5-9 “Small but Dangerous”

Pamela Adlon is kind of a big deal these days. This extremely talented woman carries her own show, which is a cult hit. Way back when she was wee, she played juvenile delinquent(?) Kelly Affinado in our beloved Facts. Young Pamela Adlon – then Pamela Segall – was the first of a number of younger folks cast for fear that the audience would wane as the girls grew up. She sticks around for a few episodes but is gone by season six.

At Edna’s Edibles, a police officer takes a report of vandalism on the side of the building. Jo gets sarcastic, and remarkably, the cop takes it in stride. Jo gets in a good eye roll before Mrs. Garrett, who can’t bring herself to say what was written on the wall, hands the cop a note.

Natalie: “I knew we shouldn’t have told her what it meant.”

Mrs. Garrett wrings her hands about who could possibly have done this as the cop leaves. Tootie makes my stomach churn by babbling about being “women, alone and defenseless.” Jo agrees with me.

Tootie makes a dated reference to “movies of the week,” the 80s equivalent of Lifetime movies. It’s true. “Stalked by a Vandal” would be a LMN hit. Please understand that I am not mocking the genre; I love me some Lifetime movies.

Blair suggests hiring an armed guard. Jo makes my stomach churn by saying:

“You guys are acting like a buncha girls.”

We need to stop treating “girl” as an insult. The studio audience agrees with me: the joke falls flat.

Jo, who grew up on the streets, says that graffiti is no big deal, while Mrs. Garrett frets.

Oh HAY, someone has just entered the shop!

It’s a tiny little Pamela Segall Adlon. Jo says, “You steal it, you bought it.” Mrs. Garrett protests that she is a customer, and tells her to help herself.

Jo warns that you don’t tell a kid like that to “help herself” and insinuates that she’s a criminal. She manages to be both dismissive and violent when she stalks off, saying that if the twerp gives them any more trouble, call Jo and she’ll step on her. Little Pamela Adlon looks crushed.

Mrs. Garrett apologizes to her, but Blair backs Jo up, informing Mrs. Garrett that she and Jo once caught her trying to steal an entire smoked ham by wrapping it in a blanket and pretending it was her baby brother.

Kelly: “My mistake; my brother looks like a ham!”

Blair snots that “you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Blair Warner!” Kelly proves her point by telling her that she’s got beautiful hair; even prettier than Victoria Principal.

My mother always pronounced “Principal” as if it were in Spanish, and I was convinced that Victoria Principal was a Latina. I checked. She’s not.

Now that Jo and her street smarts are gone, Kelly tells the group that she noticed the “Lords of Discipline” had left their mark on the building. The Lords of Discipline, Kelly explains, are the roughest gang in town. Mrs. Garrett frets; she can’t believe there’s a street gang in Peekskill.

Kelly says she knows the gang, and she’ll talk to them for Mrs. Garrett. Tootie asks if they’re anything like the guys in the “Beat It” video, and she replies “Totally, except they don’t have a smoke machine.” Ugh.

Tootie and Natalie banter about Natalie’s newfound interest in sociology before heading off to Eastland, which I only mention because Natalie makes this precious comment about the youth of the day:

“Short attention spans. I blame Sesame Street.”

Left alone with St. Garrett and Blair “rhymes with hair,” Kelly, who finally introduces herself, says she’ll talk to the gang, who will be in a good mood because they stole a car last night. The scene fades on Mrs. Garrett’s bewildered and concerned face.

Later, a nerdy customer who refuses to buy pasta salad because he only orders in metric introduces the scene. As he grumps out of the store, wee Pamela Adlon enters and tells them she talked to the gang for them, but it didn’t go well. They went after her with their bike chains, but she got away because “If you can outrun rats, you can outrun guys wearing fifty pounds of leather.” The girls and Mrs. G immediately show their concern.

But Tootie and Natalie must get back to cleaning, or they won’t be able to go to a movie that night. Kelly offers to help, and as they all clean, they chat.

Poor sad Kelly has seven brothers and sisters, and is on welfare. Everyone, including the studio audience, gasps.

Reagan was president, y’all.

Her dad has been out of work for two years. The family of ten lives in the same room, eats out of the same pot, and sleeps in the same bed.

“Poverty really keeps you close.”

Because I know what’s going to happen, I’m all “ewww” at this comment, but we’re supposed to believe at this point that she is an impoverished youth. Poverty is a really serious problem, and if (spoiler) Kelly’s story were real, it would be tragic. In retrospect, what Kelly is doing is even grosser than I understood it to be back in the day.

Indeed, Kelly’s story moves Natalie and Tootie, who call Kelly “brave” and invite her to the movies with them. She offers to sneak in and meet them, and only accepts their offer of paying for her admission when they point out that she’s helping them around the shop. But she insists on swiping the popcorn.

The word “swipe” has certainly undergone an evolution since the ’80s.

Back in the shop on another day, Blair works alone. Jo enters.

When Blair laments that it must be the Lords of Discipline again, Jo derides that if there were a gang in Peekskill, she’d know about it. She and Blair trade some snark before Jo agrees to look into the gang after she finishes deliveries.

On the way out, Jo snarks at Kelly, who tries to tell Jo about the gang. Jo dismisses her. Wee Pamela Adlon looks frustrated and heartbroken.

“Keep an eye on this smurf,” Jo recommends to Blair as she exits with the day’s deliveries.

Now alone in the shop with Blair, Kelly suddenly starts talking tough. She says she’s one of the Lords of Discipline’s old ladies, and she demands protection money: fifty bucks a week or they’ll “put in air conditioning,” that is, bust every window in the place. Blair announces that she’s calling the police, but as she marches to the telephone, Kelly throws a jar of olives on the floor.

“The next one goes through the window. Now hand over the cash!” Blair, cowed, fumbles with the cash register. The studio audience claps as Blair drops her head into her hands and we fade to commercial.

Later, Blair, Tootie, Natalie, and Mrs. G somberly prepare for dinner. Jo swaggers in and announces that she got the lowdown on the Lords of discipline:

“They don’t exist.”

Natalie, Tootie, and Mrs. G recall Kelly’s story about being chased with chains after trying to intervene. Jo, kick ass in her few scenes this episode, sums up Kelly’s story: “It was a crock.”

Tootie insists that Kelly wouldn’t lie, and Mrs. Garrett describes Kelly as “such a nice girl.” That is enough to break Blair, who has not yet told anyone about her earlier confrontation.

“The olives were all over the floor and she called me ‘Mrs. Potatohead” and what else could I do? I had to pay her!”

Awesome Natalie requests clarification, and Blair awkwardly explains that Kelly said she was with the Lords of Discipline, and if the shop didn’t pay her fifty dollars, she would “repair our air conditioning.” Jo is exasperated that Blair gave “that little twerp” protection money. Blair apologizes for not being an expert on this type of crime, explaining that she’d see right through her about embezzling corporate funds. The writers’ failure to point out that Blair has unique knowledge about tax fraud is unfortunate.

Tootie and Natalie haven’t given up yet; they repeat the story that dad is out of work and there are eight kids and some people besides Jo have hard lives. And just when it’s about to get too heavy for an 80s sitcom, Mindy Cohn’s comic genius lightens the mood.

Mrs. G declares that she’ll go to the police first thing in the morning and goes to bed. As soon as she is out of earshot, Jo mutters that the police will take too long and announces that she’s going to handle it herself. She’s going to track down the twerp and get the money back. The scene fades out as Jo flips through an old-timey phone book.

Think about how much damn work it must’ve been to make a publication like the telephone book when things weren’t all electronic. We still get an old-timey phone book up here in the mountains, but it’s tiny.

We find ourselves in a lovely apartment, where the doorbell rings and the apartment’s occupant enters the scene to answer the door.

Wee Pamela Adlon, looking smashing in her Guess? brand denim skirt, tries to lie that it’s not her place, she’s babysitting. The baby must’ve slipped out when she wasn’t looking. Jo calls her out and yells in her face.

“Nobody messes with Mrs. G or hits on that store!”

Here’s a story: I was raised in a grocery store; my father owned a little mom-n-pop local grocery in Albuquerque, NM for the first thirty or so years of my life. My playpen was an empty toilet paper box. It was in a rougher part of town, and it was subject to armed robberies. My three siblings were each held at gunpoint or locked in the meat cooler multiple times in their teenage years. In retrospect, that’s pretty fucked up. Regardless, after one robbery, the suspect got picked up by the cops and put into lockup. Apparently, one of the other people in lockup was the brother-in-law of one of our managers, and when he found out he was in for robbing our store, he asserted vigilante justice on the suspect. I used to think this story was hilarious. Now it’s just a sad commentary on social inequality and the fucked up prison system.

Anyway. Jo does not inflict any bodily harm on this tiny teenage girl, but she’s still pretty fuckin’ scary.

When Kelly tries to lie that she donated the money to Save the Children, Jo announces that then she’ll just wait there until Kelly can come up with it.

Jo gets increasingly terrifying until poor wee Pamela Adlon pulls the fifty bucks out of her skirt pocket and hands it over. Jo tells her that if she ever comes around the store again, she “can forget about breathing,” and as her pretend attorney I have to suggest that it was a bad idea to make a direct threat to murder a minor.

Back in the shop, the girls and Mrs. Garrett are incredulous that Kelly has a “cassette player, a stereo, and a portable Tron.” OMG a portable Tron. Do today’s gamers appreciate how far the technology has come?

Jo begs to talk about anything but Kelly, and just then her little adversary comes through the door.

Jo: “Kid, you’re in the store and you’re breathing. One of those things has got to change.”
Kelly: Mrs. Garrett, are you going to let her threaten me like that?”
Mrs. G: “Why not? She’s good at it.”

Kelly has burned her goodwill with Natalie and Tootie as well, and even Blair isn’t afraid of her anymore. Jo repeats that Kelly isn’t welcome in the store. When Kelly asks why, Mrs. Garrett is just as incredulous as I am. She points out that from day one Kelly has been full of it, and she clearly only comes around to cause trouble. Kelly protests that that’s not the only reason; she also likes the strudel.

For real though, Kelly comes around the shop because she’s lonely. Her parents are never around; she has already scored a million on Tron. She wants a place to hang out.

I attempted to write a rant about how yucky it is to hang out in a retail establishment, and then I recalled how many people hung out in my dad’s store. Typically he ended up hiring them. Many of them became like family.

Indeed, Mrs. G declares that she’s not running a home for wayward girls (are you sure?) and she’s not a parole officer (thank God). Kelly promises she’ll never steal again. Mrs. Garrett imprints upon Kelly the seriousness of that promise as only Mrs. G can.

Jo, skeptical, acknowledges that the final decision belongs to Mrs. G, but she reminds her that poor wee Pamela Adlon has pissed off everyone, including Natalie and Tootie. Kelly vows to make it up to them, explaining that she only made up that story because no one would have been interested in her if they knew that her father sells insurance and her mother makes paper loops for the PTA.

Mrs. Garrett Mrs. Garretts that Kelly never gave anyone a chance to like the real her. Kelly asks how to do that, and Mrs. G reviews rule number one: stop lying. Firm but optimistic, Mrs. G tells Kelly that if she wants her friendship, she’s going to have to earn it. She leaves with a friendly smile.

Kelly still has business with Jo, however. She demands to know why Jo has hated her from day one, even before she knew Kelly was rotten.

Jo: “I always knew you were rotten.”

And now we get to the real issue. Kelly admires the shit out of Jo. It turns out that she saw Jo in action at the motorcycle shop last year. Her dad was getting his golf cart fixed and she was with him. In ten minutes she saw Jo “fix an engine, drain a crank case, and throw a six-foot biker out on his tattoo!”

Awww, poor sad little Kelly idolized Jo and thought the best way to emulate her was to take up a life of crime. But now she explains that she just wants someone to look up to. Jo, who beneath her gruff exterior is touched, allows Kelly some space to find a place in her life.

What she wants is a Mentor. I am on the board of an organization that provides one-on-one community based mentorship to youth in my underserved rural county. Click here to donate now.