Lucebumps

A few years ago, several hours into a drive from Burlington, VT to Wilmington, NC, I had one of those half-crazy ideas that form when you are alone in the car for extended periods of time, which despite actually being sort of insane, at the time seem really, really spectacular. My idea was to write a blog in which every week I would read a Goosebumps novel and then write an entirely serious synopsis and review of the novel. I would call my creation: Lucebumps. For pretty much all of the Mid-Atlantic states I thought this was the greatest idea anyone had ever thought of. It would be so funny! And weird! And nostalgic! Have you noticed that everyone is really into nostalgia these days? You can’t get through an entire day without somehow encountering Kelly Kapowski somewhere. But by the time I got to North Carolina, I was pretty much over it. Did I really want to waste time reading a Goosebumps novel every week? Have you ever gone back and actually read a Goosebumps novel? They don’t exactly hold up. So I ended up scrapping the idea. But recently someone told me that someone else actually did this. I found the blog and read a few entries, and it’s pretty good and the blog itself seems fairly successful. Damn it. That could have been me! Lucebumps could have taken the world by storm. Or at least the world of mock reviews of 90s children’s book series by storm.  Has anyone done the Babysitter’s Club? Boxcar Children? Sweet Valley High? Is there anything left for me? Anything besides Babysitter’s Club Little Sister. Even as a kid I thought those books were boring and repetitive. I get it, your parents are divorced, you have two pairs of glasses, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn to use contractions, Karen.

So when Netflix recently put out the first season of the Goosebumps TV show, I thought: perfect. Now I can just spend twenty minutes watching an episode instead of the hour to hour and a half it would take me to read one of the books. Plus the TV show is Canadian which, if I’ve learned anything from watching hours and hours of Degrassi in high school, it’s definitely better than American TV. I watched the show as a kid, but I don’t remember much except the opening sequence when RL Stine’s briefcase falls open and all his papers go everywhere, because as a kid it really stressed me out. I always wished they would then show another clip of him successfully gathering and reorganizing the papers neatly into his briefcase, but I guess that wasn’t really the vibe they were going for. Anyway, now for your reading pleasure here is my totally serious review of Goosebumps Season 1 Episode 6: The Phantom of the Auditorium: 

As soon as the episode begins, I already feel a tremor of terror as the contents of R L Stine’s briefcase float over a sleepy seaside town and turn into the iconic Goosebumps “G”. The G floats over the town’s mysterious happenings: most notably an innocuous-looking golden retriever who, when he turns to look at the camera, displays glowing yellow eyes that look as though they have been created in MS Paint. Convincing, no, but terrifying, yes. If I came home to find my cat’s eyes had been replaced by two dimensionless blobs of floating yellow pixels, I would definitely be freaked out.

The episode begins with quick flashes of smoke, lightening, and the image of a man in a cape and white mask twirling in front of the camera. I think the twirling man is supposed to be menacing, but I just can’t seem to get panicked about anyone who is twirling. Don’t worry though, because a few seconds later the eyes of a blonde girl pop open and we realize it was all a dream. Classic Goosebumps.

After the main character, Brooke, wakes up from her frightening dream of a phantom doing what seems to be an amateur ballet routine, she heads off to play rehearsal. Her school is performing a play called “The Phantom” which has a plot that when described, seems shockingly close to the famous Broadway musical “The Phantom of the Opera” but for copyright purposes is not “The Phantom of the Opera.” Brooke has been cast as the lead, Esmeralda. Her friend Corey congratulates her for this, but another girl, Tina, rolls her eyes. Corey accuses Tina of being jealous that she was only cast as an understudy. But Tina assures him that she would never want to be cast as the lead role in this play because this play is cursed.  She explains how her grandfather told her that many years ago the school attempted to put it on, but on opening night the boy who was supposed to play the phantom disappeared and was never seen again. Tina is obviously not happy that the school has chosen to do that play again, what with its sordid history. So why did you sign up to be in the play, Tina? Just to drone on about curses? While everyone is busy ignoring Tina’s story, suddenly a gloved hand reaches out from behind the curtain a grabs Brooke around the neck! The music swells and the scene cuts off and if this was 1994, you better believe there would have been a 1-2 minutes commercial break where you were just sweating wondering what was going to happen to Brooke. But luckily this is 2013 and I only had to wait one second to find out it was Zeke, The floppy haired class clown who is playing the Phantom. Poor Corey, I thought he was going to be the love interest, but obviously he can’t compete with a boy with hair this floppy in the early 90s.

Out comes the quirky acting teacher (we know she is quirky because she’s wearing a flowy neck scarf) who tells everyone to stop fooling around. But then Corey starts literally sinking into the floor. She ignores this as she continues to explain the plot of the production, even though Corey is waving his arms frantically as him and his chair are being lowered into the stage. She finally notices and explains that that must be the old trapdoor they build for the first production of the Phantom, which nobody has used or apparently even noticed, for the last 70 years. After saving Corey she dismisses play rehearsal, even though nobody has actually done anything yet besides complain about curses and get sucked into the stage.

After rehearsal Brooke and Zeke decide to check out that old trapdoor, despite the fact that their quirky drama teacher has strictly warned them against it. The pair get on the trapdoor, flip the switch and are taken down to what seems to be the school’s basement, but Zeke tells Brooke it’s “Definitely not the basement” because apparently either Brooke isn’t the first girl Zeke has convinced to go with him down to the basement, or he is unusually gifted at calculating depth. With that mop of Backstreet Boy hair, I’m guessing the former.

In the sub-basement, Zeke and Brooke run into Emile, a shadowy figure who tells them he is the night janitor. He tells the kids to go back upstairs and warns them never to take the trapdoor elevator down here again, it’s too dangerous. The warning is meant to be creepy, but is actually entirely logical because it looks like the most dangerous elevator you could possibly ride on, it’s just a hydraulic lift with no guardrail that goes through a hole in the floor two stories down.

As the week progresses, strange things start happening.  Brooke finds a skull mask hanging in her locker with a note that says “STAY AWAY ESMERELDA.” A new boy named Brian nobody has ever met before joins the cast like two days before opening night. A phantom swings down during rehearsal and assaults Brooke and drops a giant door on stage painted with the words “STAY AWAY ESMERELDA” in blood, which everyone seems pretty unconcerned about and blames on Zeke, which gets him kicked out of the play after they find a bucket of red paint in his locker. The kids ask the janitor to ask Emile, the night janitor, to come clean up the mess and the janitor informs them there is no night janitor. Outraged at the injustice of being kicked out of play, and intent of figuring out the identity of Emile, Brooke, Zeke and the random new boy who just showed up in the play two days before opening night but nobody seems suspicious about, go back to the sub-basement to investigate. There they find Emile, dressed all in his phantom costume who chases them around the basement, in the process they discover his secret lair, he’s been living in the sub-basement! They escape through the trapdoor and call the police, who inform them that Emile is just a homeless man whose been living in the school’s basement illegally and he must have been pulling all those pranks to make sure nobody found out he lived down there. NO BIG DEAL. He just tried to drop a door on a 14-year old girl and has been living illegally in the basement of a middle school dressed in a phantom costume for apparently no reason, since it turns out he has no affiliation with the play whatsoever. School and the play continue as usual, despite, of course, Tina, who is still harking on about the “curse.” Seriously, Tina, it’s getting old. Go join the volleyball team or something.

On opening night, Brooke delivers her lines on stage and waits for Zeke to appear as the phantom, but on the trapdoor we see that Zeke has been knocked out and a new phantom has taken his place. But who is it?! The new phantom appears on stage and gives an impromptu speech about how he has waited 70 years to play this part, but he never got his chance until this very night. Breaking the fourth wall much, man? Get it together, this is a professional middle school production of The Phantom. (Not affiliated with the hit Broadway musical Phantom of the Opera.) Then the phantom disappears through the trapdoor and as the curtain goes down, everyone rushes to Zeke to congratulate him on his amazing performance. Zeke is undeterred by the fact that he did not actually perform, and accepts their compliments with gratitude, failing to explain to anyone that an unknown masked man knocked him out and did the performance for him. But whatever, why ruin his chances to get more ladies into the sub-basement now that he knows there’s a homeless man’s empty bedroom set down there.

As the cast exits the stage, Brooke notices something on the floor. She picks up an old yearbook from the year 1927 and flips to a page advertising for a production of The Phantom. Under the list of cast members there a picture of the new kid, Brian. He was supposed to play the phantom.

This episode was actually a lot more complicated than I thought it would be and I have to admit, I wasn’t sure it would be Brian the whole time. I suspected Tina. I’m still confused why a homeless man living in the basement of a middle school went through the trouble of leaving cryptic Phantom-related warnings to keep the kids from going in the sub-basement, why he framed Zeke for his crime, or why he owned a full, adult-sized phantom costume, but maybe it’s asking too much for the plot to actually make sense. Some of the episodes I saw before took themselves a little less seriously and I wish this episode had the same types of tongue-in-cheek jokes aimed at an older set of viewers. (For example in one of the episodes Matt and I watched yesterday a teenage girl yelled at her dad when he accused her of going through a phase that “life is a phase I’m going through!”) It’s been fun, even though taking extensive notes on an episode of Goosebumps is probably the silliest thing I’ve done to date. Next week maybe I’ll tackle the Babysitter’s Club Movie.