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Absurdly specifically called out by the fact that when I had an Animorphs RP group going consisting entirely of OCs, our David stand-in was named Zach.

About A-Town, could you see, in the second season, they'd potentially do a David plotline (by accident, since the Animorphs don't talk about him), by introducing a new "recurring" cast member as a student who stumbles into the overall plot? And they're "edgier" than the main cast and represent the "hard choices" character, etc, and eventually are poised to betray the Animorphs and join the Yeerks, so they have to be removed in a TV-friendly way. Bonus if they date one of the main cast.

[For everyone just tuning in: A-Town is my idea for a shitty postwar sitcom about the leader (Brandon) of a team of teen shapeshifters, his best friend (JJ), his occasional girlfriend (Crystal), his cooler cousin (Trina), her on-again-off-again aviationship (Liam), and her beau's stepsister (Gina). Any resemblance to real persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental. Our legal team said so.]

What if this character is also Jeremy Jason McCole's self-insert Mary Sue? Assuming JJM's the same age as the Animorphs themselves, this'd put him at age ~26 playing age ~15 as of A-Town, but that's pretty standard for Hollywood.

Zachary the New Kid first appears at a meeting of The Gathering, chatting with some cool controller kids. The camera follows him as he walks out of the meeting, around the corner, and out of sight... a housecat walks out of the alleyway a second later. We smash-cut to Crystal's barn tree house, where the cat climbs up the ladder and into the window. "Zack!" JJ exclaims, "you scared me! Good thing we have you spying on the meetings of The Gathering, the secret alien organization. Ever since you joined the team last month after catching us morphing behind those dumpsters, you've used that cat morph more than any other — you're a real cat man at heart!" Cue laugh track; evidently this line is meant to be funny.

Zack may or may not live in Brandon's house. He refers to his parents having been taken by the yeerks, and over half his scenes are filmed in Brandon's bedroom, so...

The main plot of Zack's first episode involves him declaring he'll do "whatever it takes" to defeat the yeerks, and Brandon being worried that he's "going too far." Since A-Town never shows onscreen violence and involves lots of fauximorphs casually blowing up entire Yeerk Pools by pushing a button, it's not clear what either of these extremes would entail. None of the obvious answers (killing hosts, using oatmeal Chicken 'n Stars, siding with the andalites) ever comes up in conversation. In the end, Brandon and Zack hug and agree to put their differences behind them.

His catchphrase is "E-ZACK-tly!"

Zack's major running plot involves JJ being insecure because Trina obviously likes Zack better than him. JJ goes through various antics to win Trina back, and eventually succeeds, but then! The camera shows Zack hiding in a dark corner (of Brandon's bedroom) making out with someone, judging by the moans and smacking sounds. "Daisy" (Zeptron 420) flicks the lights on, and they scream in shock — it's Zack and Crystal! "Daisy" screams too, something about "filthy humans!" and runs off downstairs.

Brandon finds out about Crystal and Zack (presumably Zeptron tattled? or he just walked into his own bedroom?) and declares he and Zack must fight to the death. Brandon morphs his terrier Mopsy, Zack morphs a beagle, and... Well. There's lots of footage of Mopsy yapping and Zack-the-beagle howling, and Liam and Gina's narration assures us that there's a vicious dogfight happening just offscreen, so we'll take the show's word for it. Even though the footage clearly shows both dogs' tails wagging furiously the entire time. The episode ends without us finding out who won.

Between episodes there's a fan poll: should Zack stick around? He loses by a landslide.

Zack's penultimate episode opens up with him meeting "Daisy" in a back alleyway. Not only does he kiss her on the cheek — he's cheating on Crystal! — but he buys a pack of cigarettes from her. Zack walks out of the alleyway and straight into Liam. "This isn't what it looks like!" Zack declares, as Liam watches "Daisy" and the other Gathering controllers wave goodbye to Zack after he was clearly colluding with them. "I think," Liam growls, "it's e-ZACK-tly what it looks like. Cigarettes are an addictive substance, and contain over 40 different chemicals that cause cancer. Plus, cigarettes are uncool. We can't have someone who smokes on the team." Zack begs for another chance and promises to quit, but then — the mid-episode twist — offers a cigarette to Gina, who accepts.

The final episode opens with the other fauximorphs all telling Zack he can't be on their team anymore. Gina smoked one entire cigarette thanks to him, and she's just an innocent young... person. Entity. Being. Phenomenon. Look, the point is, cigarettes are DANGEROUS. Zack weedles his way into going on one last mission with the fauximorphs, where he heroically sacrifices his life to keep the others safe by letting the controllers capture him so the others can get away.

For the entire rest of the show, there's a memorial statue to Zack in the corner of the tree house. If you look very very closely in some of the shots, you can make out that the epigraph just says "SMOKING KILLS."

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The Animorphs/Boxcar Children crossover we never knew we needed

Here's an interesting AU idea: What if the Animorphs DID have a tree house base?

I feel like it'd have to be Cassie's backyard still. Jake's is too close to Tom, Rachel's would necessitate keeping her little sisters out, Marco doesn't have a backyard, and Tobias and Ax kind of already live in tree houses.

What would be awesome is if it's waaaaay off the ground, like not feasible for most humans to access. These are kids who can't be hurt or killed by a fall unless they insta-die, and who can easily go bird or chimp to get up there fast. And that way there'd be massive advance warning if someone (e.g. the controller cop, Cassie's dad, Estrid) did try to drop in on them.

Also, tree houses have the advantage of easy hork-bajir access but difficult human access and near-impossible taxxon or andalite access. That means Ax has to go to meetings in morph more, which we know he hates, but it'd let people they do want (Toby, Jara, Erek) in while keeping out those they don't (Gonrod, random controllers, civilians).

This requires somewhat more negligent Aniparents to pull off (there's a difference between "my son's at a friend's house" and "my son's off somewhere") but it'd be awesome if it's hidden in the woods and no one but them knows about it. Not sure how these kids in particular would do at making something structurally sound — Ax's idea of construction is to prop up a piece of plywood with wires he stole from utility poles, Cassie's is to dig a hole under a fridge, and none of the others shows a shred of building ability. But assuming they did get it up and working, it'd be a great safe haven.

Speaking of havens, is it better or worse if they stash David there? He'd still have Ax and Tobias babysitting him, and he's not much better off than in the barn, but maybe they could frame it as a cool adventure for him. And if given enough time, I bet Ax could get him a space heater and a wifi hookup there.

Other thoughts?

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Around 2000ish I had an Animorphs OCs role playing group in AOL chat rooms and our version of Cassie's barn was a treehouse hidden in the woods. I even had this elaborate headcanon that this weird secondary group of characters were a little backup plan of the Ellimist, and each time he interfered for the main group, he was able to give that benefit to our characters too, although they weren't hand-picked and the benefits were at less convenient points. One of those was that when he hid the Hork-Bajir valley, he also hid my characters' treefort. I spent a lot of time thinking about how this would all work but could never figure out a satisfying ending for them.

Here's an interesting AU idea: What if the Animorphs DID have a tree house base?

I feel like it'd have to be Cassie's backyard still. Jake's is too close to Tom, Rachel's would necessitate keeping her little sisters out, Marco doesn't have a backyard, and Tobias and Ax kind of already live in tree houses.

What would be awesome is if it's waaaaay off the ground, like not feasible for most humans to access. These are kids who can't be hurt or killed by a fall unless they insta-die, and who can easily go bird or chimp to get up there fast. And that way there'd be massive advance warning if someone (e.g. the controller cop, Cassie's dad, Estrid) did try to drop in on them.

Also, tree houses have the advantage of easy hork-bajir access but difficult human access and near-impossible taxxon or andalite access. That means Ax has to go to meetings in morph more, which we know he hates, but it'd let people they do want (Toby, Jara, Erek) in while keeping out those they don't (Gonrod, random controllers, civilians).

This requires somewhat more negligent Aniparents to pull off (there's a difference between "my son's at a friend's house" and "my son's off somewhere") but it'd be awesome if it's hidden in the woods and no one but them knows about it. Not sure how these kids in particular would do at making something structurally sound — Ax's idea of construction is to prop up a piece of plywood with wires he stole from utility poles, Cassie's is to dig a hole under a fridge, and none of the others shows a shred of building ability. But assuming they did get it up and working, it'd be a great safe haven.

Speaking of havens, is it better or worse if they stash David there? He'd still have Ax and Tobias babysitting him, and he's not much better off than in the barn, but maybe they could frame it as a cool adventure for him. And if given enough time, I bet Ax could get him a space heater and a wifi hookup there.

Other thoughts?

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The skinny jeans for sure happened, but I also always imagined they didn’t ever figure out like regular sneakers, but maybe some weird awkward elastic swim-shoes. Truly the height of fashion.

So I originally read Animorphs as a kid from the library. So incomplete and out of order. I’m currently rereading them for the first time in my adult life and I came across something I do not remember in the slightest

How do you feel about the fact that Jake and Marco have canonically seen Ax naked in human morph at the end of #4?

So, of the canonical Awkward Nudity in canon, we have:

Marco and Jake helping Ax get dressed in #4

Jake seeing Tobias briefly naked in #1, and vice versa

Ax at minimum and everyone at maximum seeing Naked Jake Morph in #6

Presumably Jake seeing Tobias naked when he loans him clothes for his first human morph in #13

Tobias seeing Ax naked at least once by #28

Everyone briefly seeing David naked in #21

Kinda marginal, but everyone does see Marco's insides in #42

The real question becomes, do the kids get over their nudity taboo, or do they remain awkward teenagers about it forever?

I vote for Tobias being chill with it — Tobias thinks pretty much all human social norms are stupid and overrated. Marco meanwhile would have no chill whatsoever. But also, the first time Marco gets horrified by accidental nudity, Tobias would be like, "Dude. I'm always naked. Birds don't wear clothes." Of course, then Marco spends the entire next month shrieking in mock outrage and throwing his hands over his eyes every time Tobias flies into a room. Jake doesn't have enough capacity in his lungs to sigh the depth of sigh that this nonsense deserves, but he sure as heck tries.

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Now I want to see Marco’s sexy gay werewolf movie

Please tell us more about a town it sounds great. (Also, Jordan and Sarah probably watch that. I can just imagine Rachel's reaction to suddenly getting it after being forced to watch half an episode one afternoon with no context)

Okay, so! Other headcanons about A-Town, the shitty postwar sitcom based on Jake Berenson's life (to Jake Berenson's eternal annoyance):

The love triangles have love triangles. Trina (the main character's cooler and more competent cousin) is constantly dating Liam, only to cheat on him with J.J., only to start dating J.J., only to cheat on J.J. with Liam. Jordan's of the opinion that girl should just get herself two boyfriends, but of course then the show would run out of plot.

Gina, Liam's stepsister and the Ax stand-in, is so friggin weird if you pay close enough attention. It's probably just a side effect of bad continuity, but at various times she a) implies she's over 300 years old, b) has various lines that imply she's an andalite in morph c) has various lines that imply she's a yeerk in morph, d) apparently killed a visser off-screen through means so horrifying they can't be described, e) can reprogram computers by licking them, and f) may or may not have eaten Liam's aunt, depending on how ironic certain lines are meant to be.

Sort of like Batman and Robin having exposition-conversations as they walk up the side of a building, most episodes will have a scene with the actors doing a voiceover overtop footage of two or three pigeons sitting on a power line. The most popular clip of the show on YouTube is the one where the "Crystal" pigeon visibly takes a shit midway through a tearful love confession to "Brandon." (Spoiler alert: she cheated on him with Liam.)

The alien controlling Daisy, Brandon's sister, is named Zeptron 420. One of the stranger B plots involves Zeptron falling in love with a banana slug, carrying it around, writing it bad poetry, and eventually trying to stuff it into the ear of a cow so that they can be together forever. The slug falls out and the cow accidentally tramples it; Zeptron is heartbroken, at least until the post-credit scene where we now see her falling in love with a freshwater eel.