#my sister and i are starting our rewatch at season 3 and gonna loop back

[casualavocados]

Kanan will be proud of you. Yeah? Well, he has a funny way of showing it, considering he's never around.

STAR WARS: REBELS 3.01 • Steps Into Shadow (Part 1)

[tobiasmasonpark]

Goosebumps Season 1 Episode 3: The Cuckooclock of Doom!

WARNING: TODAY’S EPISODE CONTAINS A MONSTER WE ALL FEAR: EXISTENTIAL DREAD AND THE FLEETING SANDS OF TIME!

Source: http://www.indianruminations.com/contents/poems/time-raj-yura-patiala/

Source: https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/70264616        

This is Michael. As with Kat Merton in the previous episode, we don’t get to learn any personal details about Michael, except that he has a younger sister named Tara, who absolutely loves to torture him. We see this immediately, as the show begins with eerie music playing over a scene involving Michael investigating a creepy noise from the bushes. As Scream hasn’t been released yet, Michael doesn’t know that you should absolutely never investigate a strange noise when you’re in a horror setting. That’s where the monsters always are!

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/Tara_Webster            

Ladies and gentlemen, our monster for the episode.

Tara is genuinely awful, and not in that kid-sibling-is-annoying-and-won’t-stop-bothering-their-older-brother way. I have a younger brother—hell, I am a middle child, so I was also an annoying younger brother. I also know people with younger siblings. Younger siblings can be pains in the butt, sure. But Tara is genuinely evil. She goes out of her way to make Michael look like a jackass, just for the hell of it. Michael refers to her as Tara the Terrible—which, while it is by no means original, is an incredibly apt nickname.

I mean, alright; realistically all she does is pour ketchup on the dude, call him a krej—which is Jerk backwards, get it?—and she trips him at both of his twelfth birthday parties. But something is off about Tara. Look at those cold, unforgiving eyes. She is looking down at her older brother—and by extension, us all in the audience—with the utmost disgust. The innocent little girl look is merely a façade. Behind those brown eyes is a creature far more fearsome than Slappy; truly more menacing than the Horrors at Horror Land. The only reason the Goosebumps movie wasn’t as big a success as it could have been, is that Tara was never the big bad.

Seriously. The moment Tara appears on screen I felt an immediate dislike—and that’s something I’ve felt toward only one other character in a movie

Source: https://www.pottermore.com/features/how-dolores-umbridge-made-our-skin-crawl              

So, we get a flashback to three days earlier—Michael’s twelfth birthday party. All of his friends are there, including his love interest. I don’t recall her name, and I’m not gonna bother looking it up, because she is only there so that Tara can have a way to humiliate Michael.

The girl gifts Michael a CD, which Michael says he likes. But just like the monster she is, Tara calls Michael out on it, saying that he thought it was lame and threw out the CD the first time, but because he likes the girl he is willing to pretend to like this new gift. Michael’s mother calls him in to bring in the cake, which is odd to me. For every birthday my family has ever had for everyone, not once have we ever had to bring in our own birthday cake. I mean, damn, they didn’t even put candles on the thing. It’s just a cake that presumably lacks even Happy Birthday written in icing. 

Source: http://goosebumps.tumblr.com/post/132563277792/goosebumps-rewatch-s01e03-the-cuckoo-clock-of        

So, Michel comes in from the kitchen, holding his own nameless birthday cake in defeat, when Satan herself pulls a hilarious move and trips him. Michael falls head first into his own cake while his asshole friends all laugh at his misfortune.

We’re brought back to the present, when some moving men bring in a strange object concealed by tarp. Seems like Michael’s dad has purchased an antique cuckoo clock from a man named Anthony—who we later learn owns a store. In a scene that I think is mostly ripped off of A Christmas Story, we see that this is no ordinary cuckoo clock

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cuckoo_Clock_of_Doom/TV_episode    

Seriously. The mom looks at the thing with a mixture of confusion and dislike. The dad is all proud of the thing. The kid’s are immediately enthralled by it. There’s even a fucking lamp right next to it. Homage, or blatant rip off?—Says the man who has copy-pasted images from other sites and blogs onto Tumblr.

We learn that this is a magical clock—because that’s what Michael’s dad tells us. In what is the laziest and vaguest “legend” ever, we learn that “a strange old man built the clock over a hundred years ago, and he put a magical spell on it. But they say that whoever discovers the magic must beware.”

That is barely even a legend, sir. Just because it was built over a hundred years ago and believed to be magic, doesn’t mean the thing itself is, in fact, magic. I could show a twelve-year-old a pay phone today and say, “About a hundred years ago, people used to make magical calls for just 25 cents per minute,” but that doesn’t make it a legend. Who was this man? Was he evil, like that guy whose coffin was eventually used to make the Slappy Doll? Other than being made by an old man from a hundred years ago, what about the clock is magic? Sounds like he was just an old clockmaker from 1895—which, spoiler alert, was not a super magical time in history. But I guess a hundred years is a long time to a twelve-year-old.

But that’s not all that’s vague about this legendary cuckoo clock. Michael’s dad says that the shop owner, Anthony, told him that “there was something wrong with the clock, but he wouldn’t tell [Michael’s dad] what it is.”

That sounds like an awful way to sell somebody something. I mean, I’m no business man, but telling a customer “hey, the thing I am selling you doesn’t work 100% the way it should,” sounds like you’re just asking for the customer to start haggling over the price. I mean, I’m not crazy, right? Was Michael’s dad so genuinely impressed by the fact that it was supposedly a hundred-year-old, magical clock that he was willing to shrug off the store owner’s own admission that his product is shit?

Anyway, Michael’s father is super strict about the clock, forbidding both kids from going near it. Later, while getting a glass of milk or something, Michael overhears his sister getting scolded for touching the clock, and he gets the idea to frame Tara, to get back at her for the birthday incident.

Well, Michael sneaks out of bed, and snaps the neck of the cuckoo bird inside the clock. The next morning, Michael wakes up to find that he has time travelled back to his twelfth birthday—just three days ago.

Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/GroundhogDay    

The second movie this show/book rips off is Groundhog Day.

So, Michael relives his twelfth birthday party, almost verbatim. He is visibly shaken by the fact that he has travelled back through time but tries to prevent his ultimate humiliation. Unfortunately, Tara is basically Hitler and manages to trip Michael again. 

Source: http://goosebumps.tumblr.com/post/132563277792/goosebumps-rewatch-s01e03-the-cuckoo-clock-of        

This book brings up some pretty heavy topics. Are we all doomed to repeat our most humiliating mistakes, even when we are capable of literal time travel? Will Michael spend the rest of his life trying to break out of this Phil Connors loop, only to be tripped, yet again, and taste a mixture of blue frosting and his own tears? This is truly the most frightening Goosebumps story of all.

Michael tries to explain to his parents of his situation, but they understandably think he’s just ill. The next morning, he wakes up as a six-year-old and rips off a third movie:

Source: http://stine.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cuckoo_Clock_of_Doom_(TV_Episode)  

It’s not Christmas yet, Goosebumps! Stop trying to tell me it’s winter time!

So, Michael tries explaining his situation to his parents, but notices that there is no Tara. This is, in my opinion, only a good thing. Michael’s parent just assume that he has an imaginary friend. 

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/My_Best_Friend_Is_Invisible/TV_episode

Silly parents. That’s not for another two seasons.

Michael reasons that the cuckoo clock is behind everything. He goes down to see the clock but remembers that his dad won’t purchase the magical hundred year old clock for another six years. Well, as luck will have it, Michael is celebrating his sixth birthday today. While everyone is celebrating, Michael sneaks away to find Anthony’s antique shop.

There’s this super weird moment where real scary things nearly creep into Goosebumps, when an older gentleman calls Michael over—presumably just for a pleasant chat—but Michael’s dad finds him just in time.

Later that night, Michael tries Phil Connor’s plan of staying up passed midnight to break out of the time loop. Apparently, Michael fell asleep before watching the rest of Groundhog Day, however, because we all know that that doesn’t work. No big deal, because Michael, already suspecting that he won’t be alive the next day, has resigned himself to his fate of simply fading from existence.

The episode ends fading to black, as Michael regressed into sperm, thus ending his hellish existence.            

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/File:Cookooclock_09_one_again.jpg  

Just kidding. He wakes up as a baby and has shit himself. No, really.

Anyhow, Michael’s parents take him to Anthony’s antiques, where he finds the cuckoo clock. He walks over to it, the cuckoo pops out, something bumps up against the base of the clock that knocks off the number 88, Michael fixes the cuckoos twisted head so that it’s facing the right way, and he is literally thrust into the future.

Ecstatic to be twelve again, and out of the time loop, Michael discovers that the world is not the way he has left it.     

Source: https://katthemovies.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/in-for-a-scare-the-cuckoo-clock-of-doom-and-phantom-of-the-auditorium-goosebumps-review/

 The Shyamalan Twist:

So, it turns out that the number 88 that was knocked off was the year Tara was born—1988. This means that, for some reason, Tara was never born. Which is the happiest ending in a Goosebumps episode thus far.

Michael says that he’ll go back and fix it one day. But let’s be honest, Tara will never be born and Michael will have her blood on is hands forever.

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/Michael_Webster

I’m sure he’s really broken up about it.

Thoughts on the Twist:

I remember when I first saw this episode as a youngster. I was genuinely unsettled by the fact that Tara just gets erased from existence, and it’s left in the air whether Michael will go back and save her. As an adult I’m more sensible and know that the world is a whole lot better off without the little demon.

But here’s something I can’t stop thinking about. In the beginning of the episode—i.e. with Tara—Michael’s parents are really stern. The dad won’t let his kids go near a clock. Like, give it a day or two, they’ll stop being interested. Michael’s mom doesn’t seem to be the happiest person either.

Then we see Michael’s parents when he’s six—i.e. without Tara. They’re happier, they joke around with him. When Michael is a baby, they’re nearly unrecognizable. I wasn’t kidding, they were literally happier when Tara wasn’t around.

My theory: Tara was so freaking scary that the only reason the parents let her get away with tormenting her brother is because they’re afraid she’d turn on them. The constant stress of trying to appease the beast drains them every day. It’s no wonder they’re so cranky all the time.

Ah, you say. But what about when Tara is scolded for touching the clock? If he’s so scared, why’d he do that?

To which I respond with this: Michael is creeping down the stairs to frame Tara, and he steps on Tara’s doll, placed meticulously on the step. I think she left it there to either murder her father. That, or she was trying to kill Michael.

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/Tara_Webster            

Even people on the internet—the most sensible and logical of folk—are ready to write Tara off as a sociopath.

Most Existential Line:

When six-year-old Michael says, “Today I’m six tomorrow I might be nothing.”

Best Time-Related Pun:

When the creepy stranger says, “Hey kid, got the time?” Geddit, because time?

Worst Tara Moment:

When Michael is creeping down the stairs, he steps on Tara’s doll. It’s supposed to be a jump scare, but I think that it’s actually a murder attempt. Why else would she have placed it so strategically?

Final Thoughts:

The episode focuses more on establishing mood than anything. There isn’t any narration, which automatically puts it over the previous two episodes. The first scene we get Michael is unsettled by something, and the music makes sure we know it. There are some not-scary jump scares, and a dream sequence that involves Michael running away from the cuckoo clock with Tara’s face on it, but all of that is silly.

The scariest part of the show—aside from Tara—comes from the dread Michael feels when he starts travelling back in time against his will. I remember it being done better in the book—I recall Michael breaking down in tears early on, when his family is teasing him about his claims of being caught in a time warp—but it’s still genuinely creepy. Have you ever tried to let someone close to you know that something was making you uncomfortable, but they’re ready to write it off as you just being silly? That’s pretty relatable. Michael is also powerless to stop it for most of the episode. Near the end he just sort of gives up, fully expecting to be dead the next morning.

The actor playing Michael is pretty decent, all things considered. The parents are rather good at playing both stern discipline and happy new parents. Tara is awful, but the girl playing her is only like, six. On the flip side, you could say she did a great job by making her character’s awfulness so believable. Michael’s friends are also there and are the weakest performances in the film.

I liked it way more than The Girl Who Cried Monster, and only slightly more than It Came from Beneath the Sink, since the monster in this one was scarier, and the episode has a happy ending.

Source: http://goosebumps.wikia.com/wiki/File:Cookooclock_11_where_is_tara.jpg