[AYAOTD? Recap with Erin Callahan] S06E03 "The Tale of Jake the Snake"

RECAP

Tucker scares the bejeezus out of Andy, who isn’t salty about the whole thing because he and Tucker are friends. Tucker then tells a story about protecting your friends, even when they occasionally act like dicks.

Zach and Wiley are best friends, both trying out for the hockey team. Wiley keeps getting harassed and knocked around by one of the current players and worries he won’t make the cut. Instead of listening to his encouraging best friend, Wiley follows the advice of a shadowy figure in the training room and goes down to the basement. There, he retrieves the stick of Jake the Snake, a once-average hockey player who found a magical hockey stick that gave him the ability to snake through any defense. Jake’s hockey performance immediately improves, but he also develops a gross rash and starts acting like a jerkweed. When he makes the team and Zach doesn’t, he won’t let Zach sit with the team at lunch. When Wiley almost eats a lab mouse, Zach knows something is up and goes to the basement to investigate. He encounters Jake the Snake, now a half-human half-snake creature, who explains that Wiley will turn into an actual snake if he keeps using the stick. He threatens to feed Zach to the others who have turned and shows him a trunk full of snakes. When Wiley refuses to listen to him, Zach traps him in a closet and goes back to the basement. Wiley escapes and returns to the basement, where Jake has captured Zach. Wiley uses the stick to defeat Jake and save Zach, which ensures he’ll transform into a snake. Quick thinking Zach breaks the stick, which breaks the spell.

The gang think Andy is revenge-pranking them, then flee the clearing when they realize something else is in the bushes.

REVIEW

T: Is Andy just the sweetest, nicest guy? He takes getting scared by Jason-masked Tucker in really good spirits. You know Quinn would have been butthurt about that. I’d like to think Tucker planned on scaring whoever showed up last, and it just happened to be Andy.

E: I really hope the plan was for “whoever showed up last” and they weren’t targeting Andy specifically, but he is a good sport about it. I, on the other hand, would have screamed at the top of my damn lungs, people miles away would’ve heard it, and the police would’ve been called. And this conversation is for another day, but have we not discussed how much I absolutely despise the word butthurt? The internet can’t agree on whether it’s a reference to rape or child abuse, but neither of those things are funny or cute.

T: What?! I just thought it was like, “he’s got a stick up his butt” shortened to “butthurt.” Not that I use that more than twice a year, but now I know better.

E: *~*The More You Know*~*

T: I wish I had a counter going for how many times a member of the Midnight Society says, “That’s kind of what my story is about,” especially when it’s not at all.

E: Haaaaaa! Oh damn, yeah. Sometimes the connections are basically nonexistent. This one has a tenuous connection? I think? Like, Andy doesn’t get salty about Tucker’s pranks because they’re friends, just like Zach doesn’t just kick Wiley to the curb even though he’s being a royal dick?

T: It took six seasons, but we finally get a full out hockey episode! And it’s okay.

E: Hockey is a super big deal in Canada, so I’m surprised it took this long, but this episode is a passable salute to their national pastime. And I think it’s hockey-specific enough that you couldn’t just swap hockey out for another sport? The phallic nature of the hockey stick is pretty key here, as well as the image of a hockey player “snaking” through a defense.

T: Exactly. It’s not like, say, Catherine from “Vacant Lot” who needed to be into sports, but it could have been anything besides running and the story wouldn’t change.

E: Precisely!

T: Wiley’s bloody nose is an extremely rare sighting of blood on this series. The vampire episodes had blood bags and red scars, but I can’t think of another scene with blood. Human blood, that is. We’ve had monsters dissolve into goo.

E: Oh interesting! That didn’t even occur to me, but you’re right. I love that Shadow Jake just hands him a straight-up block of ice to put on it. They don’t have ice-packs at this school?

T: Jake the Snake’s shadow is creepy, too bad he turns into a giant goof later on.

E: I have to admit I don’t *hate* Jake in his fully-revealed form. But he’s absolutely the kind of half-creepy half-goofy villain who I’d like to see voiced by H. Jon Benjamin.

T: Great, now I want to do a fan edit with a different voice. Maybe someday.

E: Yes please! The world needs this!

T: Here’s a problem with the plot: Wiley is told that Jake Desmond was one of the all-time greatest hockey players, but he’s never heard of him! If someone was like, “Hey, Erin, if you take this magic pen, you’ll be just as famous as Muriel Smythe-McGoo, the best writer ever!” wouldn’t you be like, “Um, that’s not a thing.”

E: OMG. The fact that Zach actually has to point this out to Wiley later makes it even funnier. I’m not sure Wiley’s critical thinking skills are one-hundred percent operational at this point in his life.

T: Too many pucks to the head?

E: Undoubtedly. Also, one cannot live on poutine alone, Wiley. Diversify your nutrients!

T: I’ll never get tired of AYAOTD? having schools with unexplored areas like “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” “Locker 22,” and “Dead Man’s Float.”

E: Yes! It’s so great! And the basement set is pretty rad. Like, where does one find a dirty tarp to hang over the railing of a basement set? Do you think our high school had unexplored areas? It must’ve had a basement of some sort, right?

T: You’d think so, but I can’t picture where you could have accessed it. Maybe there was one built but no door to it? That’d be a fun story.

E: The Basement With No Door — instant bestseller.

T: Duchamp: “Where’s your loser friend?” Wiley: “I’m right here!” Um, that’s not a badass entrance, kid.

E: Ha! Maybe he thought this was an acceptable response because he planned on getting all up in DuChamp’s face? They do that weird straight guy thing where they puff themselves up and stare each other down and it looks like they can’t decide whether to hit each other or kiss.

T: They chose wrong.

E: 100%

T: Zach doesn’t make the team and Wiley doesn’t give a flying fuck. They’re best friends. Guess DuChamp isn’t the biggest douche in this episode.

E: Wiley is SUUUUUUUCH a dick to Zach. I assumed it was part of the transformation, like how Catherine in “Vacant Lot” gets more and more mean as she accepts things from Marie, but is that ever made clear? Is it the “new attitude” that Jake the Snake promises him, or is Wiley just an asshat when he feels like he can get away with it? That said, even when he’s being a dick, he’s not as unlikable as the older brother from “Forever Game.”

T: I think the stick affects him right from the moment he grabs it, imbuing him with confidence.

E: Confidence does not need to equal arrogance, Wiley. Eat your vegetables!

T: Erin, this is the start of some bad CGI on this series. The mid-shot of the snake is actually fine, but that close up is terrifying for all the wrong reasons. For TV in the late ’90s, it might have been passable.

E: I think if I’d seen it back then, I would’ve thought, “That looked super wrong and not real and I’m not quite sure why.” Now, of course, we’re all capable of instantly identifying bad CGI. Yeah, it’s unfortunate, especially because I feel like that close-up could've been accomplished with a realistic puppet for not that much more money?

T: The body horror is pretty decent here. Make-up effects are solid, which underscores how bad the CGI is. Even almost eating a mouse is pretty decent body horror in a way.

E: Totally! I actually think “ingestion horror” is overdue for a moment. There’s a book coming out this year about people who eat...books!! Can’t wait. And the makeup is great. I cringed every time Wiley peeled off a layer of dead skin. *shivers*

T: Does Jake just live in the basement of the school?

E: Yes? But, like, what does he eat? He seems very concerned with feeding his “friends” but not himself?

T: I guess he sneaks around the school after hours and buffets in the cafeteria?

E: He’s that level of goofy so I’ll buy it.

T: So Jake’s lit up face is kind of cool? And awful? I’m so glad they didn’t show him uncovered. What we have leaves it to the imagination while still giving us something. We get that awesome eye wink and see the lips move around the teeth. For Up All Night’s season six recap, I believe Brandon and Courtland listed Jake as both the best villain of the season and the worst.

E: LOL -- that’s fantastic. It mostly works for me, I think because it seems like the right kind of creepy for this show. And CGI snakes aside, I applaud them for trying new things. They could’ve gone for scaly, gross-out makeup here and, instead, they went for snake-demon meets Death. I dig it.

T: Ah, the ’90s, when you could just freely roam around your high school at night.

E: When I think about the amount of unsupervised time I spent at school, it kind of blows my mind. Like, if we’d tried to spend a random night at the school, do you really think the janitors would've kicked us out? I suspect not.

T: We could have made that happen. Missed opportunities.

E: Dammit!

T: I guess the theme of this episode is don’t use steroids, right? Sure, you’ll be super good at sports, but you’ll get snake rage and tiny testes.

E: LOLOLOLOL. Steroids are not funny, kids, but tiny testes? Haaaaa! But yes, I agree with this assessment. Again, I’m reminded of “Vacant Lot,” another devil’s bargain episode that was probably a giant metaphor for drugs.

T: I’m scared of snakes in real life, like full on I flee from them. But the snake pit just isn’t doing it for me.

E: Oh my god, really? I can actually handle individual snakes, but a pile of them crawling all over each other is sooooooo gross to me. I immediately thought of The Craft, where the climactic fight scene involves copious amounts of snakes, bugs, and rats.

T: Ah, the slow motion. Now that doesn’t age well, but I love that it’s included. It’s a shame more baddies aren’t defeated by hockey pucks to the head.

E: I laughed so hard and then spent the next twenty minutes imitating Zach’s slow-motion voice with my boyfriend.

T: So Wiley gets to stay a human, but all those dozens of kids Jake the Snake turned into snakes? They just leave them in the school’s basement?

E: I guess you have to break the spell before the transformation is complete? This particular solution struck me as too easy and also a repeat of what we saw in “Unfinished Painting.”

T: They have a good mix of bad endings to happy ones, and it usually feels right, but I think this story could have had a bad ending with Jake winning and it still would have worked.

E: Ooooooh — yes, I would be totally onboard with a dark ending here.

T: I appreciate Andy scaring Tucker (and the others) back. If that’s what happened? Does he set it up, or is there really something freaky in the woods? And I have to laugh at Quinn calling Andy “dink.”

E: Dink is just a kid-appropriate version of dick, right? Like crap is to shit? Fudge is to fuck? And I assumed Andy had nothing to do with it, but I really hope you’re right. I dig Andy so far, but I don’t want him to be wholly passive.

QUEER OR NOT?

T: This is a stretch, but that’s what we do here. Is there a little sexual tension between Wiley and Zach? They talk so close to each other, their friendship handshake lingers, Wiley gives Zach the flirtatious shoulder touch when he heads to the basement, and at the end of the episode, they walk off arm over shoulder. And of course this story is all about gaining power and influence by wielding a snake-themed stick, which is double phallic coded. Wiley even sleeps with it.

E: I totally felt the tension! These two would really go out on a limb for each other and there’s a physical comfort between the two of them that’s noticeable. I didn’t even think about the fact that Wiley was sleeping with a giant phallus. Fantastic.

TRIVIA, USELESS TRIVIA

T: Wiley is played by James Hayes Liboiron, who we last saw in “Manaha” as the comic-book nerdy kid.

E: Didn’t make the connection at all, but I remember him now that you say it.

T: Deuchebag Pierre DuChamp is played by Shawn Potter, who was the too-cool-for-school best friend in “A Door Unlocked.”

E: Sunglasses kid?? Holy shit.

T: The hockey list of kids includes “Ned Kandel” who is the co-creator/executive producer of AYAOTD?

E: Aw, that’s a nice little Easter egg.

T: It’s probably just me, but hearing the legend of a famous hasbeen with the surname Desmond reminds me of Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond, an unhinged recluse. I’m going to say coincidental, but I like it either way.

E: Oh interesting! Yes, probably a coincidence but there’s definitely some overlap there.

MODERNIZE ’90s CANADIAN KIDS

T: This might just be the most Canadian episode of the series. Hockey obsessed kids with heavy accents and a French-Canadian bully. For that reason alone, I say change nothing! Okay, except how goofy Jake the Snake is. And let Wiley and Zach be hockey lovin’ boyfriends.

E: Yas! Make it queer. And for the love of god, give us something better than snapping a giant phallus in two. I mean, I like the symbolism of that, but we all know it’s not intentional.

JUST GIVE IT A NUMERICAL RATING ALREADY

T: I’m surprised I liked this one as much as I did. Stories about dude bros playing sports isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but it worked for me even while I was complaining. This feels like a case of “so bad it’s good” although I hesitate to say it’s “bad.” It’s certainly enjoyable. So I’m going to give it a score that may be too high (but it almost may be too low, too). 8 CAMPFIRES OUT OF 10.

E: There’s a sly silliness here that I kinda dig, so I get what you’re saying, but the easiness of the ending bothers me a bit. I’m going with 7.7 CAMPFIRES OUT OF 10, since I do think this episode is a step above the last two.