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Original Air Date: October 13, 1985 Review completed July 2, 2006 "Tap Your Troubles Away" After Margaux shows off her prowess with tap shoes (and the rest of the gang reveals that they deciding to go next week), Punky decides to prove everyone wrong. Cherie and Allan take to it fairly well, but Punky proves to have the rhythm of a tree stump. After Henry convinces her not to quit, it still looks like she would make a part in the big show being performed. Henry, however, proves to be an old fan of Janet's, and he manages to arrange for Punky to get some part: bouncing around stage in a rainbow-coloured bumblebee costume, thanks to some wirework. Oh, wait, she never did learn to tap-dance. Okay then, through Punky we learn that there are some things that you just can't do, but dwelling on them and ignoring what you can do is a destructive path on the road of life. Except she got a part through no work on her own part, with it being mostly a consolation prize thanks to Henry and his sweet-talking. So, what did we learn today? ... Jack-all, huh? Crap. The whole episode even starts on a "Huh?" note, as Punky makes a joke about air traffic controllers where the look on her face shows that she has no idea what she's talking about. That makes two of us, as I'm not sure at all what was going on with American air traffic controllers in 1985. Heck, that was probably one dated joke in syndication; it looks positively ancient on the DVDs. And not in the unintentionally funny "What's a VCR" way either. On the other side of the coin, Ami Foster looked like she really did know how to dance. For having about three minutes of face time in the episode, she comes across as knowing what she's doing. As a bonus, she doesn't look so much like a total snob when she's trying to point out Punky's ryhthm deficiencies. I'd almost say she was being gentle, but that can't be. Can it? Jersey Janet... hmm, I don't know what to make of her. She's not a bad stereotype (not bad enough for me to crack jokes about, anyway), but she doesn't really have any kind of character range either. If I had to sum her up, I'd say, "take Little Vicky from The Simpsons, but make her a lot less bitter". Or, "water Shirley Temple down a few notches". She gets one running joke about honouring the tap greats of old (for about a second and a half) and a pretty patient attitude all things considered. The tap-dancing scenes are just kind of there. Hey, I'm a drummer, and I know that setting down rhythms with your feet is a lot harder than it looks, but this is dull stuff to watch. I've been sitting here for five minutes of episode time, jotting down random jokes in another Notepad window and wondering when I'd get to fill more space in this thing. Okay, Allan having his shoes on the wrong feet was mildly funny, but I wanted to open up a Paint window and start pasting together ghastly abominations of parts from LazyTown puppets rather than watch the tap scenes with the usual "pause-jot-pause-jot" routine. Actually, bringing up The Simpsons back in the intro gives me a really good idea of why this episode comes across as so dull. When Springfield's crew tackled the subject matter, they broadened it to a parody of the entertainment of the Shirley Temple era and even made a less-than-realistic subplot. Why would they do that? Because tap dancing, presented by itself, is dull dull dull dull dull dull yawn. There's nothing else here; no in-jokes, no major humour, no subplot, not even a moral worth more than a pile of pish. Hmm, maybe I'll stop a little short of "no humour": Henry throwing an obvious felon out of his shop with a chorus of "Out!"'s and then accidentally throwing a final "Out!" at a dejected Punky was kind of funny. (I'll spare the bad joke about at least something in the episode having good timing.) And at least Punky comes up with a pretty good excuse to try and get out of the tap class, though someone ought to tell the dancers of the world about that one. (Hey, I didn't directly mention Juliann...oh, ^&*#!) Also, I'll bring up the talk between Henry and Punky here, mostly because it's the best part of the episode. Which, all in all, should give you a good idea of how high a regard I hold for this one, since such a scene is usually a transition or an ending in episodes I like much more. It's not meant to be a highlight. Yet, this one part has the strongest moral viewpoint of the episode, and as you can see by the preceeding paragraph, the best humour. Heck, I even squeezed a quote out of this part. Now, if the episode had wrapped up with Henry and Punky dealing with the less-than-stellar tap performance, that'd be one thing, and I'd remember this one quite a bit more kindly. However, we still have another eight minutes to go. Going down? Seriously, what the heck kind of message is the rest of the episode supposed to send?! The message up until this point has been either, "hard work can overcome" or, "not everyone can be good at everything". As soon as Henry starts, though, it moves more towards, "a sweet-talking parent will get you everywhere". What the heck is that?! And if you think that the plan all along wsa to have a rhythm-impaired kid up on the wires, then check out Jersey's face while the performance is happening. The writers can't even be bothered to bluff their way through it; they put it out clear as day! Fo-ul! Now, after all of this damage, you may be wondering why I'm not offering to pull my review of "Just Say No" and re-word it to give "Tap Your Troubles Away" the title of my least favourite episode. I still think that "Just Say No" squarely deserves its bottom spot for bringing freakin' politics into a super-sweet kid's show, but I'll be darned if it isn't a close race. Boring boring boring dull what's the moral about again? dull. I'll not be spinning this particular half-hour for a long while, not unless there's one in the closing two seasons where Henry decides to have The Talk and pulls out diagrams to carry on a full 20 minutes longer than he should. This is just a lousy episode, folks. - Jimmy Vibes HENRY: "How did it go?" [Punky proceeds to rip off her tap shoes, throw them down the trash chute, and borrows Henry's watering can to chase them down with some H2O.] PUNKY: [down the chute] "And stay away from my feet!" |