[AYAOTD? Recap with Erin Callahan] S05E10 "The Tale of the Chameleons"

ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?
5.10 – “The Tale of the Chameleons”

RECAP

Betty Ann shows up to the meeting with her new pet, Spike, in a sack-covered cage. The Midnight Society try to guess what kind of animal he is but Betty Ann won’t say. They have to settle for a Spike-inspired story instead.

While at a pet store, best friends Janice and Sharon encounter a strange little boy. When Janice is bitten by a chameleon, the boy says, “Bite you once, bite you twice, a little water, pay the price.” Janice and Sharon shrug it off and head to Janice’s house for the weekend. Janice quibbles with her parents like a classic teenager and, later that night, gets bitten while asleep in her bed. Turns out the chameleon snuck into Mom’s grocery bag! When she chases after it, she’s suddenly confronted by a clone of herself, who repeats the same rhyme as the boy at the pet store. Sharon is convinced Janice is losing her mind, but the next morning Janice has a horrid rash where the chameleon bit her. While Janice is brushing her teeth, the clone pushes her into the shower, transforming Janice into a chameleon so the clone can take her place. Sharon finally realizes something is wrong when clone-Janice is sickeningly sweet to Janice’s parents. With Sharon’s help, Janice is able to change back into her human form, but since Janice and the clone are identical, Sharon can’t tell which one is the real Janice. She sprays one of them with water and throws the chameleon down a well. Unfortunately for Janice, Sharon got it wrong. The clone has survived and has more chameleon friends who want to take over the lives of unsuspecting humans.

The Midnight Society all assume that Spike is a chameleon but--surprise!--he’s actually a snake. They all run off, terrified, and Betty Ann smiles at her pet and says, “Just wait ’till they see you when you grow up.”

REVIEW

T: Betty Ann’s got a pet and I want to see Spike.

E: At this point in the episode, I was banking on Spike being some sort of creepy rodent. Maybe a ferret? Or a sugar glider. I knew a girl in college who had two sugar gliders and she was about as odd as Betty Ann. Told me she’d been investigated for murder. Twice. TWICE!!

T: That is a story I need to hear some time. Or, more accurately, two stories. It’s celebrity guest time with Tia and Tamera Mowery! Tia plays Janice and Tamera is the chameleon. I was into Sister, Sister when it aired and both of them are still pretty active performers and I just love them here, really fun casting.

E: I completely forgot how fun and charming the Mowery twins are! I don’t think I watched much Sister, Sister as a teen but now I totally get why people did.

T: This is the episode I confused “Quicksilver” with way back in season three. The whole black celebrity twin/two characters thing. I have to say I didn’t remember the actual plot of this one all that well so I was very pleasantly surprised.

E: Such a solid episode!

T: A pet store is a fun place to open an episode. You can really picture Betty Ann in there getting inspiration. Does it bother you that the “chameleons” are really iguanas? Turns out chameleons are larger and fairly slow, so they didn’t use them. It might be the only nitpick I have with this episode, but I’m able to shrug it off.

E: So glad you confirmed this because I kept thinking, “Aren’t actual chameleons tiny??” Guess I was wrong about the tiny part but I suppose iguanas are more engaging onscreen with their skittery running.

T: So Gary guessed Spike was a rabbit (’cause magicians need rabbits right?) so of course Betty Ann improvises Sharon gushing over a rabbit for him.

E: LOL -- what a cute thought!

T: The ginger chameleon boy is a total creepster. Especially considering he’s never seen again, so he’s just out there in the world being evil.

E: Initially, I wondered why there was so much focus on him, but as soon as he blurted out that bizarro rhyme I was like, “Oh dear. What is his deal?”

T: I love the little argument about Janice wanting to dye her hair blue and complaining that her mom dyes her hair black. It’s just the tip of the iceberg to Janice’s story arc of struggling to be seen as an adult.

E: We’ve seen some truly shitty parents on this show (“Your friend died a whole year ago -- get over it!”) and, in comparison, Janice’s parents are pretty cool. I suppose being treated like the kid that you are is what you complain about when your parents are totally respectable ’90s parents? I don’t love Mom trying to police Janice’s body, especially the argument over the dress that’s too snug/revealing, but the dress they buy her is actually really cute? Is it just me? Can’t go wrong with a classic A-line, IMO. I’m going to be a bad feminist today and say that they saved her from a fashion faux-pas.

T: Her parents are great. Is not wanting your teenager to wear super revealing clothes “policing” her body? That just seems so generational. Kids want to stretch boundaries and parents are cautious. Like, you’re telling me if your sixteen-year-old daughter wanted to go to school in a slinky little number, Future Erin wouldn’t be like, “Um, is there a better choice here?”

E: Fair point, but as a feminist, this is one of those things I’m so torn on. Would I be instilling good fashion sense or reinforcing rape culture? Both? Ugh.

T: Coincidentally, while this features a protagonist who wants to be seen as an adult while her parents treat her as a kid, Sharon is played by Samantha Aboud who played Jill in “Final Wish.” There, the protagonist wanted to act like a kid while her parents pushed her to be more of an adult.

E: I knew she looked familiar! Another solid performance and I bet she breathed a sigh of relief when she found out she wouldn’t be forced to co-star with a middle-aged comedian.

T: Remember being that age and hanging out at your friend’s house and it being incredibly awkward when your friend gets in a fight with her parents? Poor Sharon here is just like, “Uh, I’ll say nothing in the corner and hope no one pulls me into this argument.”

E: Haaaaaa! Omg, that scene is so real. I once had a friend storm off to her room and I spent the entire afternoon baking muffins and playing Go Fish with her mom.

T: The chameleon stalking scenes have some great tension, and Janice’s growing paranoia is really well played.

E: The editing and camera work here are top notch. I LOVE the scene with the grocery bag where, for a sec, you think Mom has been bitten but she’s really just horrified that the eggs have broken.

T: Absolutely. With such short run times, episodes don’t always have the space to take time and build that tension, so I’m glad they did here. It helps that the story/characters are so simple (not in a poorly written way, but in an uncomplicated way). You got Mom, Dad, Daughter, Friend in a house with a monster. Gold.

E: Exactly! You and I often talk about how this show tries to cram too much into twenty minutes or glosses over things because of timing. This is an episode that gets it right. It’s just enough for the runtime.

T: The flipping chameleon grabs scissors? She’s going to kill Janice? Then she grabs a meat cleaver. How often do villains in this series grab knives and try to murder the kids?

E: There’s some truly dark stuff in this one. Though I suppose we rarely see the villain take the form of an actual kid/teenager? One who looks just like the protagonist we’re rooting for? That somehow makes it both easier to swallow and even more terrifying.

T: That’s another thing I love about this episode. The baddies are almost always adults. I can think of Peter from “Captured Souls,” Lex from “Nightly Neighbors,” Marshall (ambiguously) from “Old Man Corcoran,” and that’s about it. There’s some scary kid ghosts, but they always turn out to be misunderstood and not villains at all.

E: Precisely! I get why they’ve avoided kid-shaped villains for the most part, given the audience, but this ep proves they can be used effectively.

T: Then the chameleon eats a fish?! This episode holds nothing back.

E: That shot of clone-Janice with the fish tail hanging out of her mouth should be just as iconic as the “Brad?” scene from “Midnight Ride.”

T: I love the whole mythology here, the bite you once, bite you twice, water, bit. Yes, it’s a little goofy, but it sets up the rules very precisely. The girls learn them and are able to turn the tables on the chameleon. Nicely played.

E: The mythology’s never explained, but the rules are solid and they stick to them. Huzzah!

T: The whole “there’s two of them, I don’t know who is who” bit is cliched, but it works so well here. Especially since the chameleon tricks Sharon and leads to a very dark ending. We’ve had a few somewhat ambiguous endings but it’s been a long time since it was a clear-cut “bad” one.

E: I love it so much. And Tamera is just so good as the chameleon/clone-Janice. Her maniacal laugh is delicious.

T: And Betty Ann shocks everyone by revealing Spike is a snake. Oh Betty Ann. I’ve changed my mind from earlier, I don’t want to see Spike anymore. It is fun that for her last story, she gets to douse the water herself.

E: You know how horse girls are a thing? I’m now convinced that Betty Ann is a classic snake girl and that the snake girl trope has been lurking under the radar for decades, just waiting to be exploited. Let’s make snake girls a thing, y’all!

T: No. I don’t know about horse girls. Like female centaurs? I saw you tweeting something about this recently and I was thoroughly confused.

E: That tweet was inspired by this episode! And horse girls really are a thing. Look! There’s also a song about them!

QUEER OR NOT?

T: Well, you’ve got teen girls sleeping in the same bed, and Sharon is very protective/supportive of Janice while she’s losing her shit. The dad jokes that Janice couldn’t live without Sharon. It feels completely friendship’y to me, but I could see someone, especially a queer girl, getting more out of it. And there’s the Body Snatchers-like being replaced, finding your identity angle that isn’t explicitly queer but there’s some overlaps.

E: Yes, love that reading. And I think Body Snatchers tropes speak to any marginalized human who feels like their body is not totally their own because it’s constantly being threatened or socially-dissected.

TRIVIA, USELESS TRIVIA

T: This is Dan Jordan’s second time playing a dad on this series after his season one performance in my favorite episode “Captured Souls.” I love his natural, laid back parenting style. I wish they’d cast him in more episodes.

E: A few of his line deliveries totally cracked me up, especially his over-the-top dad reaction to the dress his wife forced upon their daughter. A lot of the parents on AYAOTD? are on the bland side, but Dan Jordan brings a lot of color to his dad characters.

T: And the mom is played by Amanda Strawn, who we last saw as the not-so-helpful nurse in “Shiny Red Bicycle.” She’ll pop up one last time in the series finale.

MODERNIZE ’90s CANADIAN KIDS

T: Since this is an update on the classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers idea, I’m not sure what would need updating. For me, it’s hard to think about changing a story that works so well.

E: The bones of this story are classic and would totally work now. I think you’d just need to give it a facelift, though even the fashion isn’t completely outdated here. As I said before, A-line dresses never go out of style! But would the girls immediately head to the internet to start researching this conspiracy? There are so many lizard people conspiracies floating around I feel like you’d be obligated to at least mention that if you were to update this one.

JUST GIVE IT A NUMERICAL RATING ALREADY

T: I LOVE IT. The story’s so fun, the acting is great, there’s just nothing wrong with it. We’ve both handed out five perfect ratings, although not for the same episodes, so I’m curious to see if this will line up, because I’m going with a perfect 10 CAMPFIRES OUT OF 10.

E: Yay! I love this one too. 10 CAMPFIRES OUT OF 10 for the Mowery twins!!