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Original Air Date: December 7, 1987 Review completed January 14, 2008 "Unhooking Henry" In the middle of taking out the garbage, Punky finds an empty sleeping pill bottle. Henry reveals that he's been taking sleeping pills for six months because of his back sprain. Of course, a back sprain doesn't take six months to heal, so he's developed a habit. He resolves to quit, but is re-filling the prescription within the night. Punky and Betty attempt to help him sleep naturally to cure the habit, but more than 48 sleepless hours pass before Henry makes one last desparate effort to get medicated. Punky has to physically hold him from the pills, and this snaps Henry out of it long enough to flush the supply. He then goes to sleep. After the viewing, it's even more bizarre. This is actually a pretty funny episode, a bit heavy on the barbs, but otherwise full of some charmingly low-rent jokes and yet more entries from the "TV makes fun of itself" file. Yet the climax is exactly as you would have pictured it from reading a description, full of high drama and "think of the children!". It's an odd mix; sort of like (to steal one of my favourite analogies) Count Chocula with Tang. Ugh, speaking of illegal substances, that combo should be. I use the opening scene as an illustration of the overall feel enough that you and I probably make jokes about it by now. Or maybe I do. While calling myself a tool. Never mind that, watch Punky and Cherie playing Monopoly. It allows for so many of the familiar joke setups that I'm surprised the writing team didn't go for it before. I never would have guessed it as a springboard for jokes about place names. And a '"reed - ding" vs. "red - ding"' joke? See, again the old workhorse produces for me: It's kind of funny and comes from a really unexpected direction. The pace proves to be extremely fast here, which I suppose stands to reason since they have a full TV movie's worth of drama to fit into a 22-minute episode. I checked the timer at Henry's first promise to quit and got 7:00, which surprised the heck out of me when you consider that the count starts from the beginning of the theme song. The first confirmation that the humour is going to be of odd bent is the scene where Henry desparately orders a refill by all-night discount drug store. I'm not quite sure what to make of building a scene out of laughing at an addict's desparation, nor why I ended up laughing at it so hard. It seems so wrong on a show that I've held up for its stronger moral values time and again. I make it sound like I'm outraged here; I'm not even really offended, just noting that it's pretty wrong, objectively speaking. For all of the complaining about Brandon's pet tricks in a couple of episodes, I liked him opening the door. Dogs can actually do that, and it's even built in a way where Henry is totally thinking, "Well, he can drink tea and cheat at poker, why not?" Also in this small claims paragraph: The show has subtitles in this episode showing the time, and thank heavens, they are in the show's trademark font. No to the squarish yellow stuff. I think I just killed most of my discussion of the rising action as Henry tries to sleep au natruel. I already talked about "it just seems wrong" and "I laughed 'til I larfed". They even hit old standbys along the way, like Punky talking about alien invaders and really bad TV (a fishing show from Lapland, I think). They even worked in probably the biggest "What?!?!" moment of the series when Henry gets twin dart guns out of seemingly nowhere to shoot the TV Seriously, we're watching an old man struggling to overcome his addiction to sleeping pills, and we're laughing at it almost the whole time. This may be the biggest "Only In The 80s" note I'll ever write. That would be the reason that I want to talk about the ending so much. It all goes pretty much like you'd expect, what with all of the escalating anger and the "do it for the kids" mentality. They snap Henry out of it with just some hot feelings and some pushing, putting to rest my original fears that it would happen with an (implied?) open-handed shot or something equally revolting. I am incredibly relieved for that. Even with the violence kept thankfully in check, though, the ending is still incredibly jarring given the preceeding eighteen minutes. I expected some high drama, but not after being so completely disarmed by the laughs in the rest of the story arc. It's either absolutely shameless or expert writing psychology, and I'm still not 100% sure where to classify it. I can't bring myself to actually invoke the specter of "bad taste", but it's lingering around the corner, leaving a presence. You know, like a bad metaphor. I still could have wrote the ending before cueing up the disc. I predicted more or less everything before even closing the DVD drive on my player. Henry's rising frenzy as he moves into the kitchen, Punky's protests about how he's come too far to blow it, the struggle for the pill bottle, the high point of Henry trying to physically go through his daughter to get the pills, the dewy-eyed speech about fearing for his life. This was as much predictable as the rest of the episode was a surprise. I've read a lot of high-minded writers that posit that the most persistant cliches are true to life. Maybe so, but I'm still taking marks off when I can call the action easier than a Hulk Hogan match. With that we end the episode, and indeed the season. Yes, Season Three is finished with this post, and with Season Four a month and a half from even being released, let alone being at my door or being watched. Until then, we can say that it's been an interesting ride. And what's more, from what I can see, there's even more interesting things to come. Assuming that the order on the Reviews page is accurate, we'll start again with "The Nun's Story" in two months. Whatever that's about. I thought it was that camp one. We'll see I guess. - Jimmy Vibes |