"You can keep me from dancing right now, but someday I'm going to dance. So you'll just have to be ashamed of me and my little secret, afraid that someone will find out that I dance ballet, because I will. So you'll just have to live with it and what people think about it, same as me." - Stephen Austin in "A Special Gift"
After School Specials: 1979-80 DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
The majority of the episodes in After School Specials: 1978-79 are high quality dramas that are just as timely today as they were twenty-five years ago. The 1979-80 collection features a timeless classic, too. Its remaining three episodes, however, are filled with campy laughs. Pop some popcorn, feather your hair, and get ready for the fun!
"A Special Gift"
Based on the novel by Marcia L. Simon
Original air date: 10/24/79
Fourteen-year-old Peter Harris (Stephen Austin) is a valued member of his high school basketball team. Each Thursday night, he has to leave practice a little early in order to go to work at the local hardware store. At least that's what he tells the other guys. In actuality, he's heading off to nearby Los Angeles for ballet lessons. His father (Bill Sorrells) doesn't approve of Peter's hobby, declaring to Mrs. Harris (Ellen's Alice Hirson) that "boys play basketball, girls dance - that's just the way things are." He warns Peter to give up dancing lest anyone in their small town discover his secret, believing that "everything they do up in Los Angeles isn't always acceptable in a small community like Wheaton." When Peter lands the starring role in the Los Angeles Ballet's production of The Nutcracker, he is forced to choose between dance and basketball. When some members of the basketball team inadvertently find out about his other extracurricular activity, they call him a pansy and complain that the team doesn't "need guys who wear skirts." Will Peter follow his heart, or will he cave in to pressure from his dad and the team?
You might think that an After School Special about a basketball player who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer would be screamingly funny. You'd be wrong. Of all the episodes released thus far, this one ranks near the top in terms of quality. Aside from a few unsettling similarities to the Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (cutie-pie Austin even looks like Hermie, the elf who longs to be a dentist despite public scorn), "A Special Gift" is a perceptive look at double standards and society's disapproval of anyone who does not fit its rigid standards of normality. Sweet and eye-opening, this is a special that should be required viewing for school-age children.and for less tolerant adults.
"The Gold Test"
Based on the novel by Michael Bonadies
Original air date: 2/13/80 as "The Heartbreak Winner"
Each day at the crack of dawn, Maggie (Melissa Sherman) has her mom drive her to the local ice rink. Maggie is an expert skater, and she spends each moment of her spare time practicing in anticipation of making the Olympic team. During competition at the sectionals, however, the young skater takes a fall. She ends up with a concussion, but still manages to take first place. At the hospital, a young doctor (Philip Charles MacKenzie) makes a startling discovery. Maggie has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory disease affecting the joints. Her Olympic hopes ruined, Maggie settles into despair. When she meets a young boy who was hit by a car at age five and has been confined to a bed or wheelchair ever since, she receives the inspiration she needs to rebuild her life.
"The Gold Test" wins the award for the most unintentionally funny special in this collection. The kid who provides inspiration to Maggie is perhaps the most annoying character ever committed to film. He is a jive-talking, Pollyanna-ish walking minstrel show who makes Rerun on What's Happening!! look positively Shakespearean. He's inspirational, all right - most viewers will be inspired to kill him. The scenes depicting Maggie's illness are downright amusing, such as the one in which she proclaims that she hates being a cripple.and then falls down. "The Gold Test" is quite entertaining.just not in the way its makers would have hoped.
After School Specials often seem to be obsessed with the death or divorce of parents. With this latest wave of releases, it is equally obsessed with athletic competition. In addition to "A Special Gift" and "The Gold Test," the 1978-79 collection featured "It's a Mile From Here to Glory," in which a shy young man finds his place in the world after he joins the track team, only to be mowed down by a speeding Pinto; and "Thank You, Jackie Robinson," in which a kid learns about race relations through his love of the Dodger great. In 1974-76's "The Skating Rink," a stutterer learns to express himself through ice skating. In 1976-77's "Beat the Turtle Drum" (AKA "Very Good Friends"), a little girl's birthday wish comes true when her family allows her to rent a pony for the week. Of course, she immediately falls out of a tree and dies, which kind of kills the joy of the whole pony thing. It's good to be athletic.unless it kills you or maims you for life.
"What Are Friends For?"
Based on the novel by Mildred Ames
Original air date: 3/19/80
Amy Warner (Melora Hardin) has just moved to California with her newly-divorced mother. On her very first day in her new apartment, Amy meets Michelle Mudd (Dana Hill). Michelle's parents are also divorced, and the two quickly become friends. At first, Michelle seems well-adjusted to her parents' divorce, but Amy soon discovers that her new pal is a little.odd. First she fills her room with hundreds of lit candles, chants Tibetan mantras, and forces Amy to vow that they will always be friends. Always. She appears to be in perfect health, but claims to contract a different exotic disease every day. Expensive items that Michelle admired in local stores mysteriously turn up in a shoebox under her bed. By the time Amy catches Michelle wearing Kiss makeup and a hooded robe while performing satanic rituals involving a porcelain doll and a bathtub filled with bloody water, it becomes clear that maybe her friend really hasn't come to terms with her parents' divorce. Can Amy help Michelle without being sacrificed on an altar with a knife carved from a ram's horn?
"What Are Friends For?" may well be the most psychotic After School Special ever filmed. Divorce doesn't just inflict an emotional blow on kids, it turns them into Satan-worshiping kleptomania-prone hypochondriacs. With its spooky musical score and its mounting sense of impending doom, this particular special is like a horror movie with all of the bloody bits cut out. This is a true oddity where the "horrors" of divorce are made all too literal.
"Schoolboy Father"
Based on the novel "He's My Baby Now" by Jeannette Eyerly
Original air date: 10/15/80
Sixteen-year-old Charles Elderberry (The West Wing's Rob Lowe) had fun when he worked as a camp counselor this past summer. A lot of fun - especially with fellow counselor Daisy (Diff'rent Strokes' Dana Plato). Back in the real world, Charles' mom notices a birth announcement in the paper for "Miss Daisy Dallenger." A quick (and obvious) count of his fingers leads Charles to conclude that it has indeed been nine months since they made sweet, sweet love. He visits the hospital, but Daisy is less than welcoming - she throws things, yells, and informs Chuck that their baby is being put up for adoption because her pregnancy prevented her from being invited to a bunch of cool parties. Daisy is so unhinged that one of the other moms in the ward tunes "Greensleeves" onto her radio in order to drown out her complaints. Charles is crushed. He's counted all of the baby's fingers (he really likes to count fingers) and deems the boy "superior." Charles decides that he wants to raise the baby. He never knew his father, and he wants to make sure that his son has one. Charles' mom doesn't think this is a good idea, arguing that he isn't mature enough to raise a child. She still agrees that they will take trial custody of the baby, which Charles wants to name Wolf, a name that pretty much verifies Charles' immaturity. Things work out well at first ("He's neat, huh?"), but the teen soon realizes that having a baby is a drag. You have to heat its formula, check to see if it's wet, and read books like Raising Kids O.K. The final straw occurs when he is forced to miss a party thrown by Lucy (The Facts of Life's Nancy McKeon), the hottie who sits behind him in English. Soon, Wolf has been returned to the social worker (Wonder Woman's Beatrice Colen), and Charles is once again free to attend all the keggers he wants to.but with a tear in his eye.
"Schoolboy Father" is so funny that it would be easy to believe it is actually meant to be a comedy. It seems to be against teens having sex without "taking precautions," but sends slightly mixed messages by having Rob Lowe run around half naked for much of the hour. Sex can have bad consequences, kids, but look at this hot teen! Much of the dialogue is howlingly funny ("I'm just great. Except they're giving my baby away!"). This goofy charmer is not to be missed.
Rob Lowe fans should keep an eye out for the next wave of After School Specials, due to be released in Spring 2005. These final two sets will feature "A Matter of Time" (starring Lowe), "First Step" (starring St. Elsewhere's Bonnie Bartlett), "Tough Girl," "The Night Swimmers" (starring The Wonder Years' Jason Hervey), "Two Loves for Jenny," "Did You Hear What Happened to Andrea?" (starring L.A. Law's Michelle Greene), "Ace Hits the Big Time" (starring Ally McBeal's Jame LeGros), and "Face at the Edge of the World" (starring The Cosby Show's Malcolm Jamal Warner).
The four episodes included in 1979-80 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 textbook covered in brown kraft paper. The 1974-76 and 1976-77 releases were designed to resemble Trapper Keepers. For this latest wave of releases, the keepcase slides into a cardboard slipcase that mimics a pair of green, metallic school lockers. The overall design isn't as clever as that of the Trapper Keeper boxes, but the packaging still looks terrific.
The menus are the same as those found in the previous releases. After loading the DVD into a player, viewers are taken on a short CGI tour of a school. The 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.
