Now this is where it’s at! No show on One Saturday Morning was quite as popular or as fun as Recess! And it was definitely the best show of the line-up, running for four whole years and over a hundred episodes. Though definitely a show for kids, it was characterized by some very smart humour and great commentary. It followed the lives of six fourth graders at Third Street School, mostly during recess where they’d interact with other kids, get up to schemes, and learn lessons usually more important than what they were getting in the classroom.
The show was frequently permeated by clever metaphor. Recess was always depicted as the kids’ one period of freedom in the day from their prison-like school routine. This was very much enforced by numerous details such as the worn, grim colourlessness of the school, the grumpy warden-like recess supervisor Miss Finster, and the fact the very catchy opening theme and intro sequence is a direct parallel to The Great Escape. Out on the playground, the kids have formed their own society complete with an adhered to social stratification and organizational units. This is where you get some really interesting political, social, and economic commentary. Recess is ruled by a sixth grade king while kindergarteners are primitive warriors, and the rest fall somewhere in between. The kids follow an unwritten code and mostly stick to their own respective cliques.
That is apart from our main characters. T.J. is the troublemaking but good-natured leader of the gang, Vince is the athlete, Spinelli the tomboy, Mikey the chow hound with a heart of gold, Gretchen the genius, and Gus the nervous dweeb. And though they are all admittedly stereotypes, they’re still very enjoyable and each grow at least a little beyond those stereotypes over the course of the series. Maybe it’s this development and their diversity that makes them a very likeable bunch. The show is full of other great characters though. Miss Finster is a lot of fun as the over-the-top disciplinarian voiced by April Winchell, and Dabney Coleman is terrific as the sometimes high-strung Principal Prickley. There’s a wormy snitch called Randall, a brooding urban legend weaver Butch, a teachers’ pet Menlo, the Mean Girls of elementary school -the Ashleys, and the main characters’ teacher Miss Grotke voiced by Allyce Beasley, in addition to many others.
One of the things I loved most about Recess is how it took smaller issues and “nothing” stories that would effect elementary school kids, as well as basic morality tales, and presented them in very creative and sometimes downright surreal ways. For instance, we know the trope about a little power going to one’s head, but in the episode “King Gus” where Gus is made temporary king, he really goes heavy into despotic rule. A bully episode ends with the hero getting beat up. There were also plots that were naturally bizarre, like a girl who’s been secretly living in the library, and Gretchen at one point getting permission to take part in a NASA mission. Chaos is something the show really does well, by turning minor things like rainstorms and trendy games into explorations of cabin fever and assimilation. Sometimes characters even undergo brief psychological trauma. And there’s been more than one playground revolution during the course of the series. This intelligent edge and the comedy really goes a long way to making the show at least semi-appealing to adults as well as kids.
Some of the most memorable episodes to me are the ones that incorporate movie parodies like 2001, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Nutty Professor, and Good Will Hunting, with others alluding to the likes of Spartacus and Patton. Some of the other highlight shows for me growing up were “First Name Ashley”, “Big Brother Chad”, “Gretchen and the Secret of Yo”, “Principal for a Day”, “One Stayed Clean”, and “Spinelli’s Masterpiece”. “Weekend at Muriel’s” still holds up, an episode which does a great job humanizing Miss Finster, and “Yes Mikey, Santa Does Shave” is still one of my personal favourite TV Christmas episodes (though Robert Goulet being Mikey’s singing voice is much more distracting now).
The series was directed by Simpsons directors Chuck Sheetz and Susie Dietter, and created by a couple guys from Nickelodeon: Paul Germain (who co-created Rugrats) and Joe Ansolabehere (who helped develop Hey Arnold!). The show just about lasted the entirety of One Saturday Morning’s lifespan, and near the end of its run it got a theatrically released movie, Recess: School’s Out in 2001 (which I remember being pretty awesome for the time, though having a strange psychedelic 60’s fixation). But Recess did have the quality to deserve this long run and movie spin-off. As a kids’ show it still largely holds up, and though Disney Afternoon fans will throw DuckTales and Rescue Rangers in my face, I’ll still argue that Recess is one of the best animated series Disney has ever produced.
Pepper Ann:
This is the show that Doug should have been! It takes a similar concept, that of a middle school kid with fantasizing tendencies, and adds characters who are actually funny, decent storytelling and set-ups, and just the right dose of surreality. Pepper Ann was cute, funny, energetic, and had a good degree of intelligence to leave a significant impression on the early years of One Saturday Morning. The first Disney animated show created by a woman, Sue Rose (and by now only one of two), Pepper Ann was about the pre-teen problems of its title character and her friends in the town of Hazelnut. The conflicts usually came about through her unique attitude and outlook on said problems.
If the animation looks familiar, it’s because animation director Tom Warburton went on to create the more popular Codename: Kids Next Door, which featured the same designs. And that animation style, as with Kids Next Door, lends itself very well to physical comedy and the memorability of its characters. Pepper Ann herself is the funniest and most enjoyable part of the show. Unlike the dull personality-deprived Doug, Pepper Ann is neurotic, awkward, and irrational. Her fantasies show off a wonderfully eccentric mind and her outward behaviour conveys she’s a genuine outsider. In many respects she actually reminds me of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes, only less of a menace. She’s voiced by Kathleen Wilhoite who also sings the show’s theme song, which after Recess might be the catchiest tune of One Saturday Morning. Her friends are the brainy Nicky and the artistic Milo. Both of them have a decent amount of personality, and are quite likeable and funny in their own right. Pepper Ann’s divorced mother Lydia is a very cheerful Minnesota homebody type, and she has a little sister called Moose -who’s supposed to be a tomboy, but Pamela Adlon gives her an unusually deep, gravelly voice which in addition to her name and appearance, makes her gender indeterminate a lot of the time. Maybe Adlon just didn’t want to give her a voice too much like Spinelli. Apart from the typical popular rich girl antagonist and a principal voiced notably by Don Adams, few of the other characters factor into the show in important ways. This is fine though because unlike Recess, Pepper Ann isn’t an ensemble show. Almost every episode puts Pepper Ann herself at the centre of it.
The sense of humour in general is a highlight too. Obviously with older characters it can get away with more mature and referential jokes than the previous shows in the block. This is serviced best in Pepper Ann’s more elaborate daydreams and the weird offshoots of her personality. She often has conversations with a conscience of sorts that manifests itself in her reflections. The show also takes advantage of Pepper Ann’s loose grip on reality from time to time. In one episode where she auditions for a musical, the world unexpectedly adopts the rules of a musical to her hilarious confusion; and another pretty funny show gives Pepper Ann the Christmas Carol treatment for Valentine’s Day. There’s also a very risqué episode that’s all about Pepper Ann’s anxiety over developing breasts. It’s really funny, and there’s a lot of imagery and directness I’m shocked got past the Disney censors. But it still took on a mature and sensitive approach to puberty. The series finale, actually treated as such (which wasn’t common for kids’ cartoons back then), is surprisingly quite sweet and endearing, with most of it taking place in the futuristic era of 2015.
Pepper Ann was the best suburban show of One Saturday Morning. It was definitely the most 90’s show in the line-up (I mean look at how Pepper Ann and her friends dress), and also more than once named a specific year, which the other shows usually avoided. But despite this, it’s still enjoyable now and a really good show for kids. The quality of shows like Recess and Pepper Ann make me really wish that Disney would release them on DVD, like they have for the popular series of the Disney Afternoon. Maybe they just need more time to become acknowledged nostalgic properties. Until then, we’ll settle to just remember two shows that formed a big part of why One Saturday Morning was so great.
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