[AYAOTD? Recap with Erin Callahan] 3.11 "The Tale of the Quicksliver"

RECAP

When Tucker shows up with a few things “borrowed” from his dad’s magic shop and claims they don’t work, Kiki tells him he might be doing it wrong. She then weaves a tale about the dangers of making mistakes when practicing magic.

A sickly teenage girl attempts a ritual to summon a dark being, but it goes terribly wrong. Two years later, brothers Aaron and Doug move into her old house and share her old bedroom. Weird things begin to happen, like shaking beds, “Q”s appearing on the walls, and Doug getting mysteriously ill. In a dream, Aaron sees the teenage girl performing her ritual. Before he wakes up, she tells him she did it wrong. At school, Aaron bumps into Connie, who looks just like the girl at the start of the story. Aaron eventually learns that Connie’s twin sister, Laura, died in the house after attempting to get rid of an evil ghost that was making her sick. Aaron realizes the same thing is happening to his brother. Meanwhile, Doug realizes that Laura’s friendly spirit, known as a Quicksilver, is still in the house. Aaron and Connie use Laura’s old spellbook and an oak wand tied with silver to recreate the ritual. When it begins to go wrong again, Aaron realizes the spoon tied to the wand isn’t real silver. He uses his grandfather’s silver pilot’s necklace instead and is able to trap the creature in a crystal amulet. Laura’s ghost appears and takes the amulet before disappearing.

Kiki warns the Midnight Society, “If you’re going to use magic, make sure you do it right.” Rain begins to pour after Tucker attempts a rain spell, but he claims, “I didn’t do it!”

REVIEW

T: Just try to tell me you don’t love this episode opening with Sam and Kiki stargazing.

E: So cute! But let’s save that for the QUEER OR NOT section, shall we?

T: So Tucker takes a magic wand and cape from his dad’s store (why would you even want to summon rain late at night in the woods?!) and Gary yells at him for it? That’s like the pot calling the kettle a magic thief, right?

E: It’s a flute, not a wand, yo. And Gary doesn’t have much room to talk, considering how many props he’s borrowed from the shop for his stories. Then again, he probably knows he’s a better custodian of magical objects.

T: And we open right away with special guest Tatyana Ali! She’s solid in this, and a great get for them. She’d been co-starring on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for four years before appearing here.

E: I vividly remember this episode, in part because it’s one of my all-time faves, and in part because Tatyana Ali is so memorable in it. She gets to play two roles! It’s like a very dark take on The Parent Trap.

T: The opening scene is probably the most horror movie the series gets because it’s set up with a guest star opening kill scene. Opening kills were around for a long time, but Scream came out two years later and made it a must that the actor be a name.

E: Drew Barrymore’s death is truly iconic. And the opening here is pretty terrifying. I’ve always been both intrigued by and deeply scared of magic rituals, and they’re something that immediately brings back memories of the ’90s. Remember how many gothy teenage girls decided to go wicca back then? Remember all those head shops that started stocking candles and crystals next to their bongs? Anyway, magic ritual + hooded ghost + curtains on fire = Eeeeeeek! 

T: I was super confused when Tatyana Ali showed up instead of Tia and Tamara Mowry. And I’m not being racist, they’re in a later season and I remembered this episode featuring twins, so I had their episode mixed up with this one.

E: I’m appalled. LOLOLOLOLOL.

T: I love the brothers. Both actors are solid and the characters are fun. “I like the lumpy bed” had me laughing in the exact right way. Oh, and when they play-wrestle, Doug flails his arms and smacks Aaron in the jawbone, and he doesn’t flinch and then delivers his next line right in character. That’s good acting.

E: The chemistry between them is on point. Am I the only one who thought they were supposed to be Frank and Tucker? Like Kiki took Frank and Tucker, made them care about each other, and then wrote them into one of her stories?

T: Oh, I like that! Especially since Aaron looks so much like Frank (we’ll save that for the TRIVIA section).

E: I’m intrigued!

T: I wondered if the ghost was a matchmaking yenta for making Aaron bump heads meet cute Connie.

E: Ha! It think she just wants the dark creature out of her damn house, but the almost-romance between Aaron and Connie is a cute side-effect.

T: What kind of a school do they go to? There’s a foosball in a hallway and fake plants?

E: Our school did not have a foosball table but we totally had fake plants, Troyson.

T: The dream effects are cool. I like Aaron seeing himself dreaming in the same room right before he gets the backstory.

E: Same! The pacing in the episode is particularly well done and there’s a lot of info but it’s all introduced in interesting ways. That said, how do you think Kiki pulled off the reveal that Connie looks just like the girl at the start of the story? So much of the reveal in the actual show depends on the visuals and the fact that Tatiana Ali plays both Connie and Laura. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but writer-me is wondering how Kiki would have pulled it off with just words.

T: Hmmmm. Perhaps her narration leaves that out, so the “they’re twins!” is an even bigger reveal?

E: That’s a considerable departure from the story we see but I’ll take it.

T: Doug’s sickness mirroring Laura works really well because it’s so slowly incorporated. “I think I’m sick.” Uhhhhh ya think?

E: Totally! I watched this episode with my boyfriend and early in the episode he pointed out that one of the actors was all sweaty, assuming it was a production mistake, like they’d forgotten to wipe him down before shooting. I was like, “The dark creature is making him sick. Get there faster, yo.” As noted before, I remember this one vividly.

T: LOL. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sweaty character on TV and thought, “Guess the Sweat Sponger missed that actor before this shot.”

E: But there should totally be a Sweat Sponger on every set.

T: You have to appreciate the old standby of the monster vanishing as the parents enter the room. But is the baddie only haunting that room? And speaking of the monster, what’s his deal? The magic book calls him a “creature of darkness” and he’s credited as “Zombie.” I’m all for ambiguous characters, but this was just confusing.

E: In both horror tropes and actual Hatian Vodou lore, the term zombie refers to a very specific kind of undead being. This creature doesn’t fit that bill at all. Like, zombies can’t phase through walls, for fuck’s sake. He’s clearly some sort of malevolent spirit that’s been festering in the cemetery beneath the house. Could even be a magic practitioner whose own spell went wrong. But decidedly NOT a zombie. I blame whoever put the credits together.

T: I’ve complimented the show on the usage of props. The Ghosts book not so much. There’s no graphics or author, and the title is just Ghosts? That had to be a last minute prop.

E: Obviously, but I laughed so freaking hard at it. It’s like a prop from a play put together by fourth graders.

T: And while we’re at it, Ghosts describes poltergeists as friendly spirits. They’re not. And it lists Quicksilvers as teenage girl poltergeists who leave a “Q” where they haunt? Nope, not a thing. I think what bothers me about it is if ghosts exist, they’re not going to fall into neat classifications. So neat that they leave a letter on a wall based on the English word for what ghost hunters call them.

E: Oh, come on. I think the Quicksilver concept is rad and it’s not any less believable than the existence of ghosts. Though I’ll admit that this episode was directly responsible for my misunderstanding of the term poltergeist -- a misunderstanding that lasted until I saw Poltergeist in high school.

T: I like the shout out to Poltergeist that their house was built over an old cemetery. I wish they’d leaned into it a little more and explained anything that was going on though.

E: It’s a disappointingly weak, cliched explanation, but the shout out is kinda fun. Why the fuck to people continue to build on top of old cemeteries? You’d think the whole damn world is covered in graves.

T: What did you make of the Aaron/Connie relationship? He’s into her, right? Even though he slaps her with the whole “You didn’t believe her the first time” about her dead twin.

E: LOL. As soon as he said that, I was like, “You just blew your chances with this chick, bro. Mega harsh.”

T: Doug has a little moment where he realizes Connie is seeing him in his PJs so he slips back into bed. It’s so cute and random. I was pretty upset when the zombie of darkness took Doug. Call me crazy, but I’m against creepy old pale men breaking into young boys’ rooms and taking them.

E: If this were Stranger Things, Doug would’ve been saved but come back all messed up from his time spent in the Not-Zombie Zone.

T: Aaron traps the creature in the amulet, which is then sent off to the other side. This feels like it should be a Gary story.

E: The magic elements are classic Gare Bear, but the characters and the cute little moments like Doug hiding under the covers in his PJs are very Kiki. You know we would’ve had a sad sack white-boy protag if Gary had told this story.

T: But Gary gave us Weeds and lonely-time-travelling-new-girl. Sad sack white boys were David’s jam (RIP, David).

E: Dammit, you’re right. I’m not giving Gary enough credit here.

QUEER OR NOT?

T: You got to love Kiki. After bragging to the Midnight Society that she loves moving in “Apartment 214,” she tells a story about teens moving. Since I’m operating under the impression that every Kiki story is drawn heavily on her life, I can only assume she recently got a crush on a Tatyana Ali-like girl at her school.

E: Yes! I love this theory! Also, let’s not forget Kiki and Sam’s totes adorbs star-gazing at the beginning. We’ve already talked about how they’re different takes on the tomboy trope, so I’m just going to headcannon that this was a little lesbian continuum bonding moment for them.

TRIVIA, USELESS TRIVIA

T: If you thought Aaron looks a lot like Frank, it’s because he’s the actor’s younger brother, Kyle Alisharen. He didn’t do much other acting besides co-starring on forty-four episodes of Breaker High (a Canadian/American teen show about rich kids going to school on a cruise boat) along with Tyler Labine and Ryan Gosling. The pilot and six other episodes were directed by David Winning, who was the third most-frequent AYAOTD? director.

E: Amazing! I immediately saw the resemblance.

T: Doug is played by Stuart Stone, who did a ton of voice acting as a kid, like Magic School Bus and X-Men: The Animated Series. He’s still an actor, and perhaps most recognizable as Jake Gyllenhaal’s friend in Donnie Darko.

E: Whaaaaaat? Oh snap!

T: Doug’s got a pair of Super Specs on the headboard of his bed!

E: Oh man, that almost makes me wonder if this was planned as a Gary story and then the writers decided it made more sense as a Kiki story.

MODERNIZE ’90s CANADIAN KIDS

T: The whole timeline and ghost classification needs fixin’. It should be that the bad ghost is a poltergeist (it’s literally German for “noisy ghost”) and Laura is a regular ghost. Quicksilver is a cool word, and an even cooler X-Men character, but it’s meaningless here. The Qs are cool, but they need a different explanation. Oh, and that nightgown. It’s so old that it threw me and I thought the opening scene was set in the ’70s and maybe Laura was Connie’s aunt.

E: Hang on a darn minute, Troyson. Though I will admit that the ghost classification thing could be improved, I dig the Quicksilver concept almost as much as I dug it when I saw this episode as a tween. It speaks so deeply to my desire to embrace a thing I’m scared of and make it less scary by organizing it into neat little categories. And I like that there’s a category specifically for teenage girl ghosts who mean no harm but have unfinished business. I vote to keep that but to make the Qs creepier or more spectral so the reveal that she’s “friendly” is more meaningful.

And I see your point about the nightgown but I think the timelessness of it is intentional. It’s supposed to disorient the viewers and hint at the classic Sickly Girl Who Might Be Mad trope. She’s the teenage girl in the attic who can’t stop ranting about a malevolent spirit. But she was right! Why didn’t anyone believe her?! Teen girls so often have their hurts, concerns, and anxieties dismissed by people who don’t want to believe them. As fun as this episode is, it mirrors that very real horror perfectly.

Obviously I’d do away with the generic Ghosts book -- Doug would be all over Reddit now, combing through creepypasta.

JUST GIVE IT A NUMERICAL RATING ALREADY

T: I’m really torn on rating this episode. I love the brothers and Tatyana Ali in this but the shrugging off of the backstory and the ghost world building irritates me a lot. Everything that works is so solid and enjoyable, but everything that doesn’t work is really bad. I never like focusing on the negatives (unless it’s “Locker 22”) but they do detract. This feels low to me, but I have to go with 7.7 OUT OF 10 CAMPFIRES.

E: There are definitely some flaws with the very brief Built On A Cemetary explanation, but nostalgia is forcing me to bump this one up. 9 OUT OF 10 CAMPFIRES.