Christine (host): As you may have guessed this week’s show is about drugs. Except we can’t really make it about drugs or we’d get taken off the air. ‘You can’t do that on television.’ Anyway. The idea that anyone would want to push a custard pie in their own face is just about as stupid as the idea that anyone would want to harm their bodies with dangereous and additive drugs, I mean custard pies. Sure they’re kinda fun, but I don’t need them. I mean I’m not addicted to them or anything! Excuse me.
[Walks off stage to a table of custard pies]
You don’t have to follow me with that camera. I finished the introduction.
Can’t a girl get any pies in privacy….any privacy for pies? I don’t need them…
[In walk 3 other cast members (Kevin, Mike, and Angie). Their faces are covered with custard pie remnants.]
Kevin: Listen man, you gotta spat pies sometime.
Christine: No, Kevin, I don’t gotta do nothing.
Mike: It’s good for you man, gives you a nice sticky feeling on your face.
Angie: It’s not bad for you Christine. You won’t get addicted or anything.
[Kevin splats a pie in his face]
Christine: I just don’t understand the point. You spend all your money on pies. You mess yourself up. Your clothes…your school work suffers… You get so sticky you can’t even sleep at night.
Kevin: Listen sister, don’t knock it til you try it.
Christine: Well I’m not going to try it. I think you guys are all deporable.
[Christine walks off leaving the remaing 3 with the pies on the table]
Mike: Waste not. Want not.
[The rest remain and continue to splat pies in their faces repeatedly.]

And so the rest of the show had the kids splatting pies in their faces, pie dealers…etc…
It was good. Splatting pies was the best emphimism for drug use. And much more appealing than Nancy Reagan’s lame “Just So No” campaign. I don’t think you could have handled a show about drug use in such a humorous fashion.

I’m watching more and more YCDTOTV. The show itself is classic. However I did find some skits to be a bit different.
Keep in mind that the following scetches aired on a TV network (Nickelodeon) where the primary audience was anywhere between ages 7 and 16….and it was the most popular show on the network.

Episode: Heroes – 1982
(2 Boy Scouts are sitting on a house’s front porch with a case of bottled beer):
Boy Scouts: [Singing with drunk voices] Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer…
Scoutmaster: [Blows whistle] Empty bottles! You were supposed to collect empty bottles!
Boy Scout [in a drunk voice]: We’ve been emptying them…. [Belch]

And who said Nickelodeon never promoted alcohol use among young people?

Episode: Culture – 1982
[Scene: Living room. A young man comes in wearing a trenchcoat, hat and sunglasses, carrying a violin case]
Dad: Hey Kevin! Come here. Where do you think you’re going with that? [points to the violin case]
Kevin: I’m gonna go shoot up the neighborhood, Dad.
[He opens the violin case to reveal a machine gun]
Dad: I thought you were going to some boring violin lesson or something like that. Go on. Have fun!

(The above is an opposite sketch, where the opposite of real life happens)
You would NEVER see this in a post Columbine world. I guess in some cases we’ve become over sensitized to guns and things like that to where we can’t even joke about them anymore. At the time I found the skit funny.

You Can’t Do That on Television. Possibly my all time favorite show growing up. And its still funny today. I recently got a DVD off all the episodes.
Some good quotes from the show.

From the Future Episode (1983)
Newsboy: Did you see my picture in the paper yesterday, sir? I’m carrier of the week.
Man: I never read the newspaper, son.
Newsboy: That’s what everyone says on my route. No one ever reads their papers anymore.
Man: That’s right, everyone gets their news from the teletext on TV.
Newsboy: Then why do you all still get a newspaper?
Man: Cause we haven’t found any way to wrap up kitty litter in a television set.

Shades of the internet, anyone?

Mom (to her son): So you see Dougie dear, as long as we have more and bigger bombs than the Russians, there will never have a nuclear war. So I want you to go to sleep now and tomorrow I’ll tell you another fairy tale.

Commentary on current events? Fairy tale…?

I watched The Exorcist last night. I remember staying at my cousins’ house in the 80s and them wanting to rent it because it was the scariest movie ever. I guess if you’ve seen parodies like Repossed and SNL’s comedy sketch, you tend to laugh at some of the meant-to-be scary scenes. Years ago that movie would have given me nightmares. Now I expect the priest to yell “The bed is on my foot!” in true Richard Pryor fashion.
The movie was a bit disturbing in some respects. Maybe it was the disturbing feeling how you knew the little girl was going crazy, but doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. And I completely missed the stair falling scene….and deleted it from my Tivo before I realized it.
Do I believe Demon possession happens today? I don’t think God allows us to be tempted more than what we are able to bear. There are people with certain psychological problems which compel them to sin without being able to control easily their actions. I really don’t think we see demon possession like what we saw in the Gospels.