A “very special” Diff’rent Strokes that’s terrifying for all the wrong reasons. Club. Welcome to the TV Roundtable, where some of TV Club’s writers tackle episodes that deal with a central theme. This is the seventh of eight installments to focus on “controversial episodes.”Diff’rent Strokes, “The Bicycle Man” (season five, episodes 1. Part one available on You. Tube here, and part two available on You. Tube here.)In which Arnold is asked to keep a secret. Plenty of dramas in this decade dealt with some fairly heady topics.

But so too did the world of sitcoms, through the proliferation of an institution that both preceded and outlasted the decade: The very special episode. But while the very special episode isn’t singular to this decade, the 1. Blossom went to the very special well as often as Diff’rent Strokes. To analyze “The Bicycle Man” is to analyze the mechanics of the very special episode trope, although there’s far more substance to this iteration than, say, Jessie Spano taking caffeine pills on Saved By The Bell. I both love and loathe episodes that attempt to deal with issues such as drug use, alcoholism, sexuality, drunk driving, racism, and death.

They mean so damn well, and yet usually come off so damn corny. I chose “The Bicycle Man” over an episode such as Growing Pains’ season- two episode “Thank God It’s Friday” because not only does it illustrate a good example of the trope, but also (hopefully) provides an interesting counterexample to Brass Eye’s “Paedogeddon,” which we discuss earlier in this round. The central element that connects every very special episode is earnestness, a quality that undoubtedly brings undue snark and derision upon the genre.

And trust me: I understand what makes these episodes such easy targets. They mark their solemnity early, usually with an onscreen assurance from an actor in the show indicating that the following episode will function less as entertainment and more as instruction. Dialogue is often replaced by platitudes, as onscreen figures declaim to those in the fictional world and those at home simultaneously.

Afterwards, the number for a hotline usually appears, with the understanding that those suddenly educated on the issue would spring into action. When done poorly, it’s back patting and didactic. To this day, “The Bicycle Man” makes me incredibly uneasy, due to the largely genial way in which the titular bicycle shop owner Mr.

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Horton (played by WKRP In Cincinnati star Gordon Jump) leads Arnold (Gary Coleman) and his friend Dudley (Shavar Ross) to the precipice of hell. Each step is a small, seemingly logical one derived from the previous decision. Arnold barely escapes before recognizing what’s going on, and Dudley never picks up on the danger he’s in. Because friendly Mr. Horton never drops his veneer to reveal the sinister monster underneath. He’s ever and always jovial, whether serving the boys ice cream or having them watch X- rated cartoons. At this point, it’s probably necessary to summarize the plot: The Drummonds arrive at Mr.

Horton’s bike shop after another Sunday riding through the park on rented bicycles. We quickly surmise this is a common occurrence, with a greater deal of familiarity and friendliness between the family and Mr. Horton suggests that Mr. Drummond (Conrad Bain) buy bikes in order to save money over the long haul, and even promises to give Arnold a radio for the bike free of charge if Arnold hands out fliers at school. Soon, Arnold recruits his friend Dudley to help distribute the fliers, both with dreams of radios in their minds.

Welcome to the TV Roundtable, where some of TV Club’s writers tackle episodes that deal with a central theme. This is the seventh of eight installments to focus on.

Those dreams are so omnipresent that they are unable to see how repeated trips to the bicycle shop (and to Mr. Horton’s apartment, which is in the back of the store) get increasingly problematic. Horton, who eventually insists that the kids call him “Curly,” plies them with food and alcohol while also pressuring them to keep their visits a “secret” in order to give both sides plausible deniability. Watch Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Online Etonline.

Those visits involve photo shoots (featuring Dudley as Tarzan and Curly as a lion), drinking wine, playing trampoline on the bed, and watching the aforementioned adult cartoon. But what starts everything off is a pornographic magazine that Horton plants before the boys enter his apartment for the first time. It’s essentially the first of many steps in which he attempts to lure them into a place in which telling the truth would seemingly incriminate them more than him. And given how goddamn nice he acts the whole time, it’s not terrifically surprising that no one’s Spidey sense goes off until the second half of this two- parter. It’s worth stating again how important it is for this script not to turn Horton into some overtly maniacal figure. Arnold and Dudley aren’t dumb kids that didn’t read the signs correctly.

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Horton simply understood the signifiers and bent them toward his own desires. Now, as subtle and creepy as most of this is, this is still a very special episode, which means the last six or seven minutes of the two- parter ends not with Horton’s arrest, but a long discussion between the Drummonds and a local police officer about What This All Means. The current Golden Age of television would be perfectly happy to let a figure like Mr. Horton represent unknowing chaos in an increasingly dysfunctional age. But very special episodes insist there are no unsolvable problems, only things we just haven’t spoken enough about yet, gosh darnit. I don’t want to slam the information deployed in this last bit of the episode, but the artlessness of it does make me wince all the same. And did the laughter that accompanies this episode make you as distraught as it made me?

Genevieve Koski: That laughter made me distraught all right, Ryan, and I’ll tell you why: Throughout the episode, including when Arnold and Dudley are staring goggle- eyed at nude photographs being proffered to them by a middle- aged man, the hysterical laughter of children is audible in the studio audience (laugh track?). Now, granted, the idea of an audience of any demographical makeup (real or digitally induced) laughing at that moment is discomfiting, but hearing the bubbly, innocent laughter of children in the mix heightens it even further, taking it almost to the realm of the surreal. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t surprise me that when I told my friend about watching this episode, he perked up in recognition and said, “Oh yeah, they showed that on Adult Swim one time.” I can find no evidence online that such a thing occurred, but it’s definitely the sort of thing I can imagine Adult Swim airing, apropos of nothing, for an added punch of weird in its late- night lineup. I suppose I could be projecting and imagining the creepy laughter of children during those “jokes,” but I don’t think I am.

Diff’rent Strokes was a family show, a sort of precursor to the TGIF lineup that would spring up on ABC three years after it went off the air, which means that adolescents were a part of its target audience. That makes it both understandable that someone would think it was a good idea to air an episode about the dangers of child- molestation, and also horrifying that someone would think it was a good idea to do it in this way. As we saw with Brass Eye, it’s hard to laugh at jokes about pedophilia under even the best, most self- aware circumstances; seeing it handled so clumsily by Diff’rent Strokes is downright mortifying.

Sure, the laughter dies down just in time for the episode to deliver its moral/family- meeting talking points, but right up until the moment it becomes necessary for everyone to shut up and listen goddammit, it’s as if Diff’rent Strokes had been pumping laughing gas onto the soundstage. Granted, that’s true of pretty much any show of Diff’rent Strokes’ ilk, but it’s especially glaring in this context. Even if you get behind the idea that we, the audience, are not supposed to quite get what that nice ol’ Mr.

Tarzan (TV Series 2. Edit. This thrilling contemporary take transforms the classic Tarzan tale into a rapid- fire adventure, an intriguing mystery and, most of all, a fiery love story. Strong- willed NYPD detective Jane Porter's perfectly ordered life turns upside down when a routine case unexpectedly leads her to primal and passionate Tarzan, now loose in the urban jungles of New York City. After plucking the mysterious feral man from his wild home, Tarzan's billionaire uncle, the CEO of powerful Greystoke Industries, stops at nothing to 'civilize' Tarzan in his own image. And, inexorably attracted to Tarzan's dangerous yet profoundly innocent nature, Jane wrestles with reason and instinct, civilization and savagery, her heart and her head.