6-5: “Cruisin'”

A few weeks ago, one of my readers suggested three episodes to recap. Two of them were Halloween episodes, which I haven’t definitively decided to save for the season, but I am still keeping that option open. The other was “Cruisin’.” Yes, C-r-u-i-s-i-n-apostrophe. I like and appreciate my readers, so when there are requests, I do my best to honor them.

Said reader described the episode as “an anomalous episode that sticks in my mind, the uncannily laugh-track-free cruising episode.” It’s interesting how much the lack of laugh track makes this episode stand out. I, too, noticed that it lacked a laugh track when I watched season six for the first time in a while last month. I even went back to other episodes to verify the existence of a laugh track, because I wasn’t sure if I just hadn’t noticed until then that there wasn’t one (there is indeed a laugh track in the other episodes). I nearly mentioned that fact in my bird’s eye analysis of season six, but there was so much else to cover, so I didn’t get to that nugget.

Regardless, here we are. Blair and Jo are sophomores in college, Natalie is a senior at Eastland, and Tootie is a junior, and the girls decide to spend a night out cruising downtown Peekskill.

Did you ever go cruising? I did. I cruised Montgomery street in Albuquerque when I was in high school. I got my driver’s license at 15 and inherited my sister’s old car, a 1980 Datsun 210.

That picture looks like it was taken in Albuquerque. That might be the actual car.

At 15 you don’t have a lot to do with your free social time, so I went cruising. I don’t recall it ever resulting in anything notable, which is probably a good thing.

Our show opens with a dark, yet unmistakable, closeup of the car’s license plate, lest we have any question as to whose car it is.

I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops (you know, the “sugar pie honey bunch” song) is on the radio, and Tootie and Natalie are enthusiastically singing along. Blair and Jo are clearly not into this, and though it’s Blair’s car and Jo is driving, they stick it out because Natalie has wanted to go cruising since she was 12. What good friends (despite the incessant complaining).

OH! Blair doesn’t actually own the car, it turns out – “Daddy was nice enough to lend [her] this while [her] Porsche is in the shop.” The car does look sort of unluxurious to me, but I don’t really know from fancy cars.

Tootie expounds on the sociological and anthropological implications of cruising: thousands of young people driving the streets on Saturday nights is the equivalent of a primitive mating ritual. Natalie, who has already confessed that she’s hoping to meet college guys on this adventure is on board with that assessment. Natalie is horny. And it’s so perfect for her character. In retrospect, it was perfect that Lisa Whelchel refused to be the virginity-loser in season nine. It’s so much more Natalie than Blair.

Blair and Jo bicker over the rear-view mirror, which Blair is trying to use to fix her hair and makeup, and Jo is trying to use to drive. Pshaw. Y’know, Jo is kind of a killjoy a lot of the time. I totally get it – the pressure on her to perform beyond her history can get pretty intense sometimes, and I know how that kind of pressure can make a person tend toward the humorless. I mean, obviously the rear-view mirror is for driving and not makeup, but Jo can lighten up a little when they’re on a straight, flat road in the middle of nowhere.But no, instead, Jo intentionally swerves (dangerously), claiming a squirrel on the road (lie), so that Blair screws up her lipstick.

Jo has really been pissing me off lately. I grew up Team Jo, but as I watch more closely and with the benefit of life experience, I find her to be a little too shitty sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of vanity/makeup/the beauty myth/Blair’s bullshit, but Jo could use an Ativan. Or a bowl. Someone introduce Jo to Helen Hunt’s character. Anyway, I think I’ve just firmly switched to Team Natalie.

Tootie interrupts Blair and Jo’s bickering to request some “tunage.” I probably said that at least once. That doesn’t make it OK. They turn the radio dial, which probably looks like this:

After rejecting the religious station and a report on a soybean plant disease, they are excited to have The Big Five Seven (which I think is supposed to be a radio frequency but clearly is not) “rocking them into Saturday night” with Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” and we fade to downtown Peekskill.

The two features date the show but the Friday/Saturday midnight show is timeless.

Natalie wonders where all the guys are. Tootie thinks it’s just too early, but Blair laments that they don’t know anything about cruising because “it’s part of the seemier side of life.” I think she means “seedier” and she got “seedy” and “seemly” mixed up in her head. Or the writers did, and that’s sad. Anyway, I wouldn’t say “seedy” so much as “young” and “bored.” College guys probably aren’t cruising. College guys are probably at a kegger.

Oh god – Blair actually says that cruising is something that “hicks and street people” do. Writers! I mean, I guess that’s sort of consistent with Blair’s character, but she’s always been smart enough for the judgment to be more subtle. All of this is just a set-up for her to get a dig in at Jo, of course, following her “hicks and street people” comment with a request for Jo to clarify the protocol. Jo tells the other three that they’re on their own. Jo’s just the driver.

Unsurprisingly, the writers are all for stereotypes, since after a bit of pleading Jo reveals her cruising past. In the Bronx, you drive up and down the street at exactly 15 miles per hour, because “if you drive too fast you can’t see the guys, and if you drive too slow, they’ll steal your tires.” Ha ha ha ha Bronx = crime.

Blair argues with Natalie and Tootie about the relevant merits of Blair’s cool approach (flip hair and look the other way) compared to Natalie and Tootie’s direct approach (point and hoot). Jo, meanwhile, gawks at another great body: that of a ’56 Corvette. Tootie comments on a car full of girls and Natalie tells her she’s confused, which is totally not cool because maybe Tootie is bi or pan. Blair sees a girl she doesn’t like and hides from her because she’s afraid the girl will tell everyone she saw Blair cruising, then as soon as the car makes a turn, Blair comments that ha, her enemy must be really hard up for a date if she’s cruising.

These jokes are a little too on the nose. Maybe that’s why they didn’t go with a laugh track. These are jokes that elicit both a laugh and a groan, and the laugh track might have made it seem like the jokes are trying too hard. I try to imagine the conversation behind the scenes when they decided to forego a laugh track for this episode. It’s pretty groundbreaking for the 80s.

The fifth main character in this episode, the radio, announces that it’s almost time for “Wild Bob’s Rock and Roll Trivia Contest.” Tootie is very excited; she loves contests. Every hour there’s a new question, and the winner gets two tickets to the ABBA reunion concert. This was pre- Mama Mia. Prescient.

Apparently Tootie is the biggest ABBA fan ever now, and she has to have those tickets, even though she can’t name one of their songs. I get it. There was a time when I wanted to win just to win, whether I wanted the prize or not. I’ve won a lot of radio contests. A lot of my friends know me as the one who wins radio contests. And I was briefly a minor celebrity in Houston when I was a regular on the local morning sports talk show. That was a weird time. If you want to know more about my life then, you can watch the movie big fan, substituting the Astros for the giants. Except I didn’t live in my parents’ basement. I had my own apartment, to which I regularly took dudes. So I guess I’m pretty different from the main character in big fan except for the radio part.

Anyway the first question is: “Stone Poneys produced what superstar of rock and roll?” Tootie quickly comes up with Linda Rondstadt. I have never heard of Stone Poneys. I googled “Stone Ponies” to see if they were real, and learned the proper spelling, and indeed, they were Linda Rondstadt’s first band (I was confused by the use of the verb “produced,” though).

Tootie sees a phone (remember?) and insists that Jo stop the car. Actually she doesn’t really wait for Jo to stop the car, she just sort of pushes Blair’s seat forward (I can’t get a good screen cap of it, but it’s really funny), and leaps out of the car. Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'” plays in the background as we fade to commercial. Are we supposed to be worried that something bad happens to Tootie? Of course we know that nothing does, since there are nearly four more seasons of the show with her in them, but at the time, it might’ve been scary.

Back from commercial we learn that Tootie is pissed because Natalie took her last dime (DIME!) and so Tootie had to “ask a bum for change,” which he took off his shoe to give her, and she didn’t get through in time to win. Still, though, she is excited to have talked to Wild Bob. I remember when DJs were celebrities.

Another thing that makes this episode unique is that it is so dialogue-based. I haven’t taken many screen caps from the episode because most of them look like this:

This episode doesn’t rely on a Very Special Theme, or a misunderstanding, or a conflict, or really even a plot. It’s a show about “nothing,” you might say.

And so it continues as Jo is impressed with the fact that the driver’s seat adjusts six different ways, Natalie wants to roll down the window, and Blair refuses to allow her to do so because closed windows make you seem “aloof and unattainable” while open windows make you seem “easy.” Ack, the slut-shaming! Look, I acknowledge that the show is still a product of its time and is far from perfect, but it does a lot of things better than other shows did. Anyway Natalie suggests a compromise on the window: halfway down for “discriminating yet approachable.” That’s my Nat.

Natalie, who is now apparently “a sucker for a man in leather,” gawks at a biker, whose bike Jo analyzes as “450 CCs, fuel-injected, and dual exhausts,” which kind of sounds like a goofy dirtbike that would be ridden by someone who wouldn’t wear leather, but would rather wear one of these:

I try not to wear leather anymore, what with the vegan thing and all, but I’m glad to have my legacy leather and faux leather synthetics, ’cause they do look way cooler on a Harley than all that colorful shit.

Anyway, Natalie leans out the window to holler at the dude, and Blair pushes her back in and tells Tootie to slap a seat belt on her. It’s only now that I realize that none of them are wearing seat belts. It’s true. We just didn’t wear seat belts in 1984.

Blair finally sees some men she approves of. She points out the “very classy guys” next to them. Natalie and Tootie, of course, lean, gawk, and drool, much to Blair’s chagrin. Tootie thinks the boys like them! They’re stopping! And then…

I can’t remember the last time I either mooned or got mooned. That was definitely a thing at one time, though. Do kids in their teens and 20s still do it? Have I simply outgrown it, or has it gone out of fashion? Blair is mortified. Jo is as entertained as I am. She and I are both twelve-year-olds at heart.

Blair, just wanting to get out (get over it, Warnsie), tells Jo to just drive. When Jo protests that it’s a red light, Blair says she doesn’t care. That’s all bad-girl Jo wants to hear, of course, and she flips a u-turn right then and there. That’s doesn’t go over so well with local law enforcement. Jo points out that at least they’ll meet a guy, which, ugh. Obviously it could be a female cop.

Once one’s cruising plans go south, where does one end up? The drive-in, of course.

Blair and Jo bicker about who was more stupid in front of the officer. Apparently Blair told the officer that Natalie was in labor. Natalie points out with pride that she bit down on her seat belt. I love you, Natalie. An irritated Jo turns off the radio, which incenses Tootie, who still hopes to win the radio contest. By the way, the Warnermobile is a Cadillac of some kind.

The menu consists of “Phil’s cheesesteak, the Phil Burger, the Chili Philly, and Phil-in-a-basket.” My favorite drive-in food back in the day was Mac’s Steak in the Rough. Obviously I was not yet vegan.

Obviously, our fab four have been to Phil’s before, because everyone wants the usual, and Jo orders “two Phil Burgers, one with no cheese, two Chili Phillies, two strawberry shakes, a coke, and an order of fries.” Jo asks for a repeat back and we get an incomprehensible slur from the speaker, which I think is another on-the-nose joke about how you can never understand anything through a drive-in speaker, but which instead is a set-up about how only JO can understand the drive-in speaker.

Tootie sees a woman alone in a car and laments about the sadness of a woman alone on a Saturday night escaping the loneliness of her tiny apartment. We see the back of her head, and it’s so obviously Mrs. Garrett that it strains credulity that Tootie didn’t realize that.

Jo notes Mrs. Garrett’s independence and enjoyment of her own company, while Tootie, Natalie, and Blair feel guilty for being out on the town while sad Mrs. Garrett is forced to come out all alone. Except she isn’t. She, unlike the girls, has a date! With a silver fox named Dirk.

Oh snap. My approval of that little joke in no way endorses the implication that a night out without a man is a failure.

The food comes as Blair panics about being seen and Tootie freaks out about another chance to win ABBA tickets. Our question: “What group recorded the albums English Rose, Mystery to Me, and Heroes are Hard to Find?” Tootie’s answer: Fleetwood Mac. True. I didn’t know that.

Tootie knocks Blair out of the car as she flees for the pay phone, and Blair is forced to engage with her nemesis. Jo starts collecting for the food: $3.75 is on Natalie, $4.25 on Blair. Later, we find out that the total is $9.75. That means that Tootie and Jo spent a total of $1.75 together. Because I do these things, I’ve figured out the following

There’s a special that gives you two Phil Burgers and a coke for $1.75. A Chili Philly and a strawberry shake come to $3.75 together, and it’s another $0.50 for an order of fries. Or the fries and the coke could be swapped.

Anyway, Natalie is $0.75 short (how sad) and Blair tries to pay with a primitive Diner’s Club card, because that’s all she has.

Jo informs Blair that dives don’t take Diner’s Club (oh the 80s, when credit cards were rare), and Jo only has enough for her own (handy that she’s carrying exactly 88 or 89 cents with her). In Tootie’s purse, they find eight…dimes, so she’s short too, but that’s exactly what she should have if she got ten dimes for a dollar and made two phone calls.

Oh no! They don’t have enough money to pay for their food! Blair suggests going in and explaining to Phil that they can’t pay. Jo is afraid of the person standing by the door with the tattoos and the biceps, who is Mrs. Phil (ha ha ha women with tattoos and muscles = scary).

Jo suggests that as soon as Tootie gets back, they’ll bolt. An interesting project one of these days might be to figure out exactly how much time the girls could have served throughout the course of the series. It might be too much work to look up the New York statutes and Peekskill City Ordinances from ’80-’88, but it still might be worth it to inventory their crimes. Off the top of my head, I can think of grand theft auto, whatever charges come with making and carrying a fake ID, shoplifting, the traffic violation earlier in this episode, and now another theft charge. And I’m sorry to have to say it but Jo was the instigator for all of them. Yikes.

Jo does say they’ll come back and pay tomorrow, so we know she doesn’t mean to be a thug, but yeah, that’s when you’ve got to just go in and explain. But no, they pull Tootie (fifth caller, they were looking for the fourth) into the car and bail.

Natalie worries about getting arrested. Blair worries about her father being called. Jo worries about being seen and just wants to lie low (she says “lay low,” but that’s wrong) for a while. Tootie worries about the french fry in Blair’s hair.

Jo pulls into a closed gas station to just park for a while. Tootie is delighted to see that there’s a phone booth nearby. She finally confesses that she doesn’t care about winning the contest, she just wants the “instant fame” that comes with being a winner and getting your name on the radio. Yeah that doesn’t really happen.

It’s weird when there’s no laugh track and you recognize that something is supposed to be a joke but you don’t find it particularly funny. When there’s a laugh track, it’s no big deal and you just kind of move on. With no laugh track, I feel sort of guilty, as if the character’s joke fell flat and now the two of us are awkwardly standing there. Also when there’s a laugh track, you’re probably used to leaving space for it to be inserted after jokes, so that might contribute to the awkwardness.

Our fifth main character in this episode now gives us “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’.” The girls all get into it, creating a cute moment where they sing it together. I would just like to point out that this is two years before Top Gun was released.

The song fades into the last chance for tickets to ABBA. Our question: What famous rock and roller played the Pinball Wizard in the movie Tommy?” For suspense’s sake, Tootie has a much more difficult time figuring this one out than she did the other two, even though it’s a much easier question. Or maybe that it’s just that it’s in my wheelhouse, so I know the answer. It’s Elton John. Tootie can’t come up with it and makes Natalie help her, and Natalie blurts out the first thing that comes to her mind, which happens to be “Elton John.” I don’t find that that unreasonable. I found out that Peter Gabriel was the original singer of Genesis when I guessed it blindly while playing trivial pursuit at the approximate age of ten or so.

Unfortunately, the phone is broken and Tootie can’t get through. And now the car won’t start! Blair blames Jo’s driving. Jo blames Tootie’s radio. They can’t call Blair’s auto club because the phone is broken; they can’t walk to the nearest phone booth because that’s Phil’s, which they’ve just ripped off. Natalie starts panicking that they’re in the middle of nowhere and are going to get attacked. This whole sequence would be impossible today because they would all have phones.

But anyway it turns out that the car wouldn’t start only ’cause Jo didn’t have it in park. Ha ha ha zany mistake. It’s midnight and they’re heading home. Blair confesses that she kind of hoped she’d meet someone special. Jo remembers a time in the Bronx when she and a dude circled each other for three hours but she never got his name. Nat looks on the bright side and they all agree they’re ready for bed. Wild Bob plays ABBA as his shift ends, dedicating it to “persistent caller” Tootie Ramsey. OK that just wouldn’t happen. If you’re not the winner, the DJ just says, “Sorry, you’re caller four” or whatever and hangs up. You don’t have enough of a conversation with the DJ for him or her to remember your name and give you a shout out on the air.

But that’s totally what I would have wanted in her situation.

This, ladies and gentlemen, was a tale. Simply a tale of four close girlfriends sharing a Saturday night in a car in the 80s. You can tell I enjoyed it, because this recap is long. In fact, I can’t say I don’t wish I’d been in the car with them. I probably would have won the ABBA tickets.