9 of the Strangest ‘Afterschool Specials’ & The Stars in Them
The words “Afterschool Special” instantly summon up a certain kind of story: tales of drugs, teen pregnancy, peer pressure and family discord, with heavy-handed moral messages served up alongside drama that’s so over the top, it would make a Lifetime Original Movie blush.
ABC Afterschool Specials (and the similar CBS Schoolbreak) get a bad rap these days as laughably corny and out of touch. But the series’ 24 year run from 1972 to 1996 served as a launching pad for countless careers, from Jodie Foster and Val Kilmer to Helen Hunt and Ben Affleck, and some episodes picked up Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards, as well as glowing letters from teen fans.
But other episodes … well, they were just weird. How weird? “Using a genie to try to get a date” — weird. “Running down your girlfriend’s mom with a car” — weird. These episodes didn’t quite fit in with the series’ mission of creating simple moral lessons for teens … but if nothing else, they were memorable.
1The Incredible Indelible Magical Physical Mystery Trip (1973)
Fifteen years before Innerspace, this ABC Afterschool Special had its two young heroes miniaturized so that they could live every elementary schooler’s dream: taking a tour inside their sleeping Uncle Carl’s body. Once inside, they meet an air sac antagonized by their uncle’s heroic cigar habit, and arteries menaced by evil greasy blobs, created by Uncle Carl’s diet of fried foods. The kids learn a lot about health and the body on their voyage, but upon returning to the human world, Uncle Carl is still going to town on potato chips and beer. How many children need to have a life-changing adventure inside his blood vessels before this guy is willing to eat a vegetable?
This special also marked the debut of Timer, a sentient blob creature with a top hat who looks a little bit like W.C. Fields playing Willy Wonka. He turned up in health-related public service announcements until 1992, perhaps most famously in one where he transformed into a cowboy who is obsessed with cheese.
2The Magical Mystery Trip Through Little Red’s Head (1974)
A spiritual sequel to The Incredible Indelible Magical Physical Mystery Trip, this fully animated special follows two young siblings who, along with Timer, get miniaturized to enter their teenaged sister’s brain, so they can understand her emotions and decision-making … also, the sister, for some reason, is Little Red Riding Hood.
3Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid (1979)
What good is being a magical rich kid if you can’t get girls to like you? ABC Afterschool Special took one of their periodic turns towards magical realism with this episode, where a nerdy young rich boy meets a genie (Gone With the Wind‘s Butterfly McQueen) who encourages him to be himself. But instead, he just wants to use magic to impress future Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon. None of his wishes turn out quite right, teaching us all this timeless lesson: if you ever meet a genie, don’t waste all your wishes trying to impress Cynthia Nixon.
4What Are Friends For? (1980)
Young Amy (Melora Hardin, later of The Office) has enough problems with her parents’ recent divorce and a move with her now-single mom to a new town. But those pale in comparison to the problems she experiences after she befriends Michelle, a bizarre girl who shoplifts, lies compulsively, attempts to drown dolls in the bathtub as part of a black magic ritual, and displays a precocious talent for stalking. After eventually turning into a tween friendship version of Fatal Attraction, it’s unclear what the episode’s message is, besides “try not to befriend weirdoes.”
5Desperate Lives (1982)
Yes, this is the one — the one where a young Helen Hunt, crazed on angel dust, jumps through a plate glass window. But this teen drug drama’s wild moments don’t end there. Another character does angel dust in a car and immediately drives off a cliff, laughing all the way. Teens deal drugs in a cemetery, a student nearly drowns in the school pool because she’s so stoned she’s forgotten how to swim, and a heroic guidance counselor with an inscrutable accent (Australian? Canadian? Valley Girl?) confiscates all the drugs in the school and dramatically sets them on fire during a school assembly … all set to a peppy theme song written by Rick Springfield.
6High School Narc (1985)
Predating the similarly themed 21 Jump Street TV series by two years, High School Narc gives it all away in the title: a vice cop who is 22 (and looks every second of it) goes undercover at a local high school to unearth the teen kingpin flooding the community with drugs. To no one’s surprise, one of the villains is a young, long-haired Viggo Mortensen, while Nancy Travis plays a sexy bad girl who has no idea that her new crush is a police officer who is old enough to buy beer.
7My Dissident Mom (1987)
This CBS Schoolbreak episode had the surprising duo of Martin Sheen and Annie Potts as a married couple whose relationship is put to the test by … nuclear energy? While Dad pursues nuclear energy work, Mom becomes an anti-nuclear activist, and the kids predictably get caught in the crossfire. Will the family be torn apart by the twin pressures of social activism and financial responsibility? Nah, everyone sort of makes up in the end.
8The Day My Kid Went Punk (1987)
Never mind that the titular kid, who wears white face paint and contour blush, looks less like a punk than a Transformer-era Lou Reed. In this ABC Afterschool Special episode, we are given a break from the typical plagues of drugs and parental drama to tackle a new problem: a teenage boy who wants to put a lot of hairspray in his hair! Terry Warner, an unremarkable teen, decides to give himself a punk makeover en route to his summer job at a hotel’s daycare center. While the tots love his New York Dolls-esque vibe, his psychologist mother is scheduled to give a talk at the hotel — presenting a pr0gram called “Punk Syndrome: How Parents Can Avoid It.” Together, they learn that it’s okay to be different and Terry (Jay Underwood), finally placated, agrees to tone it down with the rouge.
9Lies of the Heart (1991)
It’s a teen dilemma we can all remember from our high school years: Boy gets car. Boy immediately injures another driver and flees the scene. Boy meets girl, who happens to be the daughter of the woman he maimed. Should he tell her the truth? Or listen to his scheming businessman father, who urges him to forget the whole car crash thing, and also maybe date someone whose mother he didn’t cripple? The Los Angeles Times complained that Lies of the Heart‘s “adults are one-dimensional, the chain of events predictable,” and by this point, viewers were largely dismissing the show on the whole as old-fashioned.
By 1991, ABC Afterschool Specials had been on the air for almost two decades. And unlike in 1972, they now had a lot of competition, including shows like Beverly Hill 90210 and The Facts of Life, which often examined social issues in the same vein, but did it with a steady cast of characters that viewers could grow attached to. It simply couldn’t compete. Today, the show stands as a tribute to the era when teens had fewer options, both for entertainment and information — and sometimes, they had to get both from a drugged-out Helen Hunt.
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