"Dear Mouth: What I have to say to you is a four letter word. Diet. Try it!" - Susan Lawrence as Carrie giving advice to an overweight letter-writer in "Dear Lovey Hart: I am Desperate"
After School Specials: 1974-76 DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
From the early 1970s through the 1990s, the ABC After School Special helped kids to come to terms with difficult topics like death, sex, drugs, and peer pressure. A decade earlier, these subjects would have been deemed inappropriate for young audiences, but the social and cultural upheaval of the late 1960s gave birth to a new openness, allowing ABC to broadcast stories dealing with themes that most parents even today would have difficulty broaching with their children. Running several times a season in a late afternoon timeslot, the series allowed kids to continue their education after returning home from school and before they went back to watching reruns of Alice and The Jeffersons.
Between 1974 and 1989, producer Martin Tahse was responsible for twenty-six of the specials. Adapted from critically acclaimed novels for young adults, his After School Special productions won eighteen Emmy awards in that fifteen year period. Now, eight of the specials have been released in two nostalgia-filled DVD sets: After School Specials: 1974-76 (which includes "The 18th Emergency" [AKA "Pssst! Hammerman's After You!"], "Summer of the Swans," "The Skating Rink," and "Dear Lovey Hart: I am Desperate") and After School Specials: 1976-77 (which includes "Francesca, Baby;" "Beat the Turtle Drum" [AKA "Very Good Friends"; "The Pinballs;" and "Trouble River").
All of these episodes are as dated as a pair of purple double knit elephant bells, which is definitely part of their appeal. So save your homework for later, feather your hair, and get ready for some After School fun!
"The 18th Emergency"
Based on the novel by Betsy Byars
Original air date: 1/16/74 as "Pssst! Hammerman's After You!"
Shrimpy sixth grader Benji "Mouse" Fawley (Christian Juttner) likes to label things with his handy piece o' chalk. The headboard of his bed is marked "SLEEP HERE" with an arrow pointing to the pillow. The door to his apartment building features a note explaining how to press the handle. Today, however, he chose to label the wrong thing: looking at a "Stages of Man" poster in the library, he couldn't resist writing "Marv Hammerman" under a picture of a Neanderthal man. Hammerman (Jim Sage), you see, is a sixth grade bully in the body of a ninth grade delinquent. Now Mouse is on the run from the rampaging Hammerman, slowing only long enough to talk to his fried Ezzie (Salem's Lot's Lance Kerwin), pet neighborhood pooch Garbage Dog, and imagine (via animated sequences) the solution to various far-fetched emergencies (Emergency #9, for example, is an unexpected charge by a water buffalo). After learning about honor and self-respect during a history lesson on King Arthur's knights and an encounter with a neighborhood stroke victim, Mouse decides that Emergency #18 - Marv Hammerman - must be met face-to-face. The moral, I suppose, is that we shouldn't make fun of others, but since the big bully merely gets his feelings hurt while wee Mouse gets a bloody nose, a black eye, and a sore tummy, it seems like a tough lesson to learn.
This surprisingly charming and imaginatively filmed comedy/drama often plays like a live-action Peanuts cartoon. The humor is gentle and soothing. The animated sequences have the look and feel of vintage Sesame Street shorts, except that they deal with grabbing a charging lion by the tongue rather than counting apples. At times, young Juttner looks like a long lost brother of the Olsen twins - cute and engaging, but alarmingly elfin. "Emergency" may be a bit too slow for kids weaned on video games and Pokeman cartoons, but nostalgic parents will love it. Look quickly for an appearance by Willie Aames.
Originally broadcast as "Psst! Hammerman's After You!," the DVD packaging refers to this special by the title of the book on which it is based: "The 18th Emergency." The credits, however, still employ the broadcast title.
"The Summer of the Swans"
Based on the Newbery Award-winning novel "Sara's Summer of the Swans" by Betsy Byars
Original air date: 10/2/74
Fourteen year-old Sara (Heather Totten) is having a bad summer. Sara feels as if she has become totally responsible for her younger brother, Charlie (Reed Diamond) since the death of their mother. Her father is never home. Her Aunt Willie (Priscilla Morrill, Edie Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) would rather watch Let's Make a Deal than attend Charlie's fifth birthday party. Even her blue argyle socks and orange sneakers bother her.although maybe that's understandable. She hates the way she looks, and refuses to accept it when Aunt Willie says that looks aren't important. She also doesn't realize that what's on the inside - her negativity, distrust, and snippiness - affects how people view her. When Charlie wanders away in the middle of the night, Sara teams up with schoolmate Joe (The Brady Bunch's Chris Knight) to find the little simpleton. As they search, Sara learns to be less self-centered and, thanks to Joe, to embrace her inner beauty.
This drama is very earnest and gyno-centric, showing young viewers that female ennui can easily be solved by accepting that you're ugly and finding a cute boyfriend. While it is interesting that the story centers on a character that is so unlikable, it leaves us without someone to root for. Still, it is sort of fun to laugh at Sara's wild mood swings and bargain basement teen angst. And it is to the credit of those who created "Summer." that when she finally blossoms into a swan, it is purely an interior change. Even with her new attitude, she remains an ugly duckling, with matted hair, hideous clothing, shiny braces, and an all around gawky demeanor.
Brady kid Eve Plumb also makes a cameo appearance as Sara's hubba hubba school acquaintance.
"The Skating Rink"
Based on the book by Mildred Lee
Original air date: 2/5/75
Scarred by the memory of watching his mother drown in a flood when he was only five years old, teenage Tuck Faraday (Stewart Petersen) lives a hardscrabble life on his family's declining farm. He is shy and insecure, shamed by a terrible stutter. Tuck even avoids riding the school bus because the other students call him stupid. While walking to and from school, he meets Pete (Jerry Dexter), a professional ice skater who was forced to give up the ice due to an injury. Pete is building a new ice rink, and Tuck is thrilled when he offers to give him free skating lessons. When The Ice Palace opens, Tuck impresses his family and friends with his grace and skill on the ice, finally able to express himself physically in a way he was never able to verbally.
For a drama from the '70s that features a stutterer and ice skating, "The Skating Rink" manages to avoid being a campy hoot. Banish any thoughts of Porky Pig donning a sequined jumpsuit and taking skating lessons from Liberace. Costarring Rance Howard and Devon Ericson, "Rink" is refreshing in its refusal to treat Tuck's skating as feminine in any way. Instead, he becomes a hero to his family and friends. Hokey and slow, yes, but its heart is in the right place. Sort of like The Waltons meets Ice Castles.
"Dear Lovey Hart: I am Desperate"
Based on the book by Ellen Conford
Original air date: 5/19/76
Skip (Meegan King) is the editor of the high school paper, The Lincoln Log. Circulation is down because the school's students don't think that the Log is hip enough, but Skip has an idea about how to boost readership: an advice-to-the-lovelorn column called "Dear Lovey Hart." He taps sophomore Carrie (Susan Lawrence) to be the column's writer - the only hitch is that she must keep her identity a secret. At first, Carrie enjoys her anonymous fame, but then her fellow students begin to take her supposedly light-hearted advice a bit too seriously. How seriously, you ask? One chick is hospitalized with diabetes when Lovey Hart suggests that she go on a diet. One of Carrie's best friends begins to act like a Neanderthal because Lovey Hart said he should act more forcefully around women or risk forever being thought of as an older brother. Her buzz thoroughly killed, Carrie begins to have second thoughts. Now that the column - and the paper - is a hit, however, Skip is reluctant to let Lovey Hart go. By the time her identity is revealed at the school carnival, Carrie's infamy leaves her needing advice herself.
Of the four episodes presented here, "Dear Lovey Hart" provides the biggest '70s nostalgia kick - hair feathered within an inch of its life, clothing made of supremely synthetic fabrics, and an all-around aura of grooviness. The show is meant to be a comedy, but the playing-to-the-cheap-seats acting style of several performers adds an unintended layer of humor. The lesson of "Dear Lovey Hart" seems to be that kids should mind their own business and simultaneously never seek the advice of others (instead finding the answers to life's problems within). Both of these morals, of course, go against everything ever presented in the other After School Specials. With this line of reasoning, Tuck would still be a lonely, misunderstood stutterer, Sara's brother would be dead (pecked to death by swans, probably), and Mouse would be hiding under his bed. Still, it is obvious that this episode is meant to be a comedic change of pace for the series, so we can cut it some slack. Plus, it is one of only two episodes included in the 1974-76 and 1976-77 releases not to feature dead parents or siblings.
'Lovey Hart"'s soundtrack includes several songs by Dobie "Drift Away" Gray. It was also successfully parodied in the "Ask Jerri" episode during the third season of Strangers with Candy.
These four episodes are appealing in their own special way, but be sure to check out our review of After School Specials: 1976-77. Several of the episodes in that collection are much campier than the earnest ones found here, and it features a truly heartbreaking episode starring Kristy McNichol.
The four episodes included in 1974-76 are divided onto two DVDs. The DVDs are housed in a single keepcase that includes DVD hubs on both interior surfaces. The cover of the keepcase is designed to resemble a red Mead Trapper Keeper folder. The keepcase slides into perhaps the most well-designed cardboard slipcase you'll ever see. The wedge-shaped slipcase simply and successfully mimics the design of Trapper Keepers, complete with a Velcro-fastened flap. It is impossible to adequately describe the clever design of this 3-D packaging. Just be prepared to laugh and shake your head with recognition when you see it in person for the first time. I've been looking at it all weekend and I'm still impressed.
After loading the DVD into a player, viewers are taken on a short CGI tour of a school. The clever menus feature a loose leaf paper design. Full motion images from the disc's episodes play on faux Polaroid snapshots taped to the "page." Viewers can choose to play the episodes or jump to one of four scenes. The segues between the various menus - involving pencils and erasers changing info on the screen - are extremely clever.
