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Original Air Date: November 9, 1987 Review completed July 1, 2007 "Open Door, Broken Heart, Part 2" After an attempt to get the police to look for Brandon, and a teen con artist with a bad fake, Henry brings up the point that Brandon may not be found. However, one of the flyers that Cherie was handing out ends up in the hands of Joey's mother. Joey doesn't want to give Brandon up, but Brandon takes matters into his own paws and runs them right back to Punky. As a consolation, Punky exchanges Brandon for the puppy she was about to get. The first sign that we're going to have an abbreviated experience is the "Last time..." sequence. The last part ran so long that there wasn't time for a preview, but this episode can provide a two-minute recap including several whole scenes that were essentially comedy breaks. Remember, these episodes are already running on three to four minutes less than their earlier counterparts, so in the time it took to watch the recap, you could have fit the entire "Wake up, Brandon!" segment from "I Love You Brandon". Well, if it's going to be quick, at least it'll be kind of funny. I got a good chuckle out of Punky and the crew trying to convince a familiar-looking police officer to put out an APB for what he thinks is a fat, hairy midget. (Don't ask me why the police officer looks familiar. He's played by Charles Levin, who has never appeared on Punky before or since and whom I don't remember from elsewhere.) And don't argue me on the intentional misdirection point, either. If nothing else, the slaps Punky gets when she slips out a quote about Brandon's eight-inch tongue shows that they know what they're doing. What I do wish they wouldn't do, though, is keep giving Margaux off-topic jokes to throw everywhere. It's not just this episode, but here's as good a place as any to talk about it. It gets kind of annoying when you have a sketch building up steam and little filler jokes keep hitting against its momentum like pigeons off of the glass in a Windex commercial. Side note over. Also, the scene does at least very well reinforce Punky's desire to get her dog back. See, the humour can have lots to do with the plot. It's not like things have to stop to make a joke. It's going to take me a while to get used to Punky calling Henry "dad" as well. The humour continues on... hey, we've got a lot of jokes in the middle of one of the main cast being missing. Er... okay, a black Lab with bath mats posing as a golden retriever is funny. You lie if you say that isn't funny. It's certainly a funny visual. It also makes for one nasty kid. "I've got his kids"? Where was this guy when Fenster Hall needed some villains? Things finally get serious soon after this, but unfortunately for my word count, I think I had my pet death write-up in "I Love You Brandon". So, um, yeah. Hah, remember my king-sized introduction from the first part about not really being into Brandon's personified antics? Now Brandon's playing chess. Oh well, at least it sets up an explanation for Brandon getting where he is. It also sets up an annoying thing that isn't the writers' fault. I remember, back before getting the sets, reading a lot about the "stoned studio audience". After seeing the scene where Joey tries to deny Brandon's true ownership, I'm beginning to see why this is written. We have a dramatic scene happening here where Joey is planning to willingly and knowingly kidnap another person's dog, and the audience keeps laughing at the stupidest times. Yeah, there's jokes in there (I laughed at Brandon fetching the mismatched shoes. Wanna fight about it?), but the laughs came up at points like Joey yelling about how Brandon was HIS dog. Eh, audience? I trashed the pacing up in my intro; here's my time to back that up. The timer's at the 13:00 mark at this point. Right now, it looks like Joey's going to be forced to call Punky, leading to a quick surprise reconciliation like the end of "Changes". Except, he slams down the phone (in his room?) and storms off. Fair enough if it leads somewhere, but the running time after this will be taking up mostly by a tub o' slime, reaching the same conclusion teased above. What the heck, episode? Thinking about it, I'd bet that you could do some not-so-impactful cutting and get the meat of the plot into one episode the size of Part One. Okay, okay, I'll give one thing. If we lost the tub o' slime spot, we'd miss the look of glee on Henry's face when he finds a worthy sliming target. More to the point is the puppy, and wow, they found a pretty good likeness for puppy Brandon. And wow, puppy Brandon is a bitey little thing. Watch him nip away all over Soleil during her traitor speech, including a painful-looking and -sounding one right in the face when she's talking nose-to-nose with the little guy. True to form, the little guy even keeps gnawing away at the basket in the background after Punky declines the replacement. Strangely enough, he's much calmer later on. Must've been sedated a bit. (Even if you don't have the Season Three set yet (?), you can still watch this scene: The puppy speech is on Shout Factory's site as their one and only teaser clip for Season Three.) Do you remember that big production I made last time about exposing a very big plothole this time around. Well, I found out the hard way I just made a very big fool out of myself on that one. I forgot about that quick line at the end we Joey says the move to California didn't go through. If that line hadn't snuck in, then the next episode would be really funny since it also features Joey and his dad (sort of), supposedly in California. Except that I screwed it up. I'll take my round of applause now. (And hah, I only wish I could publish my original note on that, but given that I try to keep these reviews to about a PG-level, that won't fly.) The next episode featuring Joey shouldn't be such a surprise, though, since a really big stab is made at the end to plant some reasons to feature Joey again. Y'know, like the end of Fenster Hall. And like the end of Fenster Hall, it wasn't terribly successful, since Joey appears in exactly one other episode. I think the last half of Punky Brewster is cursed, given that they can't seem to keep any regular characters outside of the established ones. And Joey wouldn't have been too bad, as you'll see the next time I can focus on Spud. And it's... over? That was it? Four scenes yielding talking points, for a total of way too little episode. I guess keeping the whole focus on search efforts may have got repetitive, but the off-topic tangents got kind of annoying. What's here is good enough, but going by the lofty standards of Season One, it's very stretched. Maybe I'm just getting jaded by writing 48 of these things as well, though. It's fine. It's not great, but it's fine. - Jimmy Vibes |