ashleyspinelliburnbook

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

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[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S2E1: The Break-Up/The Hypnotist

Long time, no recess? Well, guess what — IT’S TEN O’CLOCK WHICH MEANS IT’S TIME FOR RECESS.

The Break-Up

Was I writing essays in fourth grade? In third grade, we had to write a story every week using all of our spelling words, and many of mine did get long, but I’m not sure if we got to essays that year or the next. But maybe that was 20 years ago and I simply can’t remember.

Anyway, these fourth-graders are writing essays. Miss Grotke announces that the class has to write an essay called “My Best Friend” (and she reveals the topic written on the board by rolling up one of those pull-down maps of the United States, which remains an undefeated move). It’s great news for the rest of the class, but TJ has some...thoughts.

Because all of a sudden, all of TJ’s friends are telling him how excited they are to write about him, and in turn, how they’re excited for him to write about them. The whole gang, for whatever reason, is under the impression that TJ is their best friend. Which throws a whole bunch of character development out the window, but fine. You know what? Fine.

Except it’s not fine, because when Vince finally decides they can settle the argument they’re having over TJ by just asking him, he clams up and says he’s friends with all of them.

They are...unamused by this. So, rightfully, they disown him.

(Why couldn’t they have at least just paired off and written about each other? That’s a whole lot easier with six people than with five, which is what they’re left with now. I think the most logical pairings are TJ/Vince, Gretchen/Spinelli, and Mikey/Gus, though TJ/Spinelli, Gretchen/Mikey, and Gus/Vince could get spicy.)

Oh, I forgot to mention that Randall has been watching this all go down. And I actually didn’t forget to mention it, but I wanted to make a greater point: Randall didn’t interfere with this whatsoever. He had been badgering TJ, asking him if they could write about each other (remember when they were friends?), but all this self-destruction among the gang was, well, self-destruction.

So, no one will sit next to TJ on the bus (except Randall), no one will talk to TJ on the playground (except Randall), and as soon as TJ starts to wonder where his friends are, Randall is there to Ghost of Christmas Present his way around the playground to the gang’s new endeavors:

Vince is now one of King Bob’s bodyguards

Gretchen is upside down with Upside Down Girl

Gus is with the diggers

Mikey is with Guru Kid (where his catchphrase is, “Cease becoming, my friend; begin to be”)

Spinelli is the queen of the kindergarteners (and goes by “Spinuddi,” because they can’t quite say her name)

“Friends are jerks,” Randall says, reminding TJ that if he doesn’t pick one of them to be his best friend, he won’t have any friends at all.

As Miss Grotke hands back the papers (at which point I wondered if Vince wrote about King Bob? that doesn’t sound like an equitable relationship?), she can’t find TJ’s, and that’s when he announces he wants to read his aloud.

TJ tells the class in a moving speech that he doesn’t have one best friend, but five, as he describes each of them without naming them, but they all get it. (Gus’s reaction at the end of this scene had me ROLLING as a kid: “He called me a great athlete!”)

They all apologize to each other, and reconcile the fact that, sigh, they are ALL best friends with each other. WAS THAT SO HARD?

Takeaway: Isn’t it cute how the first episode of the first season was called “The Break In” — where the gang all bands together to rescue TJ — and this one is called “The Break-Up” — where the gang all bands together to abandon TJ?

The Hypnotist

My experiences with hypnotism are as follows:

We had a hypnotist at my high school grad night.

We had a hypnotist at something my freshman year of college.

And so my first question is: were the late 2000s a big time for hypnotism or something? Sheesh. Anyway, I’ve never been hypnotized. I am convinced it wouldn’t work on me, and it’s way more fun to watch people you know have it happen to them instead.

Today, Third Street School is welcoming a hypnotist, The Amazing Jeffrey (a solid 3/10 name), to their auditorium for an assembly. And the guy looks so much like Hank, Miss Finster’s ex-boyfriend, that this screenshot really threw me off at first. I thought Hank had a midlife crisis or something and was trying to get Miss Finster back through the power of hypnosis (even though, of course, their parting was a mutual decision).

Jeffrey gets crickets from the audience when he tries to ask for a volunteer, so he volunteers Miss Finster, saying he’ll turn her back into a six-year-old. It. uh, doesn’t work, and he’s run out like the fraud he is.

...Or is he? Because someone does get hypnotized: Principal Prickly, who we see next bursting onto the playground, ready for recess. The gang encounter him playing with mud, swinging, hanging upside-down, and he even attracts the ire of Spinelli after he pulls down her hat over her eyes.

“The principal thinks he’s one of us. Things like that don’t happen every day!” TJ exclaims as he expresses his desire to 100% take advantage of this unusual situation. Of course, Randall can’t go ONE SINGLE EPISODE without being terrible, so he overhears and immediately tells Miss Finster.

TJ and company don’t know this, though, so they explain their plan to Principal Prickly — who goes by Petey now, actually. Petey needs to act like he’s the principal so the kids can get things like pizza and ice cream sundaes for lunch, and all the teachers need hall passes. So Petey takes this to the faculty and...yeah, they don’t buy it.

Miss Finster and co. send Petey to his own office and lock the door from the outside, forgetting that they’ve just left a 50-year-old manchild in a room with a bunch of permanent pens — with which he defaces a photo of himself — and the PA system, on which he burps the alphabet and does some solid armpit farts.

In his final act of delinquency, Petey jumps out the window and goes back to the gang, who congratulate him for his efforts. TJ is way too into this idea, though, as Gretchen points out Principal Prickly is “the cold-hearted authoritarian we’ve come to fear” and everyone agrees: he can’t stay a kid forever.

Time is of the essence, as the teachers have discovered Petey is missing as they enter his empty office. And the entire playground hears the grim news over the loudspeaker, since Petey has taped the switch to stay “on” as he did his armpit farts: Miss Finster is going to take over the school.

The gang breaks the news to Petey that he’s not a kid, with TJ adding, “Being a kid’s great, but being a grown-up’s even better.” (Eh, debatable.) But Petey is throwing a grade-A tantrum: he rips off his clothes and climbs up the jungle gym, where Gretchen hypnotizes him back, to his horror.

Miss Finster brings the gang to Principal Prickly’s office so he can punish them for taking advantage of him, but the ol’ kid-hater shows that part of his six-year-old self is still with him as he gets distracted by the photo he defaced.

“Kids will be kids, Miss Finster,” he says as he excuses them without punishment. He gets out his yo-yo and starts to play.

Takeaway: Don’t mess with hypnotism, folks. Unless you’ve got a friend like Gretchen who’s read Hypnotism: There May Be Something To It!

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E13: Parents’ Night/Swing on Thru to the Other Side

DOUBLE SPINELLI

DOUBLE THE FUN

Also, this is the last (pair of) episode(s) in Season 1!

Parents’ Night

You bet Parents’ Night was something I looked forward to every year. We called it Open House, and it was in April, and I think I liked it because I was a parent-pleaser. Not just my own — I wanted to impress all the parents with how mature and/or grown up and/or smart I was.

Spinelli kind of has the opposite problem. She is not at all excited about Parents’ Night, and every year, she has a different excuse as to why her own parents can’t make it. Last year, Spinelli’s parents were in the Amazon. The year before, they were hang-gliding from Mount Everest.

This year, she tells the gang that her parents are having dinner at the White House, and everyone is stoked to hear it. Well, except Gretchen, beautiful buzzkill Gretchen, who points out that the President is in the Middle East this week. Undeterred, Spinelli explains that they’re just house-sitting, more or less. And that the Secret Service can’t do it because it’s their bowling night.

TJ, of course, isn’t having it, so he enlists the gang (minus Spinelli) to stake out her house that night. They see someone taking out the trash...and their cover is immediately blown, because that’s where Mikey is hiding, and it’s Spinelli who’s got the trash.

So next, TJ says they have to be direct — they fill up Mikey with water from the hose until he has to pee really bad, and they ask Spinelli to use her bathroom. She says no. She also says her parents are secret agents, which no one believes. Then...she says she’ll bring them to Parents’ Night.

A quick runthrough of what some of these parents are like:

The Ashleys’ parents dress in the same color scheme as their daughters and also say “Scandalous!”

Ever wonder why Gretchen’s so smart? Well, she’s a carbon copy of her parents.

TJ’s mom and dad are impressed that he made a whoopee cushion as a science project.

Gus’ dad is impressed that his desk is so clean and organized.

Mikey reads his parents some poetry, and his hippie dad gets so emotional that his mom (who looks like Mikey, but taller and a woman) comforts him.

Vince’s parents...are maybe the Black couple walking in near the beginning of the scene? We never meet them. Typical.

Spinelli shows up with her parents and they seem pretty much like her! They’re the tough-looking characters pictured above. Unfortunately, Spinelli met them in a parking lot and she doesn’t have the cash to keep them there all night. They go out into the hall, and from the classroom window, the gang sees them shaking down Spinelli for all her pennies.

So, the truth comes out: Spinelli’s parents...are embarrassing. That’s all. Except that’s not all, because when they finally show up — they found the Parents’ Night flyer in Spinelli’s dirty clothes — we learn that her mom (played by Katey Sagal!) calls her “pookie” and wipes her daughter’s face using the ol’ licking-her-finger method, and her dad calls her “princess.”

Her parents also aren’t 100% on names. To them, her very best friends are Mickey, Vance, Gretel, Russ, and BJ, and their teacher is Miss Grabkey. Neat. It’s when they share that Spinelli just stopped wetting the bed last year that she can’t take it anymore and heads to the roof.

Spinelli has a nice heart-to-heart with her parents, where they forgive her for her being so embarrassed! Because they love her, and she’ll understand someday, you know? She even shares that she was so embarrassed by them that she told her friends they were secret agents, which gets a good laugh.

They head down to enjoy the last of Parents’ Night together, but Spinelli’s dad tells them to go on without him, because...oops, he’s a secret agent, 006. And he declines a call to save the world because it’s Parents’ Night.

Takeaway: Less a takeaway, more an acknowledgement that Miss Grotke referred to parents as “be they mothers, be they fathers, be they whatever.” And while it’s 1998 and that’s probably not an acknowledgement of nonbinary parents (she’s probably referring to aunts, uncles, grandparents, and other non-parent guardians), that’s how I’m choosing to read it here in 2020.

Swing on Thru to the Other Side

The Church of Swinger Girl: Definitive Texts

Compiled by the prophet Ashley Spinelli

I have seen it! I have seen it with mine own eyes!

Swinger Girl, blessed be thy name, has ascended! Swinger Girl is no longer of this world! Whether she has transported to another dimension or another astral projection has taken my Swinger Girl to freedom, she has truly swung on thru to the other side!

What a pity it is that she did not take more of us with her.

---

I am a new woman.

My friends know the Old Spinelli, who would terrify all who crossed my path with my mighty fist. Today, the only fist that matters is that which is made when one grasps the chain of a swing, O Powerful Swing, that which snatched our Swinger Girl from this mortal coil!

New Spinelli is peaceful. New Spinelli wishes for peace. And, most of all, New Spinelli finally has purpose, has meaning. New Spinelli must join my Swinger Girl on the other side.

My friend Theodore insists I will be “back to normal” by tomorrow, as if “normal” is anything but a relative construct. This is my normal, Theodore. You will see!

---

O, the means of emulating my Swinger Girl, deeply do they connect me with something no longer of this world!

My people approached me at the sacred swing today, the swing where it happened, eager for a chance to share in some of its spiritual magic. What a majestic time, watching the playground become one, all because of the actions of my Swinger Girl!

Brother Mikey brought the supplies for the congregation. All are welcome to experience the glory of Swinger Girl, my Swinger Girl! The headgear and glasses only bring us closer to her!

---

What might my Swinger Girl have eaten for lunch?

How might she have eaten it?

We know not much about our Swinger Girl, naught but her preference for eating dessert as she wished it, not saving it for the end of a meal. What a powerful message!

I shall live my life as Swinger Girl lived hers!

---

Swing.

Swing.

Swing.

The hum across the playground indicates the time for my ascension is nigh. I will join my Swinger Girl in her universe, if she will have me. It is, as Swinger Girl would say, the journey that matters.

The journey over the top of the bar.

Freedom.

Takeaway: A classic. Spinelli starts a cult. Absolutely classic.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E12: The Voice/Kids in the Mist

Have you all ever seen the show The Voice? Because I sure haven’t, but now it’s the only thing I think of when I see those words together, even in the context of Recess. (I’ve heard a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise watch are now turning to it in quarantine, though. The Voice, I mean, not Recess. Though maybe those people will diversify their “voice” shows after reading this!)

The Voice

Ah, yes, the era where young millennials learned who Robert Goulet was! (Just in time to get attached for just under 10 years and be saddened by his death in 2007. Yes, I sure am speaking from personal experience.)

But before we get back to Goulet, there’s a plot to this episode!

The school is outside celebrating Martin Van Buren’s birthday (well, I assume it’s the president, though they just said “Van Buren”), and it’s time for the national anthem. TJ and the gang don’t seem to be a fan of the kid, Brandon, who’s singing it, but they’re in luck — he swallows a bee while singing and is going to be out of the game for a few months. The entire student body cheers, because who needs the national anthem, anyway?

Well, turns out Principal Prickly does. He and Miss Finster are distraught trying to figure out who can sing at the PTA Spring Fling, which needs a national anthem for some reason. (Maybe PTA in the Recess universe stands for “Parents, Teachers, America”? Who’s to say?)

Suddenly, they hear...the voice! They track down the beautiful singing they hear to the bathroom, and see that it’s our pal Mikey! After he’s reluctant to sing just for Prickly and Finster back in the principal’s office, they enlist the help of a teacher at Spiro Agnew Middle School (of course) who “can make any kid sing.”

But Mikey isn’t so sure about that, telling the gang that anyone can sing in the bathroom! (The alone time, the acoustics? It checks out.) But then the music teacher Miss Salamone shows up, and it turns out she’s young and cute, so off Mikey goes to compulsory singing lessons.

Miss Salamone tells Mikey that “singing is the most natural thing in the world...it’s like breathing, but for the soul,” which reels him in RIGHT away, but he still insists that he can only sing in the bathroom. Luckily, Miss Salamone has come prepared with a guitar, so they go into the bathroom — and what do you know? It works! Somehow they get a piano in there, and between bathroom lessons, Mikey sings the likes of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Ave Maria,” and “Little Brown Jug.”

The next day, Miss Salamone — in the music room, but flanked by toilets and sinks — asks Mikey to sing blindfolded to visualize the chords. But as he sings, people come in to take away all the bathroom stuff, and when he takes the blindfold off...he’s cured! Miss Salamone is so proud, she kisses Mikey on the cheek.

Mikey tells the gang that he never thought he was good at anything, and credits his newfound success to Miss Salamone (who, let’s be real, has only really tricked him into singing in a non-bathroom place because that’s why Principal Prickly brought her here). But then...he says that he and Miss Salamone love each other.

Gus is grossed out — “She’s old, really old, she’s gotta be at least 24!” he cries — so Mikey sets out to prove their love for one another. But when he gets to the music room, Miss Salamone is BEING PROPOSED TO by her boyfriend Antonio, who, she tells Mikey, sings opera for royal Hungarian cruise lines (is that all supposed to be a proper noun? Royal Hungarian? Either way, oof).

A very upset Mikey runs off, and the next day, no one can find him! He’s supposed to sing at what looks like a school assembly that the superintendent will attend (what happened to the PTA thing?), and they need a national anthem singer. Miss Salamone tracks down Mikey and coaxes him to come back by telling him that he’s her favorite student.

But Mikey won’t sing the national anthem, he tells the student body. “Something important’s happened,” he says, “and well, I think the nation will forgive me.”

He sings “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” because he says he can understand it now. (It’s an African American spiritual, Mikey; no you can’t.) But everyone cheers, and Miss Salamone wishes Mikey a caring “See you in middle school” as she disappears out the door.

Takeaway: I like when Mikey is good at things, especially since he’s good at a lot of things that I like. Also: awwww, teacher crushes. Aww.

Kids in the Mist

Well, everyone, there’s an expert in child psychology on campus! Dr. Quilty has three degrees from “various Ivy League schools” and has written “half a dozen books, two of which were nearly published.” But most importantly, she’s never interacted with students in the field (don’t worry, that’s not the last weird brush with academia in this episode), so she wants Principal Prickly to give her and her grad students access to his students. You know, so she can study them. Like Jane Goodall and the chimps. (This episode title is probably based on Gorilllas in the Mist, right?)

Prickly is hesitant until Dr. Quilty tells him he’ll be interviewed as an expert for the video presentation she’s putting together, and then he’s right on board, of course. (Anything for that job at Spiro Agnew Middle School that is just perpetually open, I guess.)

Dr. Quilty tries to set up a hidden camera (which her grad students are operating), and then tries to blend in with the kids with a hearty “Wassup, homies? Mind if I hang with your posse?” She tries a number of different things to catch the kids on camera, like camouflaging herself as part of the jungle gym and as some grass. Shockingly, neither option leads to any data.

(Equally shockingly, her grad students quit because they’re not being paid. Which is weird, because Dr. Quilty said she had funding for this endeavor. All too real, huh?)

Anyway, this whole time, Dr. Quilty has been getting caught by students at every turn. As if, you know, a full adult trying to fit in with a bunch of kids, none of whose classes she has recently joined as a new student, wouldn’t raise any suspicions whatsoever. (Which university funded this?) So when she breaks down crying, the gang is just kinda like, yeah, we know.

Dr. Quilty admits she doesn’t like children (“No offense,” she adds; “None taken,” says Gretchen), but all Spinelli wants to know is why she didn’t just ask them for help. TJ adds a very TJ ultimatum: she leaves them alone, and they’ll help her make her video.

So they stage a bunch of activities for Dr. Quilty to film: hanging upside-down, playing basketball, letting the kindergarteners loose, all that fun stuff. But when they’re done filming, she doesn’t want the gang to see it. She says it won’t be ready until November...of next year. (This episode came out in January 1998, so this is November 1999 we’re talking about!)

But the gang also knows she’s showing it to Prickly and the superintendent on Monday, so she has to have some cut ready to watch. So they break into her office and find it...and it’s a disaster. It starts off as an educational video about recess, but Dr. Quilty has edited all their worst moments — Vince stealing the ball while playing basketball, the bar falling down with too much weight from people hanging on it, the kindergarteners nearly trampling Gretchen — as part of her compelling case that “recess is a place where dangerous antics rule the day” and an “archaic institution”...that should be canceled.

TJ’s plan? Edit the video again. They film new footage of kids having fun on the playground and talking about why they love recess. Bonus: When Gretchen is editing, we get this delightful sequence of her laughing maniacally, then coughing violently:

As soon as the gang are done editing, Principal Prickly appears — but they’re able to hide just in time, as he brings in the superintendent, followed quickly by Dr. Quilty’s supervisor (who evidently has a thing for the superintendent) and Dr. Quilty herself.

The kids have really outdone themselves with this cut. They’ve edited in nature documentary footage to make it look like Gretchen is running from a tiger and not the kindergarteners, a train crash after some video of Mikey dressed as a train, and so much more. It’s funny! And then, when Dr. Quilty’s original voiceover directs the viewer to the experts, it’s the kids talking about why recess is important to them.

Prickly is mad, obviously, but Dr. Quilty’s supervisor is impressed — she thinks it’s brilliant that Dr. Quilty thought of the idea to give cameras to the children! (Maybe that’s why, as the adults file out of the room, the superintendent asks the supervisor if she knows anyone who would be a good fit for the Spiro Agnew Middle School job.)

The episode ends with Dr. Quilty trying to give cameras to...the kindergarteners. You know, those giant VHS cameras. The kindergarteners, who are smarter than her, instead capture her and bring her into their pen.

Takeaway: Gretchen needs to let loose more often! Oh, also something about taking kids more seriously. Maybe the experts on recess are the ones who live it every weekday, you know?

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E11: Rainy Days/The Great Can Drive

What can happen in five days? Here are two examples.

Rainy Days

DAY 1

Ten o’clock arrives, and you know what that means — recess!

But wait! Something’s different today. It’s unclear why no one noticed until now, what with windows plentiful in Miss Grotke’s classroom. Still, as you and your friends sprint down the hallway for recess, Miss Finster suddenly appears and stands in the way of the door.

It’s raining, she says. Recess has been canceled, she says.

“The horror! The horror!” you hear your classmate Mikey cry. And it is. The horror of indoor recess in the cafeteria is one never joked about. There is nothing worse in this world.

Miss Finster’s disembodied voice on the loudspeaker, banning interpretive dancing, experimental filmmaking, or having fun of any kind. The board games, all missing pieces. The offer of playing a game of bingo led by Randall the snitch.

And still, worst of all, is the realization that this could be...no, you can’t even think it...the realization that this may not last for just one day. You were barely alive in 1989, but somehow, you remember that storm. Five days of indoor recess. Five days of abject misery — and more.

The horror; indeed.

DAY 2

The storm doesn’t enter your mind, even as it rages on into its second day.

You’re better than this, you’ve decided. You won’t crack under the pressure. You will remain strong.

This won’t last.

DAY 3

A classmate, Gretchen, is trying to get a radio signal, just as she has for the past three days. It has been fruitless, until today.

Expect sunny skies tomorrow...signing off from...Bombay, India.

You feel different today, detached. Scuffles are breaking out among friends around the cafeteria, but those who have no one to scuffle with are perhaps worse off, because all they have are their thoughts.

That night, you dream of boats, of houses, floating across the playground, the lackadaisical movement lulling you to a deep slumber, far from here.

DAY 4

You don’t remember what the sun looks like.

You don’t remember ever finding any joy in the word “recess.”

You don’t remember Outside.

DAY 5

Silence.

The only entity radiating energy is Miss Finster, and you can’t bring yourself to care. Caring requires too much energy, mental or physical.

But the stillness is disrupted from a sound in the corner. TJ Detweiler, glassy-eyed and pale, stands up. “It’s just water,” you hear him mutter. “It’s just water.”

Water is not good. Water is not something to be celebrated. Water is simply something that is.

Yet TJ is undeterred. His friends, too, are undeterred. They sneak out of the cafeteria, to the place known as Outside, but instead of melting under the weight of the constant raindrops, it’s as if it energizes them, gives them a reason to keep going. They’re covered in mud, they’re wet, and they’re happy.

Recess can take place Outside?

You watch from the cafeteria, and it’s enough. The sun comes out again.

Takeaway: Miss Finster fails at creative punishment once again!

The Great Can Drive

I blame Girl Scouts for introducing me to fundraising as competition. The cookie sales were to benefit us — most of the money went straight to our local council, and by extension, our troop — yet the real attention was paid to the rewards we’d get by selling enough boxes. Namely, the patches we could earn for our sashes or vests that would show that we sold 100+ boxes of cookies, 200+, or even 300+. A couple of my friends in my troop had these. I never did. I’d sell to my dad’s office, my mom’s book club, and I’d go door-to-door in my neighborhood, and I’m not sure I ever came close to 100. Most people had family in town they could sell to, and I didn’t. (Shipping cookies wasn’t a thing yet.)

Sure, selling the most boxes of cookies wasn’t the point. I mean, I was a kid — eating the cookies when they came in a couple months after collecting orders was the point. My mom was the one who got the shipment of all the cookies our troop had sold, so we’d have boxes and boxes of cookies in our living room for days that we’d have to separate by who sold them, so they could distribute them. And then we’d have a ceremony where we each got our cookie sale patches. Everyone got the participation patch for the year. Everyone but me, usually, got more than that.

And then we’d all do the same activities and go on the same trips together as a troop thanks to all our collective sales, and the cookie sale itself — and the competition therein — was forgotten.

Here, “The Great Can Drive” refers to a similiar endeavor: the class that collects the most cans in five days to feed needy people around Thanksgiving wins a turkey dinner. Immediately, TJ and the rest of Miss Grotke’s class want to drop out — if there’s no way they’ll beat Miss Furley’s class (namely, the Ashleys, who have won every year they’ve participated), there’s no point in collecting cans at all.

Mikey disagrees, and sets out to collect cans all by himself. His friends watch as he collects, apparently, more cans than anyone else ever has before against the Ashleys, all the while maintaining that he’s not doing it to win.

At lunch one day, the gang asks him if he’s going to quit, since he’s clearly not going to win. He reiterates that he’s doing it for “the betterment of mankind,” and that he’s sure the Ashleys agree with that sentiment. They, of course, immediately show up to prove him wrong, taunting him until the gang decides to join him — to beat the Ashleys, of course.

Soon enough, Miss Grotke’s class is right back in the race. The Ashleys are bringing in more cans with a forklift, but yeah, back in the race. Then Gus comes up with the brilliant idea that, hey, maybe they should get the rest of their class involved! The cans start piling up, and the classroom seems barely usable now.

Based on Gretchen’s calculations, the final tally is gonna be pretty darn close, and it is: Miss Furley’s class and Miss Grotke’s class are tied at 4,362 cans apiece. Luckily, there’s an easy tiebreaker! Eudora B. Finkelstein of the first graduating class at Third Street School (class of 1928!) happens to have a can in her purse...and pandemonium ensues to get it.

Mikey gives a speech about how they’re all acting like animals, how helping people is the goal, how they should put all the cans together and forget about the prize...until the other prize, the can, is flung into the air and hits the pyramid of cans. There are no (can) survivors when the dust settles.

But guess what? The next day, the gang — in conjunction with the Ashleys — tells Mikey he was right, and that they’ve all gone out and collected cans once more overnight. They’ve even gotten the Feed Bin store to donate a truckload of food to every homeless shelter in Recessville!

Mikey is touched by their generosity — and then Principal Prickly gets on the intercom to announce the holiday toy drive. Why get into that stress-fest again? Kids and their endless energy!

Takeaway: Yeah, yeah, competition isn’t as important as the thing you’re doing it for, but Miss Grotke was dressed up like a Native American this whole episode??? And she was the only one dressed up????? And no one said anything??? She also teaches a lesson about Columbus, which is...whew, Miss Grotke, it’s a lot, especially from you.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E10: Teacher’s Lounge/Randall’s Reform

A bit of mystery, a bit of disappointment, a bit of...accidentally reading Randall’s secret diary oh my GOD no one tell Miss Finster!!!!

Teacher’s Lounge

It’s a big day at Third Street School, so as usual, Gus is out of the loop. Gretchen is pacing, nervous about something, Spinelli has ribbons in her pigtails, TJ combed his hair, Mikey tucked in his shirt, and Vince...why, Vince is wearing a tie!

Obviously, this can only mean one thing: it’s the day the teachers turn in their annual budget requests!

Gus is still out of the loop. To be fair, I would be too, had I not had a vague memory of what this episode was about based on its title. It turns out each class selects one student to take the annual budget request to...THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE. WHAAAAAAT

Gus never knew anyone who got to see the teacher’s lounge at his old school, and the gang laments that Vince had the chance in second grade, but when he knocked on the door to hand over the folder, the door opened and closed so fast that he didn’t get a look. Just like that, the folder was gone.

So class starts, and the gang is charming the hell out of Miss Grotke, all hoping to avenge Vince’s grave error. And it looks like it’s going to work, until Miss Lemon, the receptionist, shows up...asking for the annual budget request. “What a fine idea!” Miss Grotke exclaims. “We won’t interrupt our studies to run a silly errand!”

The mystique surrounding the teacher’s lounge feels pretty universal, doesn’t it? I wasn’t the kind of kid who investigated these things (especially at the expense of playing with my friends in other classes during recess), but I still wanted to know what the teacher’s lounge looked like.

I think it was third grade when I finally got that chance — I was walking and talking with my teacher (yep, that’s me) and he needed to go in there for a moment. He held the door open for me, as if inviting me in after him, and...I mean, it was just a room. Tables, coffee machine, couch. I didn’t have any preconceived notions about what it should look like, and still, that mystique was preserved — it was a space just for teachers. We didn’t really have any spaces that were just for us students on campus.

Not that these kids have that problem — they’re running a whole society independent of staff intervention — but they’re still pretty bummed about once again missing this chance. “We all debased ourselves today, and for what?” Gretchen sighs. She really wanted to see the bunsen burners and petri dishes, see.

You can almost hear the record scratch after she says that. It’s then that we learn that every kid has a different view of what the teacher’s lounge looks like: Gretchen sees them as scientists, “pushing the boundaries of knowledge on every frontier”; Spinelli says it’s stupid to think they’re spending their free time doing work stuff and that they must be working out; Mikey, meanwhile, sticks to his brand and says he thinks they’re meditating, burning incense, and walking across hot coals while dressed as Tibetan monks.

There’s an obvious solution to settle this, and TJ’s on it right away: why not just go see inside themselves? (Surely they might have thought of this in a previous year, but, eh, the cameras weren’t rolling yet.) They hire Crier Kid to distract Finster, who is guarding what is apparently the only entrance into the school — fire codes, anyone? — and they make their way outside the teacher’s lounge.

Spinelli unlocks the door with a bobby pin, and after distracting constant teacher’s lounge resident Mr. Yamashiro by telling him his car is on fire, the gang walks in and sees...a dilapidated old room with a coffee machine and broken furniture. All things considered, it’s a dump.

The kids are disappointed and leave as Mr. Yamashiro returns and goes to get a coffee...by which I mean he pushes a button on the machine, revealing a secret room to the real teacher’s lounge. A butler offers him a drink, he puts on a smoking jacket, and we see this spa-slash-man cave where teachers can watch TV, get massages, or relax in a hot tub.

“That’s no kindergartener, that’s my wife!” Principal Prickly says, and the teachers all laugh.

Takeaway: Never, ever get your hopes up about anything ever. You’ll just be disappointed, and that disappointment will only be compounded with the knowledge that the person snatching your hopes away is probably concealing something better. (Okay, maybe some hope is good sometimes, but “prepare to be disappointed” is sometimes okay, too.)

Randall’s Reform

THE SECRET DIARY OF RANDALL WEEMS - DO NOT READ

I WILL TELL MISS FINSTER IF YOU DO AND YOU’LL BE SORRY

Dear Diary,

I wish I was popular.

I know, I know. Being popular isn’t everything. But I see kids like TJ Detweiler with all the friends he could ever want, even though he’s dirty and ugly, and I get so mad! Why do kids like him get everything and kids like me get nothing?

I have to go make sardine and pickle sandwiches for me and Miss Finster’s lunch tomorrow. More later.

-

Dear Diary,

I got the good ball again today! Miss Finster hand-selected me! TJ and his friends got stuck with the flat ball, which they deserve. They’re just a bunch of losers. I mean, look at the ball they got!

But here’s the thing. They got the worst ball in the bin, and they still managed to have fun at recess. TJ even told a joke that I heard Principal Prickly say in the teacher’s lounge the other day about his wife being mistaken for a kindergartener! But I just didn’t have the will to snitch on him.

I got the best ball in the bin, and I didn’t have fun at all. I just hit myself in the face with the ball, if I’m being honest here.

Spinelli said she and her friends would rather play with a flat ball than a slimeball. It hurt more than I’d ever tell them.

-

Dear Diary,

I learned what “whiplash” is today, because it’s what happened to me. The day started with me framing TJ pretty good — I wrote a note that said “I did it! –TJ” and left it by the trash can, like he had just littered or something. Miss Finster was on him right away! It was great!

When TJ was serving his punishment at the wall, I told him I was going to make his life a living nightmare. But then I told him something I didn’t expect I would tell him. I said I wished I was him. I said I didn’t get why everyone liked him and not me.

He told me it’s because I’m always snitching, as if that’s not my job! But we made a deal: I won’t snitch on him if he lets me hang out with him and his friends.

I’m worried, but I’m excited.

-

Dear Diary,

Today didn’t go well at first. I tried to eat my sardine and pickle sandwich at the table with the gang, and no one but TJ even acknowledged my existence except to say mean things. Then, at recess, they all shut me out of their games. TJ told me it’s because my history is gonna be hard to shake.

So I decided to show them something to prove I’m for real! I took them to Miss Finster’s secret ball room, where there are 83 brand-new balls! We went to the window above the playground and gave them all away! It felt good to be liked for that.

Miss Finster caught us, of course, and we were all lined up as she asked everyone if they did it. She got to me and I said...I didn’t know who did it! It felt kind of bad to lie to Miss Finster, but the gang all accepted me after that. That felt good.

-

Dear Diary,

My life is over.

Miss Finster has a new snitch now, this kid named Douglas. He called me “ex-weasel” and told me Miss Finster had shared all of our secrets with him.

I’m too distraught to write any more today.

-

Dear Diary,

Well, that was fun while it lasted. TJ gave me some good advice: that we only get a few really good friends in life, and that being popular is no reason to give up a friend like Miss Finster.

It turns out she really cares about me, because she got rid of Douglas as soon as I told her TJ and all them were responsible for the balls! They had to go to the wall! It was really great.

Takeaway: Snitches get stitches (I just assume Randall got stitches after beaning himself in the head with the good ball).

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E9: The Box/The Trial

Today I learned that I, growing up on the west coast of the United States, missed the official debut of Recess on the evening of August 31, 1997 because the networks over there were still covering Princess Diana’s death (which happened earlier in the day). The official premiere was pushed back to September 13 because her funeral took place on the original date, September 6.

I don’t know why that’s so fascinating to me. Maybe because it’s a damn thing that the first major news event I remember (not counting Hale-Bopp, but that was less news and more a comet that I was fascinated by?) and such an important TV show that I’m now dedicating a not-insignificant portion of my life to, 23 years later, intersected in this way.

Oh, well. Let’s watch more Recess.

The Box

How do you get all the ice cream you can eat? Apparently, it’s as easy as unplugging the big freezer in the cafeteria, which is what TJ and the gang have just done as the episode opens.

Our friend Hank the janitor informs the whole playground that the freezer is on the fritz and that all the ice cream — including Principal Prickly’s private stash, which I really would have liked to hear more about — is melting! So our friends step in and offer to eat the ice cream, because they’re good people.

Unfortunately for TJ, Miss Finster has discovered his frozen shoe at the scene of the crime, and so she send him to the wall (you know, the punishment where you put your nose on the wall and can’t move for however long. Fortunately for TJ, his friends come hang out with him at the wall. Miss Finster is incensed by this — he’s being punished, but having fun with it — and vows to come up with a better way to punish kids so they really feel it.

The next day, she unveils...The Box.

The playground falls in line, military-style, as Miss Finster explains that they’re just not taking getting into trouble seriously. But when she unveils her next great punishment tool, well...let’s just say it’s no Chokey. Everyone laughs — “It’s just a bunch of lines painted on the ground!” Vince exclaims — but Miss Finster is undeterred, convinced this new punishment will make her “more famous than Mildred Frizbone” — the teacher who invented detention in 1952.

(Other things invented in 1952: car airbag, polio vaccine, roll-on deodorant, pocket-size transistor radio. Ms. Frizbone was in good company!)

Naturally, TJ is the first to get in trouble, and naturally, he milks the attention for all it’s worth. Ten minutes in the box is nothing compared to his peers cheering him on! But Miss Finster then reveals that any kid who gets within 30 yards of the box will get detention for a week (perhaps an early sign that if you can’t beat Ms. Frizbone, join her).

We quickly learn that four lines painted on the ground is the elementary school equivalent of solitary confinement, though — that is, extremely bad (relative to, you know, kids’ attention spans). As TJ realizes he can’t play catch because his ball rolled out of the box, he can’t watch clouds because there aren’t any, and he's too impatient to nap — something he says he hasn’t done in a long time, but um, it’s been literally one episode — he starts to crack.

TJ hallucinates the box sinking into the ground, and all his helpless friends see from a great distance is him clawing at the walls surrounding him like a mime. When Miss Finster arrives to collect TJ after the worst 10 minutes of his life, he’s ready to do anything to never have to go back in the box again.

As the extent of TJ’s apparent PTSD sets in — he can’t eat square foods, like the ravioli and sandwich that Gretchen and Mikey offer him at lunch the next day — the gang realize they have to do something. Gretchen, of course, has an academic answer, while I’ll quote in full:

“According to Dr. Freud here, trying to take a person’s mind off his fears is just playing into them. The only cure is to make the person confront those fears. In other words, TJ must go back in the box.”

Now, as someone who somehow has a psychology degree, I’m wondering if she means Sigmund Freud, who was notably known for a lot of things, exposure therapy not being one of them. Maybe not. Maybe it’s a different Freud. In any case, this course of action seems like a good thing to try, except it also means the gang has to ensure TJ goes back in the box by framing him for a crime (in this case, spitballing Miss Finster in the back).

Back in the box, TJ immediately hallucinates again...until he’s hit in the head with a dodgeball, snapping him back to reality. He’s too shocked to throw it back to the kid who lost it, so the kid just comes into the box to get it, and TJ realizes if people can come into the box, he can get out of it! Wow!

When Miss Finster (and that snitch Randall, who gets his own episode coming up!) arrives to collect TJ from the box, she’s expecting a puddle of goo where TJ’s body used to be, more or less. But...TJ is fine. “I’d have to be nuts to be afraid of that!” he says, as Miss Finster sobs over her (apparently) failed creation (sample size of two?).

Takeaway: TJ can be vulnerable! Which...again, is something we learned ONE EPISODE AGO when he was taken prisoner by the kindergarteners and regressed to being a kindergartener. Which is way more of a Freud thing than exposure therapy is, by the way!!!!

The Trial

THIRD STREET SCHOOL, Ark. — The charge of throwing a rock in a dirt clod war against fourth-grader Ashley Spinelli was thrown out, though the trial took a surprising twist at its end.

Spinelli had been charged with violating the playground constitution by throwing a rock at playground snitch Randall Weems. The prosecution argued that Spinelli’s action was worse than cutting in line, throwing slush balls or spitting loogies in the drinking fountain, per the constitution.

“What kind of rotten, evil kid would throw a rock in a dirt clod war?” an anonymous digger told Recess News.

Though Weems’ reputation as a snitch preceded him, with many on the playground reluctant not to indict Spinelli but to give Weems any benefit of the doubt, the consensus was that the constitution was clear.

The punishment for violating the playground constitution in such an egregious manner, according to the document, is a swirly. According to Urban Dictionary, a swirly is “a prank often pulled in high school, in which a group of kids hold one kid upside down over a toilet then dunk their head in and flush it, resulting in a ‘swirl’ style hairdo.”

A high school-level punishment befitted the crime, King Bob said in a statement, but a trial would be required to prove Spinelli’s guilt.

The case’s first twist came when Gretchen Grundler, a close friend of Spinelli’s, was named prosecutor by virtue of being the smartest kid on the playground — another rule from the constitution.

Then, Recess News learned Spinelli herself would not be taking the stand, citing self-incrimination. Spinelli’s defense team told Recess News they were not in agreement with their client on this strategy.

The first surprise testimony came not from Weems’ own depiction of the incident, but from Mikey Blumberg, another close friend of the defendant. Blumberg told the court that he had witnessed Spinelli threatening Weems before the alleged rock throwing took place, but had not seen the incident in question.

“When will you people learn war is not a game?” Blumberg cried in the day’s most impassioned speech. “It’s not a game!”

But the second surprise testimony came as Spinelli herself opted to take the stand. She told Recess News later that she credited her friend Vince LaSalle with the decision.

“He goes, ‘This isn’t just about you anymore, it’s about all of us,’” Spinelli said. “That was all I needed to hear.”

Spinelli had left the scene to rescue a cat, she testified, and that cat turned out to belong to playground overseer Miss Finster, the teacher to snitch Weems’ teacher’s pet. Weems was so jealous of the attention Spinelli received that he threw the rock at himself and blamed it on her, he revealed.

Grundler immediately withdrew the charges upon this revelation, leaving the playground in a state of disarray.

This is a developing story. Recess News will update this page as news of Weems’ impending swirly is confirmed.

Takeaway: I don’t use the word “badass” very often — it’s pretty overused, IMO — but my goodness, was Gretchen telling Spinelli “I’ll see you in court” badass.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E8: The Pest/The Legend of Big Kid

It’s a happy day, because we have been gifted both a Gretchen episode and a TJ episode! But it’s also a very fraught day, emotionally, for reasons you’ll soon discover. (There’s a good kicker, at least, for your trouble. No spoilers, but the ending of “The Pest” goes exactly as I’ve relayed it here.)

Read on for relationship advice, feminism, and a brief aside about white colonists in Africa:

The Pest

How To Make A Boy You Don’t Like Leave You Alone

by Gretchen Grundler

I don’t hate boys. Anyone who says that about me is simply incorrect. Four of my best friends are boys — my friend Spinelli and I are the only two girls in our group. When I’m fighting that kind of gender ratio and still enjoy their company, how could I ever hate them?

But some boys in particular are not worth my time. As a person who recently had an experience deflecting one of these boys’ advances over an extended period of time, I feel I am uniquely qualified to dole out advice on this matter.

I’m sort of spoiling the endgame here, but let me say, it is scores more effective to deal with troublesome boys yourself than to leave them to your teacher. Miss Grotke may mean well, but she’s a teacher, after all. At the core of her philosophy is law and order. Plus, in Miss Grotke’s case, she’s a much bigger proponent of letting us work out our own issues. Everyone wins.

You may feel hopeless, though, when a boy you don’t like starts bothering you in class. Maybe you want to tell the teacher. But that’s just a quick fix, and not a particularly effective one. It’s a band-aid. It won’t translate to your interactions on the playground, which is where your reputation really matters. (Okay, your academic reputation also matters. Maybe more.)

Of course, you may not know he likes you until he TELLS THE ENTIRE SCHOOL AT THE SAME TIME AND YOU JUST HAVE TO SIT THERE AND TAKE IT BECAUSE IF YOU DENY IT RIGHT AWAY THE ENTIRE PLAYGROUND WILL BE TOO BUSY LAUGHING TO NOTICE.

Whew, that felt good.

Still, nothing brings the playground together like a common laughingstock, and that was me. And when there’s a common laughingstock — the K-I-S-S-I-N-G chants were still ringing in my ears long after they happened — this empowers the boy you don’t like. Because suddenly, he’s not working for his cause alone. Suddenly, the entire playground is on his side.

What did I do? Well, I felt entirely hopeless. I tossed and turned every night, vivid dreams of this boy and I getting married and having children and growing old together disrupting my sleep. I was so distressed that I didn’t come to school the next day until lunch, which isn’t like me at all, of course. I want to stress, that was a one-time course of action. When he found me in the cafeteria, my friends tried to protect me, but alas, my lovestruck friend Mikey was starting to be won over by this boy’s persistence.

The first action I took was to simply cancel out what this boy had done to me first, declaring his love for me to the whole school. According to my calculations, it had the least risk and the most reward. Unfortunately, when a girl tells the whole school she isn’t romantically involved with a boy, they tend to believe the opposite. A boy publicly announcing his love for a girl, even against her wishes, is revolutionary, a real risk, something to be lauded. A girl publicly announcing her rejection of a boy is, well, mean. There are many high-school names a girl in my position might be called, but I won’t trouble you with them.

After even more pestering at school, even up to him talking to me through the vent that connects the boys’ bathroom and the girls’ bathroom, I had had enough. On the bus home, I told him I wouldn’t speak to him anymore, recognizing that ignoring him hadn’t worked in the past, but I was desperate for any semblance of peace and quiet, even if it was from me. 

You know what he said? “I’ll take your silence as a yes,” and, “Denial is the sincerest form of flattery.” That’s not even the phrase! And if he was taking silence as a yes, why wouldn’t he take me saying “no” as a no?

The next action I took was drastic — high risk, a potential of a lifetime of punishment if it went south — but I knew it was a risk I had to take. I marched up to this boy at school the next day and called him out. I pulled out a pair of handcuffs and locked us together for eternity. The key? Gone. This boy? Presumably having the time of his life.

Except...he wasn’t. As I regaled him with all the things I would make him do that day — math club, spelling bee practice, a frog dissection over lunch — robbing him of his agency for perhaps the very first time, he broke down immediately. I pulled out the spare key to the handcuffs and set him free.

He said he just wanted to show me how much he liked me. But if we don’t call out this entitlement early, who knows when this awakening might have occurred for him? How many more girls would have had to suffer this ordeal?

“You know, Spinelli? Boys are really weird,” I told my friend when this was all said and done. “I know what you mean,” she replied. “Can’t live with them, can’t grind them into chalk dust.”

My eyes lit up as I thought of a science project I had been working on in my spare time.

“Well, actually, you could,” I said. Because I may be one to take one for the team, to put myself in harm’s way to try to mitigate future suffering at the hands of another person, but that doesn’t mean I don’t always have a backup plan.

Takeaway: Hot damn, this episode made me mad!

The Legend of Big Kid

Is Kirby Puckett the greatest outfielder that ever lived?

I'm not much of a stats person beyond the basics — field goal percentage, sacks, errors, the ones that will come up in conversation on a regular game broadcast. So, aside from a quick glance at his career numbers, which tell a story about his career, I can’t tell you if Kirby Puckett was the greatest outfielder that ever lived. (I will say that his number was retired a few months before this episode aired, which was a few years before the domestic violence allegations against him came out.)

Anyway, lucky for us, Vince and TJ can’t make this decision either, and it’s during their argument that they stumble right into the setting for this episode: the old playground that allegedly hasn’t been used since the 1970s. (Yet it’s on campus? Okay, okay, suspension of disbelief. My elementary school had a whole bunch of ways to get off campus during recess without anyone noticing, but it wasn’t done with any regularity — it’s possible they just didn’t know it was there.)

But it turns out someone has been using it, and recently, because TJ falls into a trap. As he’s hanging upside-down from the monkey bars, the two hear the rumbling of kindergarteners approaching. TJ tells Vince to save himself, but Vince instead distracts them so that perhaps TJ can get away. Vince, though, doesn’t realize how far or how fast he’s been running, because before he knows it, he’s back at the regular playground sobbing into Spinelli’s arms about how he could have done more to save his friend.

The coast seems clear, so the gang heads back to the old playground to get TJ, but he’s gone. Gretchen posits the kindergarteners must have taken him back to their pen, but that’s deserted, too. “They’ve probably migrated to their winter encampment,” she says, which doesn’t make the rest of the gang any less terrified for TJ’s safety.

We then get a jarring prisoner log from TJ, who tells us, “The unthinkable has happened. I am a prisoner of the kindergarteners.” He’s in a cage, unsure how much time has passed, and he’s not sure what his captors have planned for him. One of them — their leader, who TJ calls “Captain Sticky,” calls him “Big Kid” and tosses him some candy. TJ refuses to eat it, in case they’re fattening him up to eat him, but eventually is too hungry to say no.

Meanwhile, the gang is busy hustling the rest of the school, asking if they saw the kindergarteners, if there was a fourth-grader with them. The outcome appears bleak for TJ — everyone knows what might happen if those kids got a hold of an older kid: nothing good.

TJ, though, is...starting to like captivity, or at least get used to it. Whereas the kindergarteners first have to threaten him with weapons (crayons and paintbrushes attached to the end of yardsticks) to join them in tasks like finger painting and napping, he quickly assimilates to their ways.

Gretchen finds TJ’s shoe on the playground, lost in one of the initial scuffles, and Vince erupts in a “Noooo!” so heart-wrenching, you forget that TJ is, well, okay. Because the gang doesn’t know that. The kindergarteners are too elusive. No one knows what they’re up to except them.

But the gang acts on a more promising lead as Gretchen uncovers a still-wet lollipop. The trail is hot again!...just as we see TJ napping again, riding tricycles, and playing musical chairs. Is he too far gone?

When the gang arrive back at the old playground, they fall into yet another trap. Someone locks them in a cage, and the kindergarteners assemble, beating drums and shrieking. (We will...have to talk about how the kindergarteners are portrayed at some point in these recaps. There’s a very obvious white settler colonist, Indiana Jones, “thrilling adventures through untamed Africa!” look about them.)

The drumbeats slow, and who should walk out but...Big Kid. Well, TJ. The gang are shocked at how quickly the kindergarteners have completely taken hold of their friend, who now dresses like the kindergarteners, acts like the kindergarteners, and speaks like the kindergarteners. He won’t listen when they try to tell them who he is.

Somehow, it’s Vince talking about baseball that brings him back, though. Little League. Kirby Puckett. And TJ breaks down in tears, wailing, because he’s been through so much.

The gang finally gets him out of there, and Spinelli has to help TJ tie his shoes. “Shoes, underpants, I can’t get used to all this stuff!” he exclaims, and they don’t get it. (Gus calls the kindergarteners “primitive.” See latest parenthetical section.) But Gretchen recognizes he’s in a better place to be able to listen to reason now, so after he tells the gang he misses the freedom of being able to do whatever he wants all day, she says, “Don’t you see? Their way of life is coming to an end. By this time next year, they’ll be first graders.”

And TJ does get it. With one last nod to Captain Sticky, they part ways.

Takeaway: Growing up is hard, especially when you’re a kid and it goes by so quickly. Perhaps giving into some indulgences of yesteryear isn’t all bad, though, so long as you balance them with your current life and don’t let them consume you.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E7: I Will Kick No More Forever/The Kid Came Back

It was bound to happen eventually, but these two were...not as good as the others? I don’t know, y’all. I didn’t feel fulfilled or inspired watching this pair of episodes. But I tried...for one of them, anyway.

I Will Kick No More Forever

Well, okay, there was one inspiring thing. Gretchen and Gus doing commentary for the kickball games made me think they should probably do a podcast together. So here’s a sports podcast that happens to be about the plot of this episode!

(I’m just going to write this all at once and see what happens. I have only ever written TV scripts, so I’m just winging it. Forgive me.)

GRETCHEN: I’m Gretchen Grundler.

GUS: And I’m Gus Griswald.

GRETCHEN: And this is “I am in Sports.”

[theme music]

[theme music fades]

[nat sound: kickball noises]

GRETCHEN: Kickball. Or as it’s known in most of Canada, “soccer baseball.” A sport of humble origins, and today, one of the most popular recess games in the United States.

GUS: You might not know all the names of some of the great kickballers in the storied history of the sport, but today, we’d like to introduce you to one in particular who took the playground by storm.

[nat sound fades]

ANNOUNCER (SOT): “Here comes Vince ‘The Foot’ LaSalle!”

ANNOUNCER 2 (SOT): “Kicks lefty, throws righty...”

ANNOUNCER 3 (SOT): “And that ball’s not coming back! A home run!”

ANNOUNCER 4 (SOT): “The undisputed, single greatest kicker that Third Street School has ever seen.”

GRETCHEN: Vince LaSalle. A fourth-grader in name only, he made everyone from kindergarteners to sixth-graders quiver in their kickball shoes whenever he stepped up to the plate.

GUS: His trajectory was storied. He was the only known kindergartener in Third Street School history to be invited to play with the first-grade kickball team, and by second grade, he was challenging sixth-graders to play.

GRETCHEN: This confidence was impressive. Inspiring, even. But it wasn’t meant to last.

VINCE (SOT): “Okay, everyone! Outfield in!”

GRETCHEN: It was a regular Tuesday, bottom of the ninth inning. Recess would be over in about two minutes. Ashley Q. was at the plate, fresh off a phone call, and Vince made the call to bring the outfield in.

GUS: It would be the last time anyone on the playground would trust him for a long time.

ANNOUNCER 5 (SOT): “That ball is up! And up! And up! Good golly, that ball is gone! It’s out of this world! Ashley Q., ladies and gentlemen!”

- SOT -

VINCE (on phone): “It was...horrible.”

GUS: “Horrible?”

VINCE: “When you make a call like that, bringing the outfield in, bringing everyone in, you don’t...that’s not what’s supposed to happen.”

GUS: “What is supposed to happen?”

VINCE: “Well, the opposite of that.”

- END SOT -

GRETCHEN: The next day, Third Street School received a long distance call — very long-distance. This call was from a busy street in Beijing, China.

PRINCIPAL PRICKLY (SOT, on phone): “They said they found our ball. I was like, what? What ball? And the man on the phone explained, you know, your ball. It says your school’s name right here.”

GRETCHEN: Ashley Q. had recorded the longest kick the school had ever seen. And Vince? Well, he didn’t take it so well.

- SOT -

VINCE (on phone): “I just started whiffing.”

GUS: “Whiffing?”

VINCE: “Everything. Just, missing everything. The next game, you know, the ball would be rolled to me just like usual. Kicked it right back into the pitcher’s hands. Kicked it foul. Missed it entirely.”

GUS: “What about after that game?”

VINCE: [sighs] “You know what’s worse than being picked last?”

GUS: “Not really. I’m picked last a lot.”

VINCE: “Have you ever not been picked at all?”

GUS: “Wow, no. How did that make you feel?”

VINCE: [laughs] “Well, after that, I left the sport.”

- END SOT -

[brooding music]

VINCE (SOT): “I am announcing my retirement from kickball. I will kick no more, forever.”

[brooding music fades]

GRETCHEN: Vince was distraught. Even though he was sure in his decision to leave the sport he loved, he didn’t take the transition well.

GUS: We visited him after school one day — a day he’d missed, we weren’t sure why — and found him in front of the TV, drinking root beer and eating doughnuts. It wasn’t pretty.

GRETCHEN: He kept repeating something, we didn’t know what at first. We tried to ask him to speak more slowly, articulate, enunciate. And then Gus finally figured it out.

GUS: “I was outkicked by an Ashley.” Over and over again. Just...gut punch.

[SFX - EXPLOSION]

- SOT -

GRETCHEN: “So we are...in my bedroom right now. Me, Gus, TJ, everyone. And I just showed them [crash in background] — Guys, what was that?”

TJ: “Sorry. Lost control of the Flubber again.”

GRETCHEN: “Glorp. It’s called glorp.”

TJ: “Yeah, whatever it is, it’s awesome. This should do the trick.”

- END SOT -

GUS: It was supposed to be a science fair project, right?

GRETCHEN: Yes, it was one of my attempts to invent a substance to replace liquid soap. But what I got instead was a bouncy...well...glorp.

GUS: And remind me what the plan was?

GRETCHEN: The plan was to create a diversion and switch out the kickball with the glorp ball. It’s much easier to kick, and it goes a lot farther. We just wanted to give Vince his confidence back, even if we had to bend the truth a little to do it.

GUS: My job was to switch the ball after Mikey and TJ created the diversion, from the kickball to the glorp ball.

[spy music]

- SOT -

MIKEY: “My foot! My foot!”

TJ: “Mikey! Are you okay? Can you play?”

MIKEY: “No! But if I don’t play, you’ll have to forfeit!”

TJ: “I’m sure there’s someone else we can use.”

- END SOT -

[spy music fade]

GRETCHEN: [laughing] Okay, it was a bad plan. It was not the best plan. But it worked.

ANNOUNCER 6 (SOT): “What’s this? Vince LaSalle, disgraced kickballer, appears to be coming out of retirement to replace the injured Mikey!”

TJ (SOT, on phone): “I was just trying to tell him, like, ‘If you don’t kick, we’ll lose the game,’ and he goes, ‘Yeah, well, get used to it.’ And I go, ‘Well, the only thing that makes you a loser is not trying.’ And it did the trick.”

ANNOUNCER 6 (SOT, CONT.): “He’s kicking righty today, maybe a revamped routine to make this try at his career go a little better, and...Oh my! Oh my word! That ball is gone! It’s in the stratosphere! It’s past the stratosphere! Where is that ball! No one knows, but Vince LaSalle has done it! He’s won the game!”

GRETCHEN: Here’s the thing. We all felt incredibly guilty after the fact. Because it was just the glorp ball. It wasn’t Vince. And still, we couldn’t tell him. But then it turned out we didn’t have to tell him.

GUS: I remember this moment so well. I was running back from the bathroom, wondering why the game was over.

GRETCHEN: And we were wondering why you were out of breath. You weren’t the one who had just kicked the ball into parts unknown. But then we learned the reason was...

GUS: I didn’t make the switch. I went to the bathroom, left the glorp ball outside, and when I came back, it was gone.

GRETCHEN: Vince had done it all on his own. His confidence was real.

[SOT - “Vince! Vince! Vince!”]

GRETCHEN: The world’s greatest kickballer was back in business.

[fade SOT]

[theme music]

- SOT -

[phone rings]

PRINCIPAL PRICKLY: “Hello?”

HAROLD STEVENS: “Hey, Principal Prickly, this is Harold Stevens at NASA. Look, I just wanted to reach out and say we won’t be charging you for the damage because this seems like a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

PRICKLY: “Excuse me? Damage? What did those kids get up to this time?”

STEVENS: “Oh, well, the kickball dent on the space shuttle. It won’t be a problem.”

PRICKLY: “What?”

[click]

- END SOT -

[theme music fades]

Takeaway: I need a Gus and Gretchen podcast YESTERDAY.

The Kid Came Back

Look, everyone. The previous recap was so long, and I don’t want to overshadow it by going too deep into this one. This episode was just...a baby thriller, you know what I mean? All the elements of a creepy story tailor-made for kids, but absolutely no payoff. It was an insult, frankly.

In short, a kid no one has seen before starts following the gang around, and bad things start happening to them. They decide it’s because of the kid, so they tell him to buzz off, and he starts crying. The gang’s takeaway is that, oops, our bad luck wasn’t caused by this kid! And so they go apologize, and then they learn he has other friends anyway. The lesson is not to tell kids to buzz off...or so we thought, until another mysterious girl shows up at the very end and the gang runs away from her immediately so as to not engage. We never learn what’s causing their bad luck.

Just...skip this one. I hope the next one is better and that we’re not rolling down an infinitely long hill. Who haven’t we checked in with in a while? Have we had a TJ-centered episode yet? I’d be fine with that.

Takeaway: I need to tighten up my scriptwriting so I don’t run out of steam before even getting the chance to make fun of a bad episode, lol.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E6: My Fair Gretchen/Speedy, We Hardly Knew Ye

Me, literally one recap ago: “When are we gonna get a good Gretchen episode?”

Me, today, looking at the title of the next episode and refusing to be embarrassed: “WELL, FINALLY”

My Fair Gretchen

The most pressing revelation here is that “Recess” apparently takes place in Arkansas, as the episode begins with Miss Finster handing out the Arkansas Standard Achievement Test.

Beyond that, this is a lovely ~ironic subversion~ of the “My Fair Lady” trope. Let me explain: “My Fair Lady” is all about turning Eliza Doolittle into a more acceptable member of high society, right? Turning her from Cockney to, well, refined?

Here, we’ve got Gretchen, who’s by no means a member of high society, but the goal isn’t to get her there either. See, Gretchen is smart — very smart — to the point that she gets a perfect score on the ASAT. She’s called into Principal Prickly’s office, where she learns that she has the opportunity to go to Oppenheimer Elementary for the Incredibly, Extremely Gifted. (Of course, Prickly has a vested interest in this too. If two more of his kids go there, he gets that job at Spiro Agnew Middle School!)

But...Gretchen doesn’t really want to go to Oppenheimer. Her mom is excited to hear the news, but it just makes Gretchen sad. And when she tells her friends she’s on the fence about what she’s learned, they decide to take action.

After Gretchen takes one last walk around the school, saying goodbye to the swingset, the graffiti, and the rancid fish sticks in the dumpster, she gets home to find...the gang! And they’ve got a plan to de-smart her so that when she goes in front of the Oppenheimer review board the next day, they’ll have no choice but to turn her down.

“I’ve been trying to dumb myself down ever since kindergarten,” Gretchen says, to which TJ replies, “This time, you’ve got experts on your side.”

“Yo, Prickly,” New Gretchen says as she walks into the gym for her review. After a whirlwind day of trying new looks (courtesy of the Diggers, the Ashleys, the kindergarteners), she shows up in, um, I’m not a fashion person but she’s coming off as very...not this decade? Wow, helpful.

So yeah, instead of going for “refined,” we get, well, the opposite of that. But here, it’s also the socially acceptable landing point. Instead of being a super-genius who aces standardized tests, Gretchen is now...just like any other kid.

The board, pictured above, asks Gretchen a handful of trivia questions, and she gets them all spectacularly wrong (“Who was the 14th president of the United States?” “Dennis Rodman?”). From outside, the gang celebrates her achievement...until the plan backfires.

A humiliated Principal Prickly accuses Gretchen of cheating on the exam, and Gretchen can’t help but recite all of the correct answers to their questions, in order, with perfect accuracy. Albert Einstein (you see him, come on) asks why she was hiding her intelligence, and she explains she doesn’t want to go to the new school. The board banishes Prickly to the hallway, where he and the gang await Gretchen’s fate.

When they emerge, Einstein explains that Gretchen convinced the board that there's more to education than book-learnin’ (which sort of reminds me of “Bart the Genius,” where Bart initially tries to convince the gifted school he has cheated his way into to let him go back to his old school undercover, “to see what makes ‘em tick”).

The board suggests the school instead implement a tutorial program, and the episode ends with Gretchen teaching...a room full of teachers. As it should be.

Takeaway: Every time I see an episode about a gifted kid/genius kid, I think about all the memes that go, like, “if you were ever a ‘gifted kid’ in school, you’re depressed now,” and...yeah. Imagine having all this pressure to succeed in fourth grade, you know?

Speedy, We Hardly Knew Ye

(Today in “trying something new on the blog,” I want to share something I wrote a few years ago that pretty much says what I would have written here anyway. The episode is about the class hamster, Speedy, dying, and how the kids react to it.)

In middle school, I had two opportunities to take part in Challenge Day, a day-long anti-bullying program meant to bring to the forefront all the deeply personal things that participants have in common, all while celebrating their diversity and inspiring them to dismantle the structure that causes these differences to drive them apart.

Being middle schoolers — 11-, 12-, and 13-year-olds in the thick of maintaining childhood friendships, facing new encounters, and experiencing puberty — there was a wide range of expectations for the event and the reactions throughout it. Many students saw the day solely as an opportunity to be able to skip school, while several of us read the material given to us with our permission slips and at least vaguely understood that our emotions — and our beliefs — would be tested.

The first time I did Challenge Day was in sixth grade, and at first, my primary concern was that my best friend and had been separated, relegated to participating on different days. But when the 100 or so of us entered the gym, whose windows had been blacked out to avoid any interruptions from the other 300 students on campus, the specially-trained Challenge Day leaders made every opportunity to pull us out of our comfort zones right away. Suddenly, we were sprinting within a massive circle of chairs, instructed to find a new seat, and found ourselves sitting between two people we’d never met to whom we would then have to introduce ourselves.

Eventually, we split into small groups of 6 or 7 — similarly randomly assigned, paired with a parent volunteer — and talked more candidly about our worries, how we truly felt going to school every day, and even our personal tragedies. The point here was to prove that we were able to open up to a group of strangers following all of the icebreaker activities we’d completed. And, from what my friend had told me after completing her Challenge Day the previous day, this portion of the day was where everyone started crying. While a good number of the students who were just happy to have the day off from school didn’t take this part seriously, I really wanted to – and luckily, both times, my group was just as keen.

I don’t much remember what I shared at that first Challenge Day, but in eighth grade I was dealing with both that friend’s sudden move to a school two hours away and the death of my hamster, my first real pet, and I felt I had a lot to talk about. The students in my group were very receptive to what I had to say, and one even took me aside after we moved on from the small group activities and complimented my candidness, saying I was very brave to cry for my friend and my pet.

Unfortunately, the parent volunteer in our group was less sympathetic. On the Challenge Day website, it states that volunteers receive a quick overview of the day before students arrive, and that’s it. Sadly, you can’t teach sympathy in half an hour. When I almost immediately starting sobbing about my troubles and was met with kindness by my fellow middle school-aged group members, this woman promptly interrupted me.

“Are you sure you’re not just getting caught up in the emotions, sweetheart?” she asked, her attempted pleasantness pierced by skepticism. “At your age, you’re too old to be crying about hamsters and one lost friend. There are more hamsters, and there are more friends.”

What could I do? I was a shy, insecure 13-year-old who was clearly overwhelmed by my own hardships — albeit comparatively minute to what some members of the group had shared — and all this woman could do was point out my perceived weaknesses and trivialize feelings I thought were legitimate and sincere. So I gave in. I nodded.

“Mm-hmm,” she confirmed, her face lit up in victory. “You need to learn to be stronger. That’s what today is all about. Let’s move on to someone else.”

Of course, because of the quiet, non-confrontational person I was — and still, only 13, barely beginning to emotionally mature — I let her words sink in. I entirely believed that what I had shared was completely out of line, and rebuked myself for crying at all. Since early childhood, I was the type of person who cried whenever I felt worried or insecure, and this woman, in just a few sentences, had made me so worried and so insecure that I didn’t want to cry anymore.

For me, Challenge Day in sixth grade was exciting. Because my school had only opened that year, even the seventh- and eighth-graders who transferred from the middle school across town were open to making new friends, and it was a wholly positive experience. But after Challenge Day in eighth grade, I wondered if I’d become too comfortable being openly emotional two years before. And, not to place the entirety of the blame on this one woman’s speech, since I clearly had many reasons to feel down, eighth grade was when I first recognized that I might be depressed. Even still, I don’t think I should have had to say, “Look, lady, I appreciate your fake concern, but I’m clinically depressed” to avoid any further insult.

I know so many people whose feelings were invalidated as kids simply because, as kids, many of them just hadn’t been alive long enough to experience the type of pain that adults have. (And even if they have, the emotional differences inherent in both parties for the exact same tragedy or other life change can be profound.) When adults don’t understand that comparing the plights of a single 13-year-old to their own — or anyone’s — is completely unfair, their words and actions can quickly devolve into invalidation and, sometimes, abuse.

During that second Challenge Day, the main message conveyed by the leaders was beyond my attention. I thought I’d come away with the advice to not cry unless it was about something really important, and to “be stronger” — which was completely abstract to me at the time. (It still is, honestly. Is there a checklist I have to fill out to determine if I’m “strong” enough to…what? Be a living, appropriately emotional person? I mean, evidently not.)

I don’t want adults to be rude to kids who are expressing emotions of any kind, even if it’s about something they don’t think is worth expending energy to worry about. Children and teenagers have vastly different capacities to internalize the world around them compared to adults, and that doesn’t make their reactions to hardships wrong or invalid. We should all know this, having been kids ourselves, but obviously we don’t.

When adults can’t understand a world in which a hamster’s death is, for one day, the most important thing, perhaps the sole hardship on a child’s mind, then we don’t deserve their innocent happiness at learning on their own that there are, in fact, more hamsters.

If we can’t handle children’s emotions at their worst — the worst “worst” they’ve ever experienced — to what fate are we dooming them when the things they don’t talk about, their depression and abuse and appropriately hard hardships that are allowed to challenge their strength, get bad enough for us to care?

Takeaway: Let kids feel their feelings when they’re kids so they have a healthy relationship with their emotions as adults. (Please.)

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E5: King Gus/Big Brother Chad

Before starting this post, I wrote a light analysis of the opening sequence, and in it, I realized that probably most of my previously-held beliefs about Gus’ character come from that alone. He gets gum all over himself and falls into the ball bin, which is on wheels, so it goes flying. Which is just...so not his character at all, it turns out. I mean, he might not be all Army macho like his dad, but he’s not a dweeb, either.

Anyway, this first episode just serves to further prove me wrong, and I’m cool with that.

King Gus

You know how the first season of a network TV show usually sucks? Like, it gets by on what it can get by on — famous actors, okay writing, a fun premise, or...famous actors — but if the show gets picked up for more seasons, it becomes the season where you’ll be selling it to your friends as, “If you must watch the first season, take it with a grain of salt”?

Animated kids’ shows are not! like! that! Some of the things that this show has already gotten into are, like, season three minimum for a network adult show. You know, let the characters live their daily lives for a bit, then start throwing wrenches. But already, we’ve had “what if two characters kissed,” “what if one of the main characters joined the Ashleys,” “what if Miss Finster had a boyfriend,” and now we’re getting “what if one member of the gang became king?”

That’s right — Gus, meek, dweeby Gus, is king of the playground. Temporarily. Until King Bob returns from his tonsillectomy.

How? Well, King Bob doesn’t want someone stronger than him, or smarter than him — someone who the people might like more than him. He wants a regular guy, someone who’ll do what he’s told, who can think for himself. And, as luck would have it, there’s our boy Gus getting gum all over himself (literally, as it turns out) — right place, right time.

TJ and Spinelli are stoked that their friend is king, and they start brainstorming all the ways that they’ll finally have a say in the goings-on of the playground now (Spinelli, for example, expresses an interest in becoming “Lord Emperor of the West Playground”). Gus is less excited, likely because he didn’t ask for this, but TJ assures him they’ll be around to give him advice along the way. In the meantime, he’s just gotta be “kingy,” TJ says.

(Side note: Without all his stuff on, King Bob kinda looks like a turn-of-the-century football player. Tell me I’m wrong.)

So anyway, Gus is sworn in, and he’s immediately taken by the idea of all the snacks he can eat. King Bob’s henchmen bring him crackers and his preferred brand (and vintage!) of apple juice, more snack food, a glow-in-the-dark yo-yo, and...cookies. We’ll get to the cookies in a bit.

Meanwhile, things on the greater playground aren’t going so well. TJ and the gang want to go up to visit Gus, but they learn there’s increased bureaucratic nonsense they have to endure first — namely, a ton of paperwork that may or may not ever go through. (You know the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode where Amy is trying to submit paperwork for a block party request, and she does it all correctly, but she still somehow doesn’t have the right forms? It’s like that.)

Gus is then tasked with his first royal judgment: deciding which of two girls gets to keep a doll they’re fighting over. In true King Solomon style, he suggests cutting the doll in half. When one girl is fine with this and the other is visibly upset, Gus...gives it to the girl who’s fine with this. Oops.

“It’s the second-best decision you could have made!” his henchman says, and we continue.

Angered by not having the proper kind of cookies he desires, Gus imposes a cookie tax on the playground: every day, each student must bring him two cookies. He’s tasking the third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders with building a cookie mine in the meantime (as well as renaming kickball “Gusball” and mandating that each recess begin with the student body singing a song about...Gus).

It’s then that the gang say “to hell with bureaucracy” and just walk up the jungle gym to see King Gus, who’s happy to see them until they start questioning his motives. TJ, then Gretchen, then the rest of the school (more or less) get locked up — except for the poor kid who can’t pay the cookie tax, who’s sentenced to hard labor.

The kids stage a protest to usurp the throne of this cookie-centered dictatorship, but before it can escalate to riot levels (well, aside from the dodgeball-throwing and Spinelli getting a few good punches in), King Bob returns. There’s a smooth transition of power, and suddenly, Gus is no longer king.

“Uneasy is the head that wears the crown,” Mikey says, as the gang decides whether or not to be mad at not-king Gus. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Gretchen adds. And soon enough, they’re all friends again.

Spinelli does hear back about her application to be Lord Emperor of the West Playground, and I really want to know if that worked out and that she’s just, like, doing that from here on out. Maybe that’ll be my personal headcanon.

Takeaway: Boy, oh, boy, do we keep getting these #deep Gus episodes or WHAT? When are we gonna get a good Gretchen episode?

Big Brother Chad

This isn’t the most important part, but after watching this episode, I have to ask: Does this type of stereotypical nerd exist...anywhere?

Not to spoil the episode’s first big twist right away, but here’s the scoop: Vince, who, um, plays sports(?), has a big brother named Chad. And Chad...is a geek.

See, Chad uses pocket protectors. His suspenders hike his pants up past his ankles, he wears glasses that are taped together, he’s in chess club, he has a pet turtle, he’s the scorekeeper on the baseball team, and his idea of a good time is going to Compu-Hut and watching the employees “unpack the latest mousepads.”

Your garden-variety ‘90s geek, basically. A person I have never seen before, and a person who may not have ever existed all at once like that.

But see, the real twist is unraveled throughout the episode. Vince is bragging to the gang that his big brother is going to pick him up from school that day, and word spreads around school fast. Everyone remembers Chad — who it looks like his about five years older than Vince — but they haven’t seen him in a long time. (How big is this town supposed to be? Anyway.)

The entire student body is waiting outside after school to get a glimpse of Chad, who arrives...on a bicycle he’s fashioned himself along with a sidecar, which he calls “the Chadmobile.”

“Why, he’s nothing but a nerd!” King Bob proclaims, and the students all leave disappointed.

To Gretchen, a self-proclaimed geek, it all makes sense. “What fifth-grader would want to hang out with kindergarteners?” she asks, referencing the gang’s earlier reminiscing about all the things Chad taught them when they first started school. The next day, though, Vince isn’t convinced, even as Gretchen doubles down with, “Take it from someone who knows.”

At dinner that night, it all starts to click, though, as Chad regales the table with tales of his “really neat” biology class and the aforementioned mousepads story. Vince has a breakdown, crying, “It’s true! It’s true!” and that’s when things start to get a little weird for me.

See, Chad hasn’t been hiding any of this. The sign on his bedroom door says “Chad’s room: Earthlings keep out!” He sleeps in a racecar bed, upon which he’s playing 3-D chess. And, well, his whole look.

“You’re a geek,” Vince tells his brother, thinking he’s telling Chad something he doesn’t already know.

“Yeah, so?” Chad replies.

Weirdly, the thing that sells it for Vince is that he always thought his brother was cool because he listened to CDs. But Chad explains they’re “geek CDs: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sondheim, Gilbert and Sullivan.”

“Sorry, Vince, but I am what I am,” Chad says. “And the fact is, I’m a geek.” And then he logs into a chatroom he’s in with his friends.

Look, okay, part of it is weird that Vince didn’t notice that Chad was who he was sooner, especially when the stereotypes are in your face like that (and one of your best friends also fits those stereotypes to a T). But even if we haven’t all had the experience of checking in on a much older kid later in life, we’ve all grown up ourselves. In kindergarten, the fifth graders were impossibly tall, and therefore impossibly cool. In third grade, I knew someone who had a sister in high school. But as I reached those ages, I didn’t feel impossibly cool, or old, or anything. I knew myself a little better — I knew that I liked hanging out with the band kids, even though that wasn’t “cool” — but I wasn’t trying to be anything to younger kids. I was content having grown into myself (as much as any angsty high schooler can).

What really drives this point home is the end, where a bully that Vince got to stop bothering some younger kids earlier in the episode shows up with his big brother, who’s out to teach Vince a lesson. Chad shows up and threatens this kid...with not helping him with his math homework anymore, after which the other big kid immediately backs down.

“Just because I’m a geek doesn’t mean I’m not a cool geek,” Chad says. Because isn’t the real reward being confident in who you are — or, in this case, confident in who your older brother is?

Takeaway: What do we think of the name “Chad” these days? I think this was how I always pictured “Chad” as a kid, perhaps because of this episode and perhaps because I didn’t know any other Chads. Now, um, that name is seen...quite differently, isn’t it? I greatly prefer this Chad.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

Let’s talk about the opening sequence

So this is coming in between the posts about S1E4 and S1E5, which means it’s late, but whatever. I figured I needed to refresh my memory on what these characters are about, at least a little bit, before revisiting how they’re portrayed when you first see them.

First, we’ve got TJ, who gives the mischief nod. I especially enjoy how Gretchen is just sort of starting into space, all *record scratch* *freeze frame* “You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation”-like. That might be more on-brand for her than her later introduction, which we’ll get to.

Next up is the one that I believe has thrown me off the most so far, as all of my mentions of Gus so far have been about how I’d always remembered him as dweeby, or meek, or whatever. Not that he isn’t that, but he’s also much more. (Episode 5 is another example of me being wrong, but, um...we’ll get there.)

Because, look at him. He blows a bubble, it pops, and he’s covered in gum. It’s, um...was this planned for the mischief-making, or did it just happen? That ambiguity has proven costly for me in this endeavor.

Vince, though, I had pretty spot-on. He does sports. He doesn’t seem to have a personality otherwise (yet). Which...you know. We’re all on the same page here. Okay.

Back to TJ, who’s...dealing cards? To a bunch of bored and/or scared-looking kids? Is this a metaphor for how he deals out the troublemaking every episode? Again, fine. It’s fine.

Spinelli’s is spot-on as well, but not in the same way Vince’s is. Her introduction has depth beyond “I’m the one Black main character and I do sports.” I mean, still in a shallow-ish way — like, “I’m a girl and I’m not afraid to beat up a boy who crosses me” — but it’s certainly better than “I’m a literal stereotype because this is the ‘90s and that’s just how things happened a lot of the time in TV shows like this.”

Okay, Gretchen. Nerd. She’s great for comic relief, but here, yeah, this is a picture right out of an inclusive (because girl) brochure for a summer camp for suburban kids. Or a stock photo. Or a stock photo in an inclusive brochure for a summer camp for suburban kids.

And Mikey? Man, I wish they’d done better by Mikey here. It’s like, we get it, he’s fat, and a not-so-small part of his character is that he’s very food-motivated. But he’s also a big reader, big into poetry, a singer(!) (though that’s not immediately known, I guess). Have him reading a book at least, damn.

Maybe someday I’ll draw up (not literally, can’t draw!) an alternate Recess opening that better encapsulates who these characters are. But until then...on to the next post!

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E4: First Name Ashley/To Finster With Love

Had a brief internal crisis about whether to just end this blog after “First Name Ashley,” since, you know. Fortunately, I’ve decided to keep going, because this is one of my favorite episodes of the series.

First Name Ashley

This episode was so important to me as a tomboy who hated “girly” things in a big way. Formal dresses? Absolutely not. Pink anything? Throw it out. Wearing my hair down? Never. My name ending in a feminine suffix? Disappointing!

It got to the point where I had so embraced my anti-femininity that others began to embrace it too, except they used it to hurt me. In middle school, my friend told me that claiming my participation on “Gender Bender Day” didn’t count, because I “always dress like a guy.” That same friend took me shopping for “girl clothes” a year later, and when I wore them and was inevitably made fun of for leaving my (and everyone else’s) comfort zone, she said nothing. I once spent two hours straightening my hair in high school and posted a photo on MySpace, and the very first comment was from a girl who said my hair “looked like a wig.” I deleted the photo and didn’t straighten my hair again for five or six years. Anytime I tried to leave the box I’d put myself in, someone tried to force me back into it. Controlling my own narrative felt out of the question.

Now, I was seven years old when this episode came out, still figuring out my relationship with femininity and masculinity. But even through those moments in middle school and high school, I thought about Spinelli.

The thing about Spinelli is that she doesn’t hate being an Ashley — her great-aunt Ashley was the first woman to win the Iditarod, after all. She just hates what being an Ashley means at this school. Here, being an Ashley is a sign of status, and it means being initiated into the Ashleys (per the playground constitution section on cliques), a group of girly-girls who gossip and watch My Fuzzy Unicorn and play with dolls.

And that’s the part she hates. The Ashleys (and the school at large, thanks to Randall the snitch spilling her secret) have ripped Spinelli out of her comfort zone, not to mention taken her pride in her name, and put her into the impossibly limited sphere of being an Ashley.

That’s why it’s such a smart move that instead of having Spinelli change her name, the gang decides to rescue her from the Ashleys’ clutches by changing their names to Ashley, too. Hustler Kid hooks them up with fake library cards, school IDs, and social security cards with “Ashley” written on them, and Ashley S. proudly invites them to join. As soon as the OG Ashleys are overwhelmed by the presence of so many Ashleys, TJ offers them a deal: let Spinelli go, and they’ll all go.

There’s so much power in Spinelli getting to keep her name and do with it what she wants! She’s now living in full defiance of the expectations of the playground, and it’s now because of her name — not in spite of it.

In this way, TJ wraps it all up so succinctly: “There’s a lot of Ashleys out there, but there’s only one Spinelli.”

Takeaway: *annoying kid in class voice* Less a takeaway, more a comment. Gus says “it’s just a name” when Spinelli is lamenting her secret getting out. The kid with the most drama surrounding his name so far (episode 1: gets his name taken from him; episode 3: is jinxed until someone says his name and is given a new nickname in the process) has the least to say about this? Come on, writers.

To Finster With Love

A nice contrast to the kissing episode. This time, it’s adults!

So as usual, the gang is goofing off at recess — today, TJ and Mikey are racing down the hill in garbage cans. Unfortunately, their fun is interrupted when Miss Finster (tipped off by Randall, naturally) stops TJ’s garbage can in its tracks. She’s just about ready to take him to the principal’s office, when all of a sudden...

New character alert! It’s Hank, the janitor, who arrives with the immortal words, “Trash receptacles are made for trash, not for little boys to ride in.” And Miss Finster has the BIGGEST crush on him.

Unsurprisingly, Mikey is the only one who notices that love is in the air. The rest of the gang recognizes that she “turns nice” whenever he’s around, but can’t quite figure out why. Gus offers the explanation that it’s just professional courtesy, but no, it’s love, Mikey says — “like Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver!” (Hi, this episode came out the year Arnold fathered a child with his and Maria’s housekeeper, though that didn’t become common knowledge until almost 15 years later.)

Anyway, once this particular nugget is out in the open, TJ decides to take full advantage of the situation. He tests the waters by insulting Miss Finster repeatedly, but she’s too immobilized with love to realize. “Too bad he’s not around all the time,” Spinelli says of Hank, which gives TJ another idea: what if Hank was around all the time?

Mikey protests, saying they’re messing with people’s feelings, and worse, messing with fate, but TJ isn’t having it. The gang goes to the library and comes out with a couple of boxes of romantic music. “They’re called records, or albums, depending on your generational affiliation,” Gretchen explains when Spinelli asks what's in the boxes.

The gang lures Miss Finster and Hank to the cafeteria as what seems to be an impossibly long recess continues, and they play the music (“Do you hear music?” “Whenever I look at you.” — an iconic exchange).

Things are going so well between them, in fact, that the school is, well, falling apart without Miss Finster there to rein things in. TJ tries his garbage can racing again, but some older kids steal the hill they’re on, taunting, “What are you gonna do, cry to Finster?” The gang goes to see King Bob, but a kindergartener tells them a “big coup” has left them in charge of the playground.

It’s a somber scene as the gang breaks Miss Finster from her lovestruck stupor and shows her the chaos outside. After letting out a primal scream, she and Hank realize they must break up — their calling is the school, not each other, and they were letting their responsibilities get away from them.

In a beautiful “welcome back to reality,” TJ throws another insult Miss Finster’s way, and the gang rejoices as she reacts appropriately.

Takeaway: Roses are red / Violets are blue / “Do you hear music?” / “Whenever I look at you.”

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E3: Jinxed/Officer Mikey

Two very different episodes today, both about the power of friendship (and some other stuff). Let’s dive in.

Jinxed

Before I begin in earnest, I just have to say OH MY GOD that kid getting bitten by the lizard at the beginning and screaming “My nose!” over and over is one of my lifelong “line from media” earworms that I haven’t been able to pinpoint the source of until now!!!

Anyway. We start our adventure by learning about the “kids unwritten code of honor,” which Gus is expressing an interest in breaking because he’s unhappy he got a harmonica in a trade for his lizard. Reneging on the trade, the gang explains, would be a violation of the code, which includes things like never cutting in line and always holding your breath when you go past a cemetery. It’s very important, Gretchen explains, because it separates the kids from the adults.

Enter... THE ASHLEYS.

(L - R: Ashley A., Ashley T., Ashley Q., Ashley B.)

They’re bored, see, so when Ashley A. — who has just overheard Gus’ harmonica troubles — comes over with a scandalous idea, they just have to do it. It’s a dastardly idea: swipe Gus’ harmonica.

But it gets even darker than that when the girls establish that all Gus wants his his harmonica back, so when he says, “It’s my harmonica,” all four Ashleys join him on “harmonica,” and then say, “Jinx!”

(What are the rules around several people jinxing the same person at once? What if one of them calls “jinx” after that? Or if the target is the same, does that all cancel out? It’s probably in the code.)

So anyway, Gus can’t talk, which is a real shame. Because as I’ve learned in the first two recaps, Gus is the kind of kid who will absolutely stand up for himself, whether the gang is with him or not. To have him so viciously taken out of the game like this is a real tragedy.

He goes around the school trying to get someone, anyone, to unjinx him, trying hand motions and writing it out in the sand (which gets destroyed by an Ashley A.-orchestrated kindergartener stampede) before seeing a notebook on the steps and deciding to take it. Unfortunately, that notebook belongs to a sixth-grader, who immediately takes Gus to see King Bob.

King Bob punishes Gus for his insolence until Miss Finster arrives to break it up. When she can’t get Gus to talk, she takes him to Principal Prickly, who calls district headquarters.

Two cops show up along with a Freud-looking psychologist, who tries unsuccessfully to get Gus to talk. They don’t know his name — maybe they still think of him as New Kid — so it’s decided that the cops will take Gus “downtown” to make him talk.

As Gus is perp-walked out of the building (my god, this kid code thing runs deep), the gang overhears the Ashleys gleefully talking about what they’ve done and try to intercept their friend. But they can’t get through the masses that have gathered, all chanting “Quiet Boy, Quiet Boy, Quiet Boy.” It’s a really touching moment only disrupted by the fact that two district cops are taking a child out of school because he won’t talk oh my god

TJ, because that’s just who he is, notices the intercom is unmanned, and he delivers a succinct explanation to the student body: “Gus Griswald has been jinxed.”

“Well what do you know, another jinxed kid,” one cop says to the other. “That’s the third one this week!”

Gus is now known as “Jinx Boy,” his heroic act even more heroic now by his strict adherence to the code — which none of the kids now think might be a bad idea — and the episode ends as the gang jinxes the Ashleys on “Scandalous!”, which, yes.

“Scandalous” count: 5

Takeaway: It’s revealed that the district cops know about the kid code, so I wonder if school employees of a certain level know all about the kids’ secret rules on a deeper level than, say, Miss Finster and Principal Prickly (who, ironically, see the kids every day). Remember last episode, where the workers who came to tear down the jungle gym were sympathetic toward them even as Principal Prickly tried to paint their protest as a riot? There’s something afoot here!

Officer Mikey

Responsibility sucks.

A lot of kids grow up doing chores, sure; helping their parents around the house, cleaning their rooms, that kind of thing. The necessities. So the thing that really gets a kid amped, aside from, you know, kid stuff, is the opportunity to take on responsibility that they’ve chosen for themselves. Something like a sport or an instrument, as long as it hasn’t been forced upon them by a well-meaning parent (or less than well-meaning, because, boy, is there a spectrum there).

Until, well. The kid realizes that in order to get good at the sport or instrument, they have to practice it. And it might be fun, at first! A lot of kids push through the initial frustration of not being good at something right away, because once they’ve got the basics down, it can be fun. Practice isn’t a chore anymore, and going to games or recitals or auditions early in the morning now comes with the reward of seeing their hard work pay off. I, for one, went from thinking about quitting the flute in my first few months because I couldn’t get it to make a sound to getting a flute scholarship for college.

But it doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes, kids realize that the idea of doing the thing was the fun part, and doing the thing itself is, well, just another responsibility. And that’s not to say it isn’t worth a try, but this process can also function as an early reality check for kids who think that creating their own destiny will always result in a good outcome. (Is that too deep? Was I just a really sad kid? Is this greater conclusion anything bordering relatable?)

Anyway, responsibility? It sucks!

All this is to say, this episode is pretty straightforward (aside from Spinelli being called out by the captain as a “jaywalking punk anarchist,” a label I cannot believe she disputes later in the episode).

Mikey wants to be a school safety ranger, but the captain doesn’t want him. Upon learning that there’s a statute in the safety ranger handbook wherein the captain’s decision can be overridden if two safety rangers sponsor a new recruit, the gang sets out bribing a chain of people to get those two safety rangers to sponsor Mikey: the rangers get to sing the national anthem at the weekly flag raising ceremony, as long as the office aide gets to carry Ashley A.’s books for her, as long as Ashley A.’s little sister (who has stolen her big sister’s diary) gets to sit in King Bob’s throne, as long as King Bob gets a real friend (in this case, a puppy). So, Mikey becomes a safety ranger...until later on his first day, when he reveals he’s quit because he didn’t like getting up early and missing breakfast. Now, he wants to be a jet pilot.

The gang is less than impressed, and so am I, quite frankly. But I get it.

Takeaway: Kids gonna kid. Let them.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E2: The Experiment/The Great Jungle Gym Standoff

I can’t believe we’re already at the episode that gave us one of the best clickbait screenshots of all time. Let’s do this.

The Experiment

The gang are all discussing urban legends, and the seeds of conspiracy are planted right away as son-of-Army-guy Gus deflects Vince’s alien abduction story with one about a guy who only ate carrots! The indoctrination starts early, my friends.

Anyway, Butch appears, and he’s got a new look — a grey streak through his brown hair. Because Butch has seen something traumatic: his brother kissing a girl...AND LIKING IT.

“At least our stories are believable!” TJ says, but Butch has more.

“I’ve seen the future,” the weathered, world-weary 9-or-10-year-old says, “and the future is girls.”

It’s at this point that Gretchen and Spinelli both give us a big “EW” at the idea of girls kissing boys, and boys kissing girls. Gretchen says, “Surely there must be some mistake!”, and while that’s totally on-brand for an elementary school kid, it doesn’t not lend credence to my “Recess kids in high school” theorizing.

We learn that Mikey is a romantic, willing to entertain this idea because he thinks it’s sweet, and the guys in movies seem to like kissing! The rest of the kids are notably traumatized for the rest of the day, though.

Gretchen, being the great scientific mind she is, proposes an experiment: One boy and one girl should kiss, and then tell everyone else how they feel afterward. She says it has to be a boy and a girl from the gang, or else they won’t be able to trust the results. This, in case you’re not keeping track at home, means there’s a 50-50 chance of her being selected, since she and Spinelli are the only girls. Way to take one for the team in the name of scientific advancement!

Anyway, TJ and Spinelli are selected by the sacred procedure of drawing straws. “No decent kid will associate with me after this,” TJ whines, to which Gus says, “I will! Just...not at school or anything.” (How. HOW did I ever think that Gus was meek? LOOK AT HIM ROAST THE LEADER OF THE GROUP IN HIS VERY SECOND EPISODE.)

After an anxious night, TJ and Spinelli get all gussied up, ready to kiss. While they’d like to get it over with, they learn that their “friends” are actually TRAITORS who told just enough people that the entire school now knows what they’re up to. But the kiss happens anyway, and of course, it goes badly.

Takeaway: Gretchen deserves a Nobel Prize, even if she did tell a few of her colleagues in the Science Club that the kiss was going to take place. (So they could be impartial observers, though, surely!)

The Great Jungle Gym Standoff

PRINCIPAL PRICKLY SIGHTING!

If I remember correctly, the guy really redeems himself in “Recess: School’s Out.” But this is not that. On his introduction in this episode, he’s just a guy who really wants a cushy job at Spiro Agnew Middle School. (Yes, the guy who was so bad at being Nixon’s vice president that he resigned before Nixon. Oh my god, this show.)

“What brings you to the playground?” TJ asks.

“Your happiness, son,” says Principal Prickly.

It turns out Old Rusty, the school’s beloved jungle gym, is set to be torn down and replaced with a new play structure. The kids are all sad to hear this news, but when the bell rings for class, they all go back inside, ready to accept their fate.

TJ doesn’t, though, because TJ instead stages a sit-in on Old Rusty. “If that’s how I have to go,” he tells the workers who have arrived to demolish the jungle gym, “then so be it.” This raises the obvious question: How was “Recess” not the liberal propaganda we were warned about?!

Miss Finster arrives to be a killjoy, asking what “disgusting, perverted thing” TJ is doing now — remember our discussion of how you really have to go all-out to teach kids important lessons? Holy hell, does this work! — and soon enough, all the faculty are in a big meeting (it’s not recess, so I’m not sure where they found this time) discussing how to approach the situation.

Ms. Grotke, the fictional teacher to whom the rest of my real teachers and professors for the rest of my life would be compared, stands up for the students. In the same way that I hoped to have a teacher like her, I hope that kids who watched this show who are now teachers were inspired to be her, and not be like Miss Finster or Principal Prickly. What a good lesson that spans across the lifespan!

Miss Finster also worries that if they give the kids what they want, they’ll just keep asking for more, which totally doesn’t sound familiar at all.

The kids cycle through all the greatest protest hits — “We Shall Not Be Moved,” “Kumbaya,” and a rousing chant of “Heck no, we won’t go!”, which moves the administrators to call the kids’ parents. When they arrive, Principal Prickly attempts to control the narrative once more, telling the parents that the kids are “rioting.” He wants to intervene, but Miss Finster points out that the president of the PTA and the superintendent’s brother-in-law are both part of the protest — power talks, see.

Amazing! Just amazing how this 1997 children’s TV show has no current implications whatsoever.

Anyway, oops, all the parents are attached to Old Rusty, too, and they all join the kids in their protest. Unfortunately, they exceed the weight capacity, and Old Rusty tumbles down anyway.

Luckily, the workers — union guys, it’s said earlier in the episode — are willing to rebuild Old Rusty rather than replace it, and so they do. TJ christens the structure “New Rusty,” and all was well.

(There’s a scene at the very end that takes place in 2097 where a bunch of kids are playing on, presumably, New Rusty, and...man, maybe in 1997 that seemed all futuristic, but will there even be a world in 2097? That innocent closing scene sure hits different now.)

Takeaway: I don’t think Gus was in this episode. Perhaps it was written before he was written into the show. It’s too bad, really; he probably would have...been the only kid to counter-protest, maybe? Having no attachment to Old Rusty? Maybe it’s better he wasn’t around for this.

[ashleyspinelliburnbook]

S1E1: The Break In/The New Kid

I hit play on this episode before deciding how exactly I was going to structure these posts?? So let’s start with “episode by episode” and go from there, okay?

The Break In

I love how this episode wastes no time telling us three important facts about the following characters through the medium of reactions to the day’s lunch, “tomato surprise”:

TJ: down-to-earth, roll-with-the-punches kinda guy

Spinelli: eternal pessimist/love of my life

Gretchen: neeerrrrrd (/love of my life)

My hindsight characterization of TJ is that he would eventually join the alt-right, but he’s immediately staging a protest against bad school lunches here. Which...might still lead to some alt-right shenanigans down the line, but here, his tenacity is admirable.

TJ pretty much immediately gets caught breaking into the kitchen, and Miss Finster takes him onto the catwalk that is in the cafeteria for some reason and tells the students that she’s decided to punish him by...taking away recess?!

“Why doesn’t she just tear away his soul?” Mikey cries, and, like, yeah, that is the only proper reaction to the title of the show being in jeopardy three minutes into the first episode.

(Enter Randall, resident snitch. More on him later in these posts, I assume.)

Spinelli wants to bust TJ out of his recess detention, and while Gretchen informs her that any plan to do that has a 70% chance of failure, Mikey suggests going to ask the Guru Kid what’s up.

Aren’t these NPC equivalents the best?

Anyway, Guru Kid suggests getting help from other people to bust TJ out, and Gretchen’s calculations support this. The gang heads to the Diggers, Swinger Girl, and the infamous kindergarteners (Gretchen calls them “primitive breeds”) without much luck, before going to see King Bob, the king of the playground.

King Bob is just too busy, though. Sixth-graders are the top of the food chain, clinging to their last shred of relevancy before...shudder...junior high. (That’s what it’s called when it starts in seventh grade, right? We didn’t have that where I grew up, so I was always fascinated by this system.)

But in an inspiring moment, after King Bob refers to TJ as just “some dumb kid” unworthy of his time and help, the students rise up and declare that they are all just “some dumb kid.” I’m Spartacus! You know how that goes.

The kids bust in to get TJ, including nearly everyone who denied them help earlier, only to learn that TJ has...already escaped somehow, his jacket and hat left behind in the cafeteria where Miss Finster has held him hostage. The bell rings. After all that, recess is over.

Takeaway: These kids really know how to efficiently use the small time given to them for recess, the most important 15-20 (?) minutes of the day.

The New Kid

TJ is already up to something — in this case, getting the master key so Spinelli can move the clock forward to 10:00. Recess!

Unfortunately, a scary Army guy stops them before they can exit the classroom to deliver the new student...Gustav! It’s Gus, everyone! He’s been to 12 schools in the past 6 years! And he immediately almost snitches on the gang, because it’s actually only nine-something (he’s swiftly interrupted by TJ, who takes him out to an early recess).

Vince informs TJ that “you’re not supposed to talk to a kid like him for at least 48 hours. You know...a new kid.” Still, Gus is immediately overwhelmed by the kindness of the group and starts crying.

But King Bob appears, and Gus outs himself as the new kid. This means the previous new kid gets his name back, and there was much rejoicing. This also means Gus gets a new name bestowed onto him by the king: “The New Kid, and nothing else!”

This is how you use humor as a medium of teaching kids important lessons, right? Go totally over the top to make an obvious point? Gus is ostracized on the bus, isn’t picked for kickball (due to a statute in the playground constitution that bans new kids from participating), and the label by his toothbrush at home now says “New Kid.” The lesson is clear: Don’t make new kids feel like crap, and if anyone does...well, the episode provides that solution, too.

Mikey tries to make Gus feel better by reminding him of all the other people who got by just by without names: the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, the Unknown Soldier, and “the other four guys in the Jackson Five.” (“How would you feel if someone took away your name?” Mikey then asks an annoyed Spinelli, which is some awkward...foreshadowing? for a future episode that may or may not have also been the inspiration for this blog title.)

The gang puts together a plan to call Gus by his name, and they suddenly have a lot of pull with the rest of the school, because everyone does it! That is, until King Bob steps in. Gus has to stand up to him and gives an inspirational speech about being accepted, with this gem of a line: “Who graduated and made you king?”

Gus gets his name back, and there was much rejoicing.

Takeaway: I had thought that Gus’ overall characterization was that he was a scared little kid. But in his very first episode, he stands up to the damn King of the Playground! Must keep that in mind as I do more of these.