3-18: “Runaway”

In which Tootie runs off to New York City on her own and a pimp attempts to recruit her.

We open with Jo, Blair, and Natalie getting ready to head out the door so Mrs. Garrett can drive them to the train to New York City to see a Broadway show.

Neither Tootie nor Miko (the Japanese exchange student introduced five episodes earlier, who, by the way, is played by Lauren Tom, the voice of Amy on Futurama among her many other accomplishments) is accompanying them on their jaunt, and Tootie is really upset about it. She’s the actress, she says. It’s more important for her to see a real Broadway show than it is for anyone. But, Natalie says, their parents didn’t give permission, so they can’t go, and she’s just sick about the fact that Tootie can’t go but really she’s sorry not sorry. Mrs. Garrett says it’s time to go and Tootie pleads one more time for Mrs. Garrett to take her, but Mrs. Garrett shuts her down. There’s a dumb and offensive joke about Miko using an abacus, which turns out to be the only thing wrong with this episode. Following exposition about how dangerous the city is, the girls and Mrs. Garrett leave.

Ninth-grade Tootie continues to kvetch at Miko, ultimately deciding that she’s going to take the train to NYC on her own and meet the other girls in front of the theater. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.

In NYC, Blair, Jo, and Natalie enter a coffee shop. Blair is weighed down by packages from her NYC shopping spree, much to the annoyance of Jo and Natalie. It turns out that because of Blair’s shopping, the girls didn’t get tickets to the show. Blair protests that she didn’t know the woman in front of them in line was going to buy the last forty tickets. Jo points out that she was a nun, and they never travel anywhere alone.

The girls take a seat at a table in the coffee shop and squabble. Blair thinks the place is gross and is horrified when she finds a hair in her menu.

Jo blows it off, both literally (the hair), and figuratively (Blair’s kvetching). Blair continues to complain, noting that there is only one decently dressed man in the place. “Oh, you mean the pimp,” Jo responds.

Blair and Natalie are scandalized. “Where’s his fur coat? And his cigar? And his purple hat?” Blair asks. They can’t believe that guy is a pimp running a ring from right there in the coffee shop, but Jo narrates the process as it happens: the pay phone in the coffee shop rings, the pimp answers it, he summons one of his girls to meet the customer, and sends her off. Blair, predictably, is horrified, and Natalie, predictably, is fascinated. All three girls agree that it’s time get the hell out.

Back at Eastland, Mrs. Garrett has finally dragged out of Miko that Tootie took off to New York on the train. She’s livid, of course. The phone rings, and it’s Jo. Relieved, Mrs. Garrett asks to speak to Tootie. When she finds out that Tootie is not with them, she freaks out, tells them she’s coming straight to New York, and they are to wait for her at the theater. She’s madder than we’ve ever seen her.

Back in New York City, Tootie has found the very same coffee shop (Darlows Coffee Shop, it is) where the girls were. It turns out that she got on the wrong train, and then her coat got stolen, and things generally aren’t going very well, particularly since she can’t find her friends. The gruff waitress, Bernice, takes her order. In movies and TV, diner waitresses are the only people named Bernice, and the name Bernice is much more common among diner waitresses than it is in the actual real world. I’ve just learned, however, that the first female umpire in professional baseball is named Bernice, so that’s pretty awesome.

Tootie orders a hamburger and hot chocolate (ew), and Bernice requests payment in advance. “You’d be surprised how many people forget their wallets,” she says. Tootie looks for her wallet, which, natch, is gone. “Surprise!” Bernice says, and tells her she’s going to have to leave. A young girl in a dress, fur coat, and purple legwarmers (oh the ’80s) tells Bernice that she’ll cover it, and she sits down with Tootie.

Tootie’s meal financier is named Kristy, and she tells Tootie that she’s an actress and a model. Tootie, of course, is fascinated; she wants to be an actress too! Throughout this exchange, The Pimp is slyly eyeballing the table, and finally he summons Kristy.

Kristy tells The Pimp, apparently named Mike, that she’s going back out. He asks what was going on with Tootie and Kristy says she’s just a kid from upstate. “She’s got the look,” he says, and he instructs Kristy to facilitate his acquisition of Tootie. When Kristy protests, he menacingly says, “I want her.” Kristy says she’s just a kid from upstate, and she’s going home. “So were you,” says The Gross Pimp. It becomes clear that Kristy thinks she has no choice but to comply.

Kristy returns to the table, and tells Tootie that her acting class was cancelled, so she’s free to keep hanging out as we fade to commercial. When we return, Kristy and Tootie are coming back into the coffee shop having failed to find Blair, Jo, and Natalie after the show let out. The show, by the way, was Sophisticated Ladies.

The two girls banter about Kristy’s life in New York, to which she came from Ohio. Tootie is impressed that Kristy has her own apartment, and takes acting classes, and seems to have the kind of life Tootie hopes to have as an actress in New York one day. Tootie explains that she is in school at Eastland, and she wasn’t supposed to have come to NYC but she took off anyway, and she’s going to be in a world of trouble when she gets home. The two girls appear to be bonding, and Tootie is excited to have made a new friend after the crappy start to her NYC trip. Kristy orders two hot chocolates from Bernice and then follows her, ostensibly to check up on their status.

Instead, she talks to Mike the Pimp and tries to convince him that Tootie isn’t worth recruiting. Mike is not interested in Kristy’s protestations, and he instructs her to make it work.

Kristy reluctantly returns with the hot chocolate, and she says she has a great idea! Since Tootie is already going to be in trouble at school, why doesn’t she just throw caution to the wind and spend the weekend with Kristy? She offers to introduce Tootie to actors and agents and producers She begins by introducing Tootie to creepy Mike, and suggests that the three of them go back to her apartment and hang out.

I wish I could say that I never would have gone home with a stranger in a strange town when I was in ninth grade, but I’m not sure that’s true. In fact, back then – the age where you think you are a special snowflake and when people give you advice from their experience you tell them, “You’re not me,” and assume that you are so far superior to everyone else that there’s nothing you can’t do – I probably would have thought such a thing was quite glamorous. And so does Tootie. She says she needs to call Mrs. Garrett back at Eastland just so she knows Tootie is OK, but is easily persuaded that she can call from Kristy’s apartment The three prepare to leave the diner.

Mrs. Garrett, Jo, Blair, and Natalie arrive in front of the theater after walking all over New York City looking for Tootie. Today, they’d’ve just called her phone. Blair complains that her feet are killing her, all because she wore stupid shoes that matched her skirt instead of wearing practical, non-heeled shoes like I would have worn.

Outside the theater, the girls and Mrs. Garrett discuss their options. Blair speculates that Tootie has already gone back home and is sitting there warm and comfortable, and that they should join her. Nearby, a middle-aged couple watch the girls and Mrs. Garrett and speculate that they are scalping tickets, which they want. The woman insists that the husband go ask them, and in one of the show’s comic interludes, they mistake the man’s intentions and think he’s trolling for them, not tickets. When he says to Mrs. Garrett, “I need two for tonight,” awesome Natalie hilariously says, “Which two?” while Mrs. Garrett whacks him with her purse and indignantly declares that the girls are not for sale.

Once the misunderstanding is cleared up (hardy har har), the girls and Mrs. Garrett agree that calling Eastland to see if Tootie has returned is a good idea. Natalie remembers that there is a phone in the coffee shop and they head over to use it.

Meanwhile, at the coffee shop, Mike talks to the other girls and Kristy is somewhere else (bathroom?) leaving Tootie alone with Bernice. Tootie blithers about how when she woke up this morning she had no idea she’d be spending the night in New York! Bernice uses her urgent-whisper voice to tell Tootie that Mike is a pimp and Kristy is a hooker, and Tootie takes great offense to this accusation. “They’ve been really nice to me,” she says. Bernice informs her that “those nice people are going to take you to a nice apartment, give you a nice warm drink, and you’re going to wake up three days later!”

Tootie sees Mike take a phone call and collect money from another one of the girls. Do you want to be for sale? Like Kristy?” warns Bernice. Tootie, clearly, has begun to reconsider.

Kristy returns, and Tootie confronts her. Kristy admits that she is indeed a prostitute, and Tootie is stunned by her nonchalance. “It’s not so bad,” Kristy insists, “When I came here, I had nothing. Now I’ve got an apartment, and super new clothes, and one day, I’m going to be a great actress!” Tootie has apparently seen enough teenage prostitute movies to know that ain’t the way it works out, and she mournfully says, “Oh, Kristy.” Kristy begs Tootie to come home just for the one night to get her off the hook with Mike. Before she can respond, Mike returns and Tootie informs him that she’s not coming home with them. He’s pissed. At Kristy. He presumes that she encouraged Tootie to back out, and it seriously looks like Kristy is going to get a pimp beat-down later.

But we’ll never know. Because right then, Mrs. Garrett and the girls walk in. “Tootie!” exclaims Mrs. Garrett in obvious relief. She says she doesn’t know whether to hug Tootie or strangle her, and Natalie helpfully suggests, “Hug now, strangle later.” Tootie wants to get home as soon as possible. As they walk out, Natalie sees Tootie glance at Kristy and asks who she is. Tootie says, “Just a girl I was talking to.”

In retrospect this is a pretty sad episode. And poor Kristy – we’ll never know what happened to her. Maybe I should write fanfic.