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Original Air Date: November 2, 1987 Review completed April 23, 2007 "Punky's Big Story" The fifth-grade class is putting together a newspaper, and Punky has landed the prestigous job of "human interest editor". However, it proves to be a very boring position, especially when the best she can come up with is a story on the janitor. After being introduced to tabloid magazines, however, she finds a new lease on writer's life as a gossip columnist. Too bad that she ends up getting most of the school mad at her for divulging their secrets. Punky decides to go with the straight and boring in the end, if only to keep herself out of trouble. I was idly wondering what they would do with the class and teacher now that there's no real aim towards having the teacher as a regular. The answer unfortunately leans towards Jay Sherman's usual angle: "It stinks." The class now represents such a wide cross-section that it's laughable: it goes all the way from super-nerd to a kid in a wheelchair. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but all together, it looks like... well, like they're filling a quota. The teacher isn't much better. Her gimmick is getting the class to finish her sentences. That wasn't even funny when John Cena used it as a device to get people to shout curse words, so having a G-rated version of the gag being used around half-a-dozen times just gets annoying. She doesn't seem to do anything else either, so there's not much reason to pay attention during these scenes. And she also doesn't have her sentence lead up to the logical conclusion either. Yay, let's have a boring joke that makes no sense. Woo. One thing I wish had gotten a bit more time was the scene spoofing the tabloids. That's exactly the time where the show's usual blue-collar humour starts kicking in, and it's the kind of thing this episode really could have used. I suppose you could make the argument that Punky's gossip-oriented stories extended that joke, but that's a load of bull and we both know it. Punky usually loves to take a stiff swing at anything that isn't lower-class working families, so it's weird that they don't take more of a shot here. Unfortunately, it seems to be the start of a trend for the series, but that's one for another day. Off-topic: Ah, that's where "Margaux a la Mode" is from. I totally missed that on the forums. I'm willing to bet that there's currently a post awaiting me calling me out something fierce on that. How in the heck did I qualify for this job anyway? I should probably talk about Spud a little bit, as this is his first appearance as more than a bit part. He's not helping, except in the scenes where he's talking about sports. I can't figure that one out either, as there's not much sports talk here. He just seems more of the type to talk a lot about sports, play a lot of sports, grow up to be a sportswriter after he blows out his knee, and develop an alcohol problem. I realize that this review so far has been a slam job, but let me relate something; it's the eighteen-minute mark and I am bored out of my tree(house). I have just spend the day clearing out an ant infestation, and I'm somehow less thrilled with watching this episode now than before the hive-minded buggers came to town. So if I sound a little negative, it may be because I am. And this is after the edits. And I typed that way too soon, because here's the end sequence at the nineteen-minute mark. That is one of the drawbacks to going through the first two seasons before trying out Season Three: The syndicated episodes feel so short. Twenty-one minutes and we're done; I've seen the timer finish at 26-28 minutes after some of Punky's earlier adventures. Not that I'm complaining at this point, but some stories later will feel rushed because of this time frame. I am aware that this is a really short review, but how much can I say? There's only so many times that I detail how some element or another is just hitting average: I had paragraphs about the music, the secondary actors, and a few other things before I gave them a mercy deletion. Writing tip #1: If you can't stand to read it, don't leave it in your review. What I'm getting at is that while there's not much in this episode to strike one as being actively bad, pretty much everything is at that level of mediocre that tricks you into thinking it's bad until you think about it. I wouldn't call this a terrible episode because I can quickly think of ten others I'd like less, but I'm not excited to watch this one again. It's very average, very middle-of-the-road, very what? Yeah. Boring. - Jimmy Vibes |