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HENRY: What?! I'll be right there! PUNKY: Henry? What's the matter? HENRY: That fire truck was for me, my studio's on fire! HENRY: Everything is ruined. Everything. PUNKY: [voiceover] With the studio gone, we ran out of money. Henry worried so much he got a bleeding ulcer. CHILLINGS: I am herewith removing Punky Brewster from your custody. PUNKY: Where will I live? HENRY: Fenster Hall. PUNKY: NO! PUNKY: [voiceover] While I was at Fenster, Mr. Chillings decided to place me with new foster parents. MR. CHILLINGS: Mr. and Mrs. Buckworth, this is Punky Brewster. PUNKY: [voiceover] The Buckworths are really rich! PUNKY: I guess... I just... I don't know how to act! I...I... PUNKY: [voiceover] Two weeks later, Henry finally got home from the hospital. HENRY: I miss you, Punky. PUNKY: [voiceover] I dropped in during my riding lesson. PUNKY: Oh, Henry! [They embrace.] PUNKY: All I want is to come back home with you! HENRY: That settles it! If I have to go to the Supreme Court, I'll get you back! And when I do, nothing, NOTHING will ever come between us! [Although the horse Punky forgot about coming in might do something...] And now the conclusion of "Changes"... |
 Season 2 Original Air Date: March 2, 1986 Review completed March 12, 2007 "Changes, Part 5" After Foxfire the horse breaks up their tender moment, Henry and Punky confirm that they want to be together. Henry appeals to the bank for a loan to restart the studio in the Midtown Mall, and Oliver Green, remembering Punky, works around a lack of credit to seal the deal. Punky's attempts to get out of her situation are less successful, not only because of Tiffany Buckworth's possessive nature, but her planned move to the French Riviera. However, Jules isn't stomaching the move so well either, and twenty years of living under a control freak cause him to launch a spirited defense of Punky's rights and leaving with her. Henry and Punky are re-united thanks to Jules' newfound dignity, and the new studio opens up without a hitch. Yes, the big, big, very big, ouch-I-totally-roasted-it-over-an-open-fire problem with the last episode was fixed. This may have something to do with less Chillings and Buckworths in favour of Henry and old guest stars, but let's just take what we get here. Besides, you can't really fault the dialogue writers in an episode where a woman gets told off like a dog. That is getting obscenely ahead of myself, though. Let's start with the live horse moment I refused to beat earlier. The fact that they forgot about the horse after it was dismissed, and thus having it free to corner Betty, was funny. Henry smirking like a mean little boy about it was even funnier, and one nice indicator that he's back in full form. That, if you've been reading all of these reviews (or are really good at pretending to), is something you know to be one of those signs that the writers and actors are really trying. Good sign indeed. Speaking of good signs, how about seeing the one for the Midtown Mall again? Gah, that was the least subtle transition ever, but still, you get it. Even more interesting is seeing Oliver Green again, from waaay back in "Dog Day Afternoon". (Which I nearly typoed as "Dog Gay Afternoon", which would have been funny as heck if I had missed it.) Even more interesting is that he's the most seamless of the references to prior episodes in the whole story arc. It takes a long while to actually reference the events of that episode, but the spirit of it is preserved throughout his segment. Case in point: The sequence about Henry's credit history. It's a riff on Punky's questions on non-sensical banking practices from back then, but not the same questions and not phrased closely to be a "remember when" joke. Very good stuff. But wait, there's more! There's a very nice joke setup in there, where Betty and Cherie make a brick-to-the-head sell of the studio to Oliver without Henry's knowledge or good humour. The good part: You totally think that Henry set it up, then it turns out he didn't, and then you see Mike come in at the end of the scene to do his pre-planned run-in. It's a little bit more involved than most of the jokes on this show, and it works better too. All good things must come to an end, and here the scene changes to the Buckworths. After seeing a scene that works so well, it's a bit of a letdown to see Tiffany Buckworth on screen, somehow not knowing what parks and yo-yos are and threatening to destroy toys in a way that reminds you of watching a wrestling show from the mid-70s. The parts featuring the Buckworths in both episodes have been pretty awful, but I'm more convinced of it being the writers wanting a cartoon villain than Joan Welles being a bad actress. After all, during the slightly better written parts later on about Tiffany's desire for a European palace, Welles is quite successful in making Tiffany seem almost human. I realize that part of the stiffness is intentional to make us hate her. I don't care, because it's sucky writing and it's not like villains can't have small good points. Jules comes across as somewhat better, probably due entirely to the writing being on his side. Still, he gets one nice run of dialogue as he tells Tiffany off, and some of the material written for this part goes back to the series tradition of hiding some potentially dirty humour in heated statements about marriage. (That face Punky makes during Jules' comments about his wedding night is one big indicator that the adults should read a little more into that line than can be said outright.) Also, I have a dirty confession of my own; I grinned like a fool when Jules told Tiffany to "Sit!" Yes, I am a tool for kid's shows. If you didn't get that by now, quit while you're ahead. Meanwhile, Punky... er, I just realized she that really doesn't have a whole lot to do with her own situation here. Actually, unlike "Punky Finds A Home, Part 3", this is a good thing. Rather than solve the problem of how to stage a non-Punky scene by having Punky make wisecracks every so often, she's just pretty much written out altogether. I know it's not usually a good thing to write your main character out of a scene she's physically in, but when the solution to her problem doesn't really have anything that she can do, I'm alright with that. Also, she got to show off her pogo stick skills earlier, so it's not like she's the wallpaper here. Okay, I fudged that last line a bit to fit the "pogo stick" bullet point in somewhere. Happy? The dramatization of the return sequence is just right. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that Henry had no way of shooting some of those photos in the book, but that is small potatoes. The big starch root in this sequence is Punky officially being back with Henry, complete with a Jules Buckworth escort. Oh, and Brandon. Remember Brandon, that dog Punky had? Since he's been gone for at least two weeks, no wonder you may not remember. The first view of Warnimont's Studio is kind of interesting. It's interesting because it's pretty different from the old building, but doesn't really inspire much response in me. On the other hand, I got to laugh as we see the neon sign light up, occasionally over top of people walking by the scene. (As in, it's superimposed on the video footage and there's a few goofs in disguising that.) Before I comment on the end of the episode, how about the Chillings epilogue? There's something odd about pairing up the best realized villain of the story arc with the worst realized one. It's particularly weird when they have him reinforce his not-quite-so-villainy right up until the end. That said, it works in a strange way; the dominator and the dominated. And I'm going to stop there before all of the subtext gets blown to heck. Now the end of the episode... oh man, you better believe it's cheesy. Rather than cheesy and boring like some of the episodes in the last half of Season Two, it's cheesy in exactly the way you'd expect from the series, and that takes the punch out. Also, it's one heck of a feel-good moment with five episodes' build behind it and a possible end-of-series after it. Given what can be pieced together about the original production history of the series, it's very hard to believe that this wasn't meant to be the send-off for Punky Brewster if that's the way things were going to go. And the final note of the original leg of Punky Brewster? It's only fitting that a series that used so many montage sequences in its early life nearly ended with one. The awkward Buckworth writing aside, this was a good end to the longest story arc Punky would ever do. Had that very short moment of limbo came to be permanent, I'd say that this episode would have gone down as a fitting end to the show. As it would turn out, we're not even done the season, and I think they may have made more episodes after that. I'm not sure, I'll have to look that up. - Jimmy Vibes |