Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Horror and humor function in many of the same ways.
Raising tension and subverting expectations work in the same way whether you’re selling
a good punchline or a jumpscare.
And while this topic might fall under the purview of the scholarly classwork of a college
course, few have attempted to convey this complex concept to a young audience.
In this week’s episode of Secret Screening, I return to Eerie Indiana to review and examine
one of the series best episodes.
So join me as I explore Episode 6, Just Say No To Fun.
Just Say No To Fun opens with Marshall and Simon rigging up a prank over their morning
breakfast.
Marshall’s father Edgar is the first to fall for the prank, but when Marshall’s
mother Marilyn is heard coming, they quickly reset.
She falls for it hook line and sinker, but before she can retaliate, they all hear Marshall’s
sister Syndi coming down for breakfast and reset the prank.
Of course she sets of the trap as well and is serenaded by the laughter of her family.
She vows revenge, but Marshall and Simon dash out to catch the bus for school.
Simon shows off his trick gum, but it’s mistakenly stolen by the class bully, Doug
Dimsdale.
One scalded tongue later, Dimsdale swings back and threatens to pound Marshall and Simon,
but is stopped by the nosey Mr Toegard.
Toegard doesn’t issue detentions though, he issues eye exams from the new school nurse.
An unexpected outcome, but better than an afternoon’s detention.
Inside however, they hear Dimsdale scream in pain as his eyes are examined, only to
discover that the newly bispecticaled bully has completely changed after the ordeal.
He’s now polite and even apologizes for how he acted before.
We’re then introduced to Nurse Nancy.
New to the school and favored by the strict teachers, her overly friendly demeanor seems
to be covering something.
She takes Simon next, and before Marshall can see what happens to him, Nurse Nancy shuts
the blinds.
Ten minutes later, Simon also comes out in glasses and completely changed!
Marshall senses something’s wrong and hides behind a door to avoid his appointment.
Later, at the World O’ Stuff, Marshall runs into Simon but he seems very different.
He’s uninterested in video games and seems far more interested in metric conversion tables.
Mr Radford points Simon to the newly hot item, and pulls Marshall aside to show him his his
Case of Fun.
A collection of pranks and practical jokes.
However Marshall is far too worried about Simon to shop.
That’s when Radford suggests a radical idea.
Something to shock the sense of humor back into his friend.
The Big *** of bad taste, the GM 20-20.
Marshall is willing to do anything it takes to get his friend back, so Radford breaks
the emergency glass and pulls Marshall through the complex safe cracking procedure to reveal
the funniest glasses known to man.
Marshall tries them on, and they instantly snap Simon out of his zombie-like well mannered
trance.
Later, back in Marshall’s attic, they investigate the glasses only to find that they’re just
ordinary plastic glasses without corrective lenses.
Setting up a camera for evidence, Simon recounts his ordeal.
When inside Nurse Nancy’s office, the complex machine she operates pins him down and through
a series of flashing images, subliminal messages, and a really cool stop motion effect, he is
forcibly brainwashed into behaving politely and mindlessly obeying authority.
With no other choice, Marshall redies his GM 20-20’s, a video camera, and a deprogrammed
Simon, they need to take down Nurse Nancy.
While Marshall deals with the fallout over being caught fighting at school and skipping
his eye exam, unbeknownst to everyone Simon is called by Nurse Nancy who triggers his
brainwashing.
The next day, Marshall is lead into school by his parents where an exuberant Mr Toegard
reveals that not only has Nurse Nancy hypnotized the whole school, but also the entire school
staff - and plans to expand her program of free eye care to all of Eerie Indiana!
With nowhere to run, Marshall enters Nurse Nancy’s office with Simon in tow.
He believes Simon is just pretending to be brainwashed, so he acts cool and collected.
Maybe a bit too cool and collected.
Once the Machine is activated, Simon struggles to get help from Simon, but Simon betrays
him.
Bringing Nurse Nancy his bag with the camera and GM 20-20s.
All seems lost, but as Nurse Nancy monologues about scourge of free will, Marshall is able
to grab the GM 20-20s and snap Simon out of his trance.
The two boys break free and Nurse Nancy asks where they’re going to go
However, they failed to realize they’re surrounded by a school of brainwashed soldiers
who block their path.
With nowhere else to turn, they use the GM 20-20s on Nurse Nancy, and force her into
the brainwashing chair.
They use the machine to reprogam her to not just have a sense of humor, but to uncontrollably
laugh all the way to the north pole.
Toegard and a fleet of students burst in just in time to be snapped out of their trance
by a hysterical Nurse Nancy who runs out of the school in a shower of everyone’s laughter.
Back in the attic, the boys bag and tag the zombie glasses and store them in the Eerie
Museum of Weird.
The show ends on what feels like a cutesy note, the brainwashed Nurse Nancy is stopped
at the Canadian border.
She’s still very much under the influence of the brainwashing and drives off in her
open topped convertible toward the North Pole against her will and possibly to her death
in the harsh environment.
Before I dig into the nuts and bolts of this episode I first want to take a quick moment
to highlight the work of some amazing people involved in the creation of this episode.
Previously I would award the Louan Gideon award for best guest star - but I feel a proper
breakdown of those involved is a much better way to champion the creators of this content.
Firstly I’d like to call attention to the fact that this script was written by Michael
R Perry.
Perry is better known for his producing nowadays, but he did write a sizable chunk of one of
my favorite shows no one talks about - American Gothic, as well as one other Eerie Indiana
episode.
The Losers.
That’s right, Perry swung in to write two of the best episodes of the series, and deserves
a lot of credit for why this episode.
It was directed by Bryan Spicer.
A man with more IMDB credits than I have dollars in the bank, he’s a directing machine that
has worked constantly in TV since nineteen ninety.
However, the reason I geek out over him is because he directed the pilot of The Adventures
of Brisco County Jr.
I will be talking about that show IN LENGTH in an upcoming episode of Secret Screening,
but for now, know that Spicer directed only one other episode of Eerie Indiana.
The Loyal Order of the Corn.
And if you’re a long time fan of Eerie Indiana, you’ll know why that deserves being called
out.
And if you’re new to the show, don’t worry.
I’ll cover it soon and you’ll learn why it’s so important.
While we’re talking about folks behind the camera, one of the reasons this episode looks
so good is the cinematography of DP Jonathan West, who also has a long history in TV, but
most notably was the DP on a large chunk of Star Trek the Next Generation and most of
Star Trek Deep Space Nine.
We also get some amazing guest performances in this episode.
Obviously Lucy Lee Flippin steals the show as Nurse Nancy.
A character who could have been overwhelmed by contextless supervillainy, but remains
grounded enough to still convey her motive.
It’s a trick shot that pays off for this deeper than expected character.
We also get another great showcase for Roy Brocksmith.
A character actor who was in literally everything from roughly nineteen eighty to two thousand.
He was in Scrooged, Total Recall, Arachnophobia, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Hudsucker
Proxy, The Golden Girls, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Star Trek: The
Next Generation, Seinfeld, Night Court - I could keep going all day, but this video is
already long enough.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that this is Roy Brocksmith.
He’s not “that guy”.
He passed away in two thousand one, and likely he’s in at least one of your favorite TV
shows or movies making it better.
Remember his name.
It’s Roy Brocksmith.
In my previous Eerie Indiana episodes, I neglected to shout out Archie Hahn as Mr Radford.
Long time Joe Dante fans know that he has a stable of actors that he loves to use in
everything he makes, and while I shouted out his nigh trademark use of *** Miller in The
Losers, Hahn is another of his favorite actors that he peppers into his work like Sam Raimi
does with Bruce Campbell.
Hahn is, in actuality, a highly gifted improv comedian, who got his start in the british
version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway.
He’s perhaps best known for his role in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach…
I guess.
But I’ll always remember him as the trolling security guard who gets punched in the face
by a gremlin in Gremlins 2.
So the reason Mr Radford was always in disguise and acting completely different in every episode
was a nod to his improv comedy work, and was likely designed to sell his talents.
However, the role was so diminished and his performance so subdued that for many - the
original Mr Radford never really clicked.
Which is a shame, because Hahn is a funny guy who always deserved more screen time.
Finally, Raffi DiBlasio and Todd Jeffries are in this as Doug Dimsdale and “mountie”
respectively.
I don’t really have much to say about their performances, but since they’re still working
now - thirty years later - I felt they’d get a kick out of being name dropped and shouted
out.
Keep getting that work, guys!
What makes this episode so great is that it’s basically A Clockwork Orange for kids.
I’m not saying that Marshall is as evil as Alex DeLarge, but Just Say No To Fun plays
with the exact same moral grey area of a Clockwork Orange.
It showcases that absolute order and civility is just as bad as absolute chaos and depravity,
and how inhumane it is to forcibly alter the way people think to affect change in their
behavior for the betterment of society.
The teachers wanted better test scores and less fighting, but what they got was mindless
obedience at the cost of their own free will.
A lofty concept for something framed as a kids show.
It also very closely subverts the 50’s dream of the cloistered suburban utopia.
An concept that embraced conforming to a sanitized starkly puritan idea of normalcy to maintain
peace and order.
I’ve talked about this before in my Eerie Indiana overview, but this episode very clearly
hits the same notes found in the pilot episode.
A nineties rebuke and deconstruction of the norms lauded and pillarized by the Baby Boomers.
As I said in the beginning, Just Say No To Fun is cleverly an analysis of the duality
of Horror and Humor.
How the two intertwine and play by the same rules.
Take the first scene for instance.
The whole section is filmed, scored, and paced like a horror film.
But punctuated with a laugh.
And they do the same thing three times in a row.
Each time a different surprise, but as you can see - the jump scare is never in focus.
Only the laughing family is.
What this scene incredibly showcases is that laughter is an appropriate response to fear.
That tension is just as important to humor as it is to horror.
And that being surprised is not something you need to overreact or lash out for.
And in this landscape of boringly similar horror movies and games that rely only on
jump scares and deafening soundtracks to get their desensitized audiences to react, an
episode like this is a great way to showcase to anyone at any age that more should be demanded
from horror and humor.
That there’s a craft to both of these artforms, and that usually those who are incredibly
skilled in one are usually incredibly skilled in the other.
Thanks for watching.
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Eerie Indiana.
Mostly because I was just starting out with Secret Screening, and I didn’t want to lose
my new audience by leaning into a single show again.
I mean, before this I mostly talked about Gravity Falls - and I didn’t want to fall
into that trap again.
However, a few weeks back Joe Dante himself gave me a shoutout and linked to my episode
on The Losers, and I’m still blown away.
Dante is one of my absolute heroes, and being noticed meant a lot to me.
So pushing forward I’ll be jumping back into Eerie Indiana breakdowns twice a month.
That still gives me the freedom to talk about other stuff, while also covering the remaining
episodes in a timely fashion.
I have a lucky thirteen episodes left to cover, and I hope you stick around for the rest.
If you’re interested in Eerie Indiana, you can stream them all for free with an Amazon
Prime account, or you can pick up the season digitally for twenty bucks, and the DVD set
for thirty five - though I wouldn’t splurge on the disks.
There’s no bonus features, and there’s only like three episodes per disk.
No matter your choice, you’ll find a direct link to Just Say No To Fun and the whole series
in the description below!
Until next time, I’m Douglas MacKrell, and I’m asking you to share and like this video,
and subscribe to my channel.
Because you’ll always have a ticket for my next Secret Screening!