Very Special Episode

Happy Days: Richie Almost Dies

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hqdefaultRichie decides to buy a motorcycle from Fonzie. I really can’t imagine Richie on a motorcycle at all. But fine, this is where the writers are taking us. His dad tries to prevent Richie from riding the bike until Fonzie promises that bikes are totally safe as long as Richie wears a helmet and leather or whatever. Now, what idiot seriously believed this even in the 50’s? I figured Howard might be a little more worldly since he’s the Grand Poobah of the Leopard Lodge, but I stand corrected.

Now that we’ve set this up so idealistically, it’s obvious that it will all end in tragedy. Richie and his girlfriend, Lori Beth, end up in a terrible motorcycle accident. This accident leaves Richie in a coma, from which the doctor isn’t sure he’ll ever wake up. (Good news, he was wearing his helmet.)

While the family sits around the living room and waits to see how things will turn out for Richie, Leather Tuscadero (singer/songwriter with a late 70’s mullet) regales us with a ballad on the family piano. And just in case this wasn’t schmaltzy enough, we get a soft-focused vignette montage of Richie doing random stuff from the past few seasons. Yikes, this show was so far past it’s prime at this point.

hqdefault1Late at night, Fonzie breaks into Richie’s room to talk to him. Fonzie (who is essentially a mystic/archangel at this point in the show) make a deal with God. And guess what? Richie wakes up!

I seriously feel like I just watched an episode of Touched by an Angel.

Very Special Lesson: If you’re going to live dangerously, make sure you live dangerously with the Fonz.

As Told by Ginger: Stuff’ll Kill Ya

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as_told_by_ginger-showAs Told By Ginger was one of my favorite shows in 2000. I was an awkward preteen and here was the perfect show that depicted exactly that. It was a cartoon (yay, kid stuff!) that talked about puberty (ugh, awkward stuff) and perfectly reflected exactly where I was at that time in my life. Plus, my girl Macy Gray sang the theme song. What I didn’t realize is that this show produced episodes long after I stopped watching. In fact, today’s episode first aired in 2006 and talks about the dangers of COFFEE! (Insert hyperbolic gasp here).

That’s right, this isn’t even a caffeine pills episode, people. This is straight up filtered coffee from the coffee shop. Now, when I last saw Ginger, she was a student at Lucky Jr. High. But she’s moved up in life and is now attending high school.

For all intents and purposes in this episode, coffee is cocaine. Ginger overhears a couple of “cool girls” illicitly discussing a “Mocoloco Frothinator” that allows them to finish the overwhelming amount of homework they have to do each night. So Ginger goes out in search of the cure for her exhaustion.

Suddenly it’s after 12:30 in the morning and Ginger crashes. But she has to wake up for school of course–except that she doesn’t wake up until after 10 am. And her mom won’t write her a sick note. Ugh. So Ginger guzzles some more coffee (which by the way is making me have major coffee cravings) and doesn’t even bother to change out of the close she wore the day before. She has rapid, pressured speech and generally acts like a spaz.

mv5bmtq0mju5odewnl5bml5banbnxkftztgwnty1mjyymje-_v1_uy268_cr870182268_al_Her mother and friends confront her at the coffee shop. And even though she only had her first coffee less than 24 hours earlier, she has no idea how many she’s had. Ginger’s mom forces her to throw out her coffee (which is actually 6 coffees in a carry-out container, I should point out.)

“Anything that alters your body or mind is a strict no-no,” her mom says. Well, I guess that makes me kind of a crack-baby then because I’ve been drinking milky coffee since I was four. So basically, Ginger just goes to bed and gets a good night’s rest. She also falls asleep in class that day…so maybe like a harm reduction model was necessary here. But instead, Ginger (and her mom) cold turkey quit coffee.

My mom cold turkey quit coffee once and she got the shakes. So yes, I’m saying that I come from a family of caffeine addicts. But since none of us have hypertension, I’d like to think we’re all just super passionate about lowering our risks for Parkinson’s and liver cancer. Although what’s this about a fairly common genetic mutation?? Well, I may have to under go genetic testing now. Great, thanks Blogging from A to Z. This has been a really productive challenge for me so far.

Very Special Lesson: Ignore Ginger and drink lots of coffee. (This post was not paid for by Starbucks. I promise.) Unless you have that very specific (yet common) genetic mutation I just read about, then you should watch your coffee intake. (Please consult your primary care physician and not this blog.)

Full House: Stephanie’s Wild Ride

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Whoops, due to the fact that I accidentally scheduled this post for March 31st (which is in the past) some of you may have already read this…but for those of you that haven’t:

I’m so glad the Phoenicians made F the sixth letter of their alphabet. The first 5 posts in this challenge have been rough, but now I feel like I’m amongst old friends. That’s right, today’s show is the tried and true very special show, Full House. In this episode, Stephanie and her bff/resident bad girl, Gia, are at the mall picking up some older guys.

screen-shot-2013-10-01-at-1-54-45-amThey pretend to be sophomores in high school even though they are thirteen. But when DJ and Kimmy Gibbler show up, they recognize the boys from their school as total sleazeballs who drilled a hole in the girls’ locker room. But for some reason, even with the knowledge that these two dudes are juvenile sexual predators, DJ and Kimmy go along with Stephanie and Gia pretending to be three years older than they are.

The two guys offer Gia and Steph a ride home. At first Stephanie is all like unsure about riding in a care with strangers (so prudent) but the Gia tells her that they’ve been talking for three minutes and therefore are not strangers (blargh) so Steph goes along.

These guys apparently have a death wish, so they drive their convertible at like 100 mph on sharp turns. And when that’s not thrilling enough, they decide to drive on the wrong side of the road, just to make things extra “fun.”

bef2d06a99b0a19ce499020786c2b32bWhen Steph gets home and tells DJ about her wild wide, DJ is livid. Gia and the guys try to get Steph to joy ride with them again after dinner, but DJ threatens to tell their dad if Stephanie goes with them. I think it’s important to point out that the very next episode is “Under the Influence,” in which we learn that the girls’ mom was killed by a drunk driver. So it’s really not surprising that DJ is adamant about road safety. Also, I feel really bad for her knowing now that she had to deal with a dumb sister in this episode and then a dumb best friend in the very next episode. But her best friend is Kimmy so I guess she deals with a dumb best friend a lot.

That night, Danny tells Stephanie that Gia has been in a car accident. She’s okay (this is Full House after all) but has to spend the night in the hospital. Stephanie realizes she could just as easily have been injured in that car if not for DJ. But DJ wasn’t always so responsible. It turns out that when DJ was 13 she and Kimmy stayed out all night on Halloween and even hitchhiked to Berkley. Yikes, so maybe that’s why they never had a true Halloween episode.

Very Special Lesson: Riding in cars with boys is dangerous. Didn’t you see that movie with Drew Barrymore?

Cagney and Lacey: Rules of the Game

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    Before we get started, here are two useful pieces of information from the 30 second preview at the beginning of this episodes.

  1. Christine Cagney is in line to become 1st woman Chief of Detectives (or Chief of D’s as they say in every episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent)
  2. The guy who is her superior (or Captain, if you will) is also a major creep. He’s now trying to make her feel like she “owes him one.” But like if “one” was sex. He’s very creepy.

cagney-and-lacey1_2693110kAlso, can I just say that the theme song to Cagney and Lacey is just so enjoyable. It makes me want to skip down the streets of midtown Manhattan and say to the passersby, “I’m a New York City detective and I chase perpetrators down while wearing this wool tartan skirt and my thigh high dress boots!” But like if you can actually chase down a perp while wearing thigh high dress boots and a wool tartan skirt, then I’d argue that you’ve totally nailed the undercover thing.

bio_tmb_1Uh, no one told me that Sensei from The Karate Kid is a regular cast member in this. I’m now way more excited for this than I ever thought I could be. I’ve got to be honest, I thought I was going to phone it  in for letter “C” but here I am dedicated 100 words to the opening credits alone. This is the benefit of a blog challenge! I would NEVER have watched this otherwise! And now I have a new favorite skipping-down-the-street song!

Okay, so back to the Creepy Captain (or CC for short). He calls Cagney a “prima donna” and temperamental. But he also says she’s talented (and attractive) and that people called him temperamental when he was making his way up the ladder too. He asks her to dinner and says he “won’t take no for an answer.” My, how charming. (That’s sarcasm for any dudes out there who are erroneously taking dating advice from this blog.)

CC insults one of Lacey’s ideas on a case by telling her it’s just “woman’s intuition” and not actual detective work. He then calls Cagney into his office and is all like if you’re seeing someone else then I’ll just give you more work so you can never leave the precinct. Ughhhhh.

Let’s take a moment for some comedic relief: Lacey’s accent. What is going on here? She’s talking like she’s auditioning for a bit part in The Public Enemy. Am I supposed to believe this is Brooklynese? For reference:

Okay, CC tricks Cagney into going to a fancy restaurant under the guise of meeting a suspect. Cagney leaves as soon as she realizes that it’s just a roos. But she doesn’t have enough money to take a cab home, so she ends up at Lacey’s apartment to borrow the additional fare. Lacey’s kind of sympathetic but then she tells Cagney that she’s probably not being clear enough with the CC. You know, the good old blame the victim.

The next day at work the CC is pissed, so he starts giving Cagney a hard time. (I went through HR training at work a couple of months ago and this situation has red flags all over the place.) So she goes to her lieutenant, who tells her that with all of her professional experience she should “know already how to handle a guy who’s uh trying to work his way into the good graces of a good looking woman like yourself.” Barf.

mv5bmtg3oda5mzi4mv5bml5banbnxkftztgwndm2mtk0mje-_v1_uy268_cr870182268_al_But Cagney points out that this isn’t just an idle flirtation. On the one hand, I’m super glad I wasn’t a lady cop in the 80’s. But on the other hand, this all seems fairly familiar even though this episode is 30 years old. The lieutenant is ultimately sympathetic. He’s also incredibly unhelpful. He’s just kind of like hm, what a bad situation.

Once again, Lacey tells her to ignore him. AGH LACEY WHY??? YOU’RE HER PARTNER! Where is the support? I feel like Lacey is just naive because she’s not in this situation and so she thinks it’s easy to get out of and that’s so infuriating. Finally, Lacey gets on board. She tells Cagney to keep a diary of all of the times he came on to her. Lacey says that she and her husband can testify about the time Cagney ended up at their house looking for cab fair when she was trying to get away from CC.

Cagney is worried about getting a bad reputation for “busting one of [her] own.” Being a cop on this show sounds a lot tougher than the theme song implied.

The CC tries to work out a deal with Cagney. He’ll recommend her for the job she wants as long as she drops the complaint. But she sticks to her guns because she’s not going to be manipulated by a creepy dude.

Uh, and then roll credits.

What? You’re just gonna do me like that Cagney and Lacey??

I’m not going to let this be a repeat of the Baywatch incident. I’ve scoured the internet and we actually have to wait FIVE WHOLE EPISODES to find out how this works out! According to cagneyandlacey.com, in “Con Games,” Cagney manages to track down another woman that CC sexually harassed. She agrees to testify and this seals the CC’s fate.

Very Special Lesson: I mean, my real life advice here is to always have a good basic knowledge of employment law and a great attorney.
But like this episode made me sad and I’m sorry that Cagney had to deal with all that.
So maybe the very special lesson here is that I should pre-screen episodes before committing myself to a blogging challenge.

However, I’d like to say that the start of the A to Z Challenge has been very serious. And for that I blame the alphabet. But tomorrow, I promise you an episode of Dragnet and plenty of giggles.

Baywatch: Bash at the Beach

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It’d be easy enough for a show all about babes in bikinis to shirk social responsibility and never go deeper than eye candy. But that would be expecting too little from the people of Baywatch. I believe the writers must have felt a moral responsibility in writing this. You can only encourage so much excessive sun exposure before you start to feel a little guilty. And never ones to shy away form tough subjects, they brought us this cautionary tale of skin cancer.

And also Hulk Hogan and Randy “Macho Man” Savage. The lifeguards have to revive Hulk Hogan after he gets hit in the head by a jet ski. And Macho Man is there because he and Hulk are bffs, duh. 26055

There are a lot of characters in this show and I honestly can’t remember all of their names. There’s a brunette who also is a lieutenant (in the Baywatch, I guess). Since I don’t know her name, I’m going to call her Lt. It’s this lady:
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The Lt. has a hot date on a private beach with a doctor. But the doctor notices a sketchy looking mole on her leg. He tells her that there’s no such thing as a safe tan and orders her to come to his office first thing in the morning.

Lt. feels like she cannot ever go outside again, but the Hoff tells her she just needs to wear sunblock everyday and reapply frequently. (Actually, that’s solid advice and there was a time when I did think you could tan safely. So perhaps this Very Special Episode is on point. But now I actually never go outside for more than 15 minutes cumulatively every day and I probably have a Vitamin D deficiency…oops I’m not talking about the episode anymore…)

The Hoff goes straight to the doctor for some answers about the Lt.’s biopsy. So like. That’s kind of a strange thing to do, but okay. And the doctor keeps saying he absolutely cannot break doctor-patient privilege. But isn’t it also not cool to skin biopsy your girlfriend?
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OMG points to the Hoff! He asks the doctor that very question. Usually, I’m the only one asking these questions. I feel like I’ve underestimated Baywatch, you guys. Actually, this is highly informative. Like I’m learning the math behind SPFs. Yasmin Bleeth is only using SPF 8 so the Lt. tells her that if her skin burns in 10 minutes (sans sunscreen) then she’ll only have 80 minutes of protection with SPF 8. Yasmin works 8 to 10 hours at a time (and she’s getting in and out of the ocean during that time!) so she’s have to reapply at least 8 times a day. AND GUESS WHAT? She doesn’t reapply.

Yasmin probably doesn’t absorb all of this info though because she sees the bandage on Lt.’s leg and realizes what’s going on. Also, Lt. says that the most common spot for skin cancer is the back of the leg. Very Special Readers, is this true??? I’m going to need to pause for a moment while I obsessively look at the back of my legs. Okay, nothing but razor burn. We’re good!

Meanwhile, Hulk Hogan saves a drowning child. And Lt. yells at a bunch of burned teenagers slathering their skin with baby oil. And it turns out that this is just the first part of a sunscreen awareness spree. She grabs a bottle of tanning oil from a woman’s hand and tells a mother to put sunscreen on her baby. Then just starts approaching random people like a crazed lunatic obsessively repeating, “Excuse me. Are you wearing sunblock? Excuse me. Are you wearing sunblock? Excuse me. Are–” it’s like the most tragic moment of Baywatch probably ever.
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OMG. She actually has cancer. I seriously thought this was going to be a false alarm. Baywatch is serious business, team. I hope this is almost over because I need to get off of this emotional rollercoaster.

Meanwhile, Hulk Holgan volunteers at the “Bash at the Beach,” a wrestling fundraiser to save a local community center. Actually, the fundraiser goes on for so long that there’s two minutes left in the episode when we finally get back to the skin cancer thing.

OMG THE CANCER HAS SPREAD. I am so, so sorry because this is now the end of the episode. I accidentally picked out a multi-episode story arc…but I really, really cannot watch anymore Baywatch. So I’ll just leave you with today’s very special lesson: Reapply your sunblock. Seriously. Also, the Lt. started wearing a really cool windbreaker. Try to wear a windbreaker too if possible.

 

 

 

A, My Name Is Alex (Family Ties)

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This episode opens with Jennifer explaining to the youngest Keaton son that Alex’s friend, Greg has died and that everyone else is at the funeral. So right from the beginning, it’s a downer. It’s not quite what I’d expect from Family Ties, but here we go.

Soon the rest of the Keaton’s arrive home and Alex is busy cracking jokes. He says how great the funeral was, which is important because “the dead have an image problem.” But we quickly learn that these jokes are all a thinly veiled coping mechanism for Alex’s guilt.  Alex would have been in the car accident with his friend, except that he was too selfish to help move a piano. Incidentally, this selfishness turned out to be a lifesaver.

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Oh Greg, we hardly/never knew ye

Apparently, Alex and Greg were so close that Alex delivered Greg’s eulogy. (That’s so interesting because I don’t remember ever hearing about Greg before.) Soon Alex begins hallucinating that Greg is back in ghost form. (Not only is he grieving, but he also stayed up all night writing that eulogy and hasn’t slept.)

Now, I would assume you might call a priest in a time like this, but Alex invites a monk into his home. I wouldn’t know where to find a monk if I tried. Are there monasteries just hanging out in suburban America and you can call them up and request that a monk come and sit with you? That appears to be the case here.

But Alex decides he doesn’t really want to be a monk (he’s not ready to give up the ladies) and soon he’s back to hallucinating conversations with Greg. He even makes him a sandwich. But when Mallory finds him talking to himself in the kitchen, he has a total meltdown. Michael J. Fox is such a good actor. He’s truly phenomenal and deserved so much better than the crappy writing on The Michael J. Fox Show. He makes this episode incredibly powerful when it could have easily been overwrought and clunky.

But that’s when things turn into experimental theater. And it’s like kind of weird for a family sitcom, even with Michael J. Fox’s exceptional skill. Actually, it’s like super weird. He’s just sitting in an arm chair in front of a free-hanging window talking straight to the camera (on off screen psychologist).
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And then things kind of turn into a really depressing “Carousel of Progress.” Little vignettes with Alex’s friends and family pop up behind him and he jumps into the scenes. This is not to say that the writing is bad– the two-part episode won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series–but rather that the change in the storytelling method is just as jarring (if not more so) than the subject matter itself.

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Although bizarre at first, I think that the change in narrative style works in this episode’s favor and keeps it from falling into trite “very special episode” pitfalls. It’s obvious that the Family Ties writers knew they could get away with this with Michael J. Fox carrying the show, so instead of an after-school special we get an emotional tour de force on grief and self-actualization.

“A, My Name is Alex” is best described as Family Ties re-imagining itself as a different kind of show for 1 random hour, which is kinda cool in it’s own right. Ultimately, Alex has to decide what he believes and what feels right to him about his place in the world now that he is alive and his friend isn’t. I feel like I cannot reiterate enough how terrible this episode could have been if carried out by a less capable cast. But luckily we have (national treasure) Michael J. Fox. And for Fox’s exceptional skill reason alone, this episode is totally worth the watch.

Very Special Lesson: Grief can cause us to lose our way or it can be an opportunity to find ourselves more deeply than we had before.

Blogging from A to Z

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I’ve signed up for the April 2016 Blogging from A to Z Challenge! Each day of April (excluding Sunday’s) requires a post on a topic that matches the day’s letter (April 1st is A and so on and so forth). You can see me right wayyy down the list. I’m number 1243.

So what does this mean for The VSB?
-I’ll be posting about a different sitcom’s very special episode for each letter (so for P I’ll be doing Punky Brewster’s Cherie Life Saver. Yep, that’s the episode about the dangers of refrigerators.)
-Since I have to cover a sitcom for every letter of the alphabet, this will be quite a challenge for me! I’ll have to watch sitcoms I’ve never watched before (Eight is Enough, for example) but I think it will be a good opportunity to keep myself from posting about different versions of Full House for the rest of eternity.
-There are a couple of exceptions to this format. Try as I might, I could not find a very special episode of Unsolved Mysteries, so for letters like “U” I’ll be using the episode title as my guide instead of the series title.

I’m excited and I hope you are too! And now, I’ve got to get to work so I can actually deliver on this promise in April!

Dinosaurs: Steroids to Heaven

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Over the past (nearly two!) years, we’ve covered a lot of highly sensitive topics. And thanks to the power of television, I think we’ve become better people along the way.

I mean what you were doing when you saw your lunchbox turn into a parrot before you had this blog to turn to for answers, huh?

Thankfully, we’ve had each other to lean on when life throws unexpected curve balls, but now I’d like to talk to you about a very important topic that we haven’t yet covered on The VSB: performance enhancing drugs.

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I personally thought the more pertinent topics of how to avoid witches while babysitting or how to respond when your boyfriend tries to sell your out-of-wedlock baby to some creepy baby broker when you’re just an average high school student  to be the more pressing topics that America’s youth needs answers to! But I’m not above admitting when I’m wrong, and Maria Sharapova’s recent revelation tells me that we should have talked about this a lot sooner. Which brings us to today’s episode, “Dinosaurs: Steroids to Heaven.”

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Dinosaurs was a weird little show that I thought was hilarious as a kid, but as an adult it mostly strikes me as creepy and weird. Dinosaurs was a traditional family sitcom, aside from the fact that the lead characters were puppets from the Jurassic age. It was kind of like The Flintstones meets Home Improvement, I guess.

I bet you’re thinking, what’s a show like this doing with a very special episode? Well, in the 90’s even dinosaur puppets were busy scaring America’s youth straight.

Robbie is the teenage son of this dinosaur family. He’s not doing so well with the ladies, and he feels like his lack of muscle tone is probably to blame for this. As his father tells him, “Chicks dig big guys.” Well, that’s news to me as a proverbial chick. And also it’s pretty terrible parenting. So Robbie decides to start pumping iron in the hope of transforming his “geekphysique” into that of a body builder.

But he doesn’t transform as quickly as he’d like. That’s when his friend, Spike, tells him about “thornoids.” Thornoids are these really terrifying creatures that look a lot like Gremlins (the wet kind). Robbie eats these Gremlin-like creatures and starts looking like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of dinosaurs.
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It doesn’t take long for the ‘roid rage to take hold because Robbie punches his romantic rival while they’re both trying to ask the cool dinosaur lady to the dance. Also, he’s starting to exhibit another unpleasant side-effect of Thornoids: he’s growing spikes…which actually seems like kind of an advantage in the dino-world…

But things quickly go downhill from here. He gets mad that his sister left a mess in the bathroom sink, so he picks up the sink and tosses it out the window. He even breaks his baby brother’s rattle. (Do be fair his baby brother is incredibly rude and the most obnoxious part of this show. He’s like a really, really lame version of Stewie from Family Guy.)

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But at one point in time, people liked him enough to buy a talking doll of Baby Sinclair.
He ends up on a terrible date with the cool lady dinosaur and comes to realize that the reason she never went out with him pre-Thornoids is that he never asked her. Omg. Seriously? She liked him before he had muscles and now she doesn’t like him (because of the ‘roid rage, understandably).

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So what does it take for Robbie to finally see that he’s headed down the wrong path? His spikes get so big that he accidentally gets stuck to a wall of lockers. I guess the Thornoids don’t make him strong enough to push himself off of the lockers, but whatever. His best friend gives him a lecture about the dangers of cheating on your body building.

By the next morning, the Thornoids have worn off and he’s back to normal. Except for a massive headache from his “Thornoid Hangover.” He then apologizes to his dad and offers to help him move the refrigerator (which he refused to do when he had tons of muscles and it would have been a lot easier, but that’s what Thornoids will do to you).

Very Special Lesson: Don’t eat weird spiky prehistoric creatures. I think that’s all something we can get behind, right?

For Nancy Reagan, May She Rest in Peace

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I think it’s safe to say that Nancy Reagan is the patron saint of this blog. Without the war on drugs, we never would have learned: how to avoid doing cocaine in the bathroom, how to keep from hallucinating cartoons, or the how to cope with the terrible dangers of pancakes.

And then of course there was this little gem, in which the first lady herself makes an appearance on Diff’rent Strokes. Here’s the gist of the episode in less than 3 minutes:

Yes, Arnold has decided to rendezvous with a drug-dealing child in order to write an expose for his school’s newspaper. I have to be honest, I didn’t take my tenure on my school’s newspaper all that seriously. Yet here I am blogging about these hard-hitting issues and I didn’t even have to buy drugs to advance this far in my career!
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Anyway, things get so out of hand with this one newspaper article for this one little school’s newspaper that the only thing left to do is call in the first lady for a little assistance. I’ve scoured the internet, but unfortunately all I can show you is this incredibly low quality footage shot on a cell phone and very far away from a small TV screen with tracking issues:

The Very Special Blog’s patron saint deserves better than that crappy video, but I am sure she is in a much better place now–where most certainly no one is doing crack cocaine.

Boy Meets World: Easy Street

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There’s a lot of financial pressure around the mv5bmjg1odywnzgynf5bml5banbnxkftztgwnjk1otu2mje-_v1_uy268_cr870182268_al_holidays, and if you have the time you may be in the market for a seasonal job. And that’s how Cory ends up working for the mob.

Cory is a “gopher” at Little Paulie’s restaurant and Shawn is working “down at the docks” in a “union job.” Woah, how did a sixteen year-old kid land that as a Christmas job?

Meanwhile, Eric offers to drive Loni 500 miles so that she can spend Christmas with her family. Remember, Loni? She’s the cute blonde who worked at the Matthews’ outdoor store. Remember that store? Whatever happened to that store?

Shawn uses his 8:30 am lunch break to visit Cory. Who takes an 8:30 am lunch break, you ask? 16 year-olds who started working at 3 am in a clear violation of child labor laws. There’s no way this is a legit union job. Cory brags about his “cushy” job and even has Shawn come to the restaurant to visit him. That’s when Shawn notices that this restaurant is clearly run by mobsters.

hqdefault4Cory quits his job immediately and Shawn fills the vacancy. Shawn becomes so dedicated to his mob-job that he skips school to work longer shifts. “Jobs like this don’t come around very often,” he says. It turns out Shawn is of the high-risk teen population that would take a low-level position with the mob.

Yep, I bet you didn’t think you’d see a very special episode, let alone a very special holiday episode, dedicated to this sensitive subject. But that’s what’s so great about Boy Meets World. They’re not afraid to tackle the tough-stuff.

Shawn buys Cory a gorgeous and pricy watch for Christmas, but he’s gotten a taste of the good life and he’s thinking this shouldn’t be a Christmas-only job. That’s right. Shawn is looking to become a career criminal. I mean, based on his character development up until this point, I am not entirely surprised. But I didn’t think he was the organized-crime type. He has higher aspirations than I expected, and I have to commend him for that.

3844-4-12On Christmas Eve, the “restaurant owners” ask Shawn to deliver a box to a warehouse and bring back an envelope. They promise to find him “something a little more permanent” if he successfully completes this task. Cory meets Shawn at the warehouse and tries to get him to walk out on the middle of a job for the freaking-mafia. Are you trying to get him killed, Cory?? Also, are you stalking him? How did you find this sketch-ass warehouse? Do you even have a drivers license at this point??

Dude, Cory, at this point, Shawn needs to deliver that box and you need to get out of there and totally forget that you even know where that warehouse is. They do not deliver the box and in a Christmas miracle, the mob does not kill either of them.

P.S. Loni and Eric never make it to her parents’ house. They end up in a blizzard and Eric gives himself a concussion trying to get out of the car underneath 4 feet of snow.

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Very Special Lesson: I can’t even come very-special-lesson this. I mean I feel like you should just never work for the mob, but I also feel like this episode painted a really unclear picture of what it’s like to work on the streets in organized crime syndicates. Also, I’ve just started watching The Wire so it’s quite possible that I am a little on edge right now. Happy Holidays!restaurant