed that she see won’t see her friends every day for two months. All of these thoughts about their impending separation lead the girls to reminisce about how they first began the club.
Today’s very special episode is “Never Too Young” and it deals with T.J.’s drinking problem. There are two storylines going on in this episode, one involving cafeteria food and one about beer. At the start of the episode Marcus and Mo are ripping into the cafeteria food and blaming the hulking eastern European lunch lady for the sub-par food. To demonstrate the staleness of the Bread Pudding, Marcus throws a piece against the wall expecting it to bounce back. But just his luck, the pudding is intercepted by the vice principal and it lands directly on his shirt. The boys are sentenced to work in the cafeteria for the foreseeable future or “until they’ve learned what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes,” to put it in TV trope terms.
s rope, T.J. wanders into a back room of the basement where he finally recognizes two kids. Unfortunately for T.J., the two kids are the class flunkies and future burnouts, Kevin and Rich. Things are going really well reminiscing about the old days until Rich pulls a beer from his coat and asks T.J. if he wants some. T.J. actually says no and makes a joke about ruining his six-pack but Kevin and Rich are not cool with sobriety. They mock T.J. about going back into the party to hang out with all the babies, which remember T.J. was afraid of to begin with so they have a point. T.J. relents and spends the next hour getting wasted off one beer split 3 ways. When he reenters the party he is trashed and tries to get Titanic Kelly to dance with him by calling her “Kel, Kel.” Then he knocks into her, spilling her red drink on her dress, and all the kids back away from him because he has committed every party foul ever.
My boyfriend–who I forced to actually visit this blog by taking away the “read via email” function.–told me that every time a very special episode came on TV he would be like “oh noooo it’s one of those lesson episodes!” Child version of me, on the other hand, was like “Oh my gosh. This is a very important message about how to be a better person and not 
floral print sundresses equal credit. And then there are all of the adorable outfits they put little Michelle in. It’s hard to beat a toddler’s fashion, so the Bradys really shouldn’t take this loss too hard. They put up a good fight.
The Very Special Blog 