We've Come To Bury Rags To Riches (In A Bomb Shelter), Not Praise It

As I've gone through Rags To Riches -- a show I only revisited due to vague fond memories of its first run, when I was a fairly uncritical pre-teen -- I've found it, from my perspective as a geriatric forty-year-old, nonsensical or offensive when it wasn't just lazy or boring. But the exercise of comparing it, on occasion, to Beverly Hills, 90210 -- a show that was also targeted directly to me when it premiered and whose characters were exactly my age when it started (and a year younger by the end due to their having repeated their junior year in Season 2) -- has made me wonder if I'd feel differently about 90210 if it hadn't been continuously airing somewhere or other since it premiered, and getting devoured by me over and over and over again. If Rags To Riches had been a bigger hit, would my nostalgic affection for it have grown through repeated viewings in syndication? Would its budgets have gotten bigger, allowing for a stricter representation of the period setting in the girls' wardrobes? If it had lasted longer, would its writers' understanding of their characters deepened and resulted in episodes that worked better overall? Would I quote its most enduring lines and follow its cast into even the most cockamamie late-career projects (yes, I did watch every minute of not just True Tori but Jennie Garth's home-renovation show on HGTV!)?

We'll never know for sure, because Rags To Riches barely staggered through twenty episodes spread across two seasons. But I'm pretty sure the answer to all the above questions is no. Guys? It's REAL BAD.

And not only is it real bad: its very last aired episode (I say "aired" because TV.com has synopses for a further three that, if they were ever made, didn't make it onto my "complete series" DVDs), "Sweet Sixteen," hints at the maudlin "issue" episodes that might have been inflicted upon us had it gone on. You thought the description of Rose's Japanese mother/GI father backstory was cringey, or waited for Marva's recording-artist friend in "Songs In The Key Of Marva" to explicitly attribute her career misfortunes to racism (as only ended up kind of being implied)? Well, strap in for "Sweet Sixteen," because THE FOLEYS ARE GETTING A BOMB SHELTER.

After a routine duck-and-cover drill at school, Mickey comes home terrified that she's going to be vaporized in a nuclear attack, and for once, it's not her fault: Bobby, some other shithead in her class, has a dad, Ralph, who "was at Alamogordo," where he apparently learned a lot about nuclear weaponry and nothing about explaining things to children in age-appropriate ways, because Bobby's gone to school to tell Mickey et al about the effects of radiation on vulnerable human bodies. And when Nick goes over to talk to Ralph about maybe soft-soaping his talk of atomic doom so that Mickey can sleep at night, Ralph just doubles down. Nick is able to maintain his equanimity for a while -- but not for long, because then all of a sudden it's the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nick goes back to Ralph's to find out what Ralph thinks the news isn't telling anyone, and Nick leaves the encounter so alarmed that he decides to build a bomb shelter...which he's able to pull off in what looks like a day even though it's THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS, which one would think would increase demand for quickie bomb shelter construction exponentially. So much for Diane's big sweet sixteen party: it's not going to be that festive underground, particularly since no one thought to bring, I don't know, a BOARD GAME or MORE THAN ONE BOOK.

DON'T WORRY, THOUGH: THEY'VE GOT MICKEY'S FUCKING SAXOPHONE, BECAUSE WHAT COULD BE MORE USEFUL IN AN ENCLOSED SPACE UNDERGROUND THAN A BLEATY WOODWIND INSTRUMENT TOOTLED UPON BY AN UNSKILLED CHILD?! Talk about the living envying the dead.

For our very last visit with the Foleys, I thought I should end things as I began: counting down the elements of the episode from best to worst.

1. Rose & Marva
   Since the former manages not to be a complete pinko and the latter doesn't even attempt arson, it's a pretty solid showing from both of them. They've definitely each done worse over the course of the series than encourage their girliest sister to see if Nick will bankroll a sweet sixteen party for her.
2. Diane
   Diane can be kind of a ditz, but wanting to throw this party is normal teen behaviour, as is pouting about it when an international nuclear standoff scuttles her plans.
   

   Could I have done without her derailing the party she eventually has after Nick comes to his senses and releases them from the bunker (of which more later) by leading a rewritten-lyrics singalong to "Drift Away," a song that won't be released until eleven years after the events of this episode? Sure, we all could. But it's just smurfy as opposed to genuinely offensive.


3. Clapper
   Okay, so let me get this straight. The one object Clapper brings down to the bomb shelter is a photo of some broad he was involved with before "The War," and who took up with another dude while Clapper was away. Sure, it happens. EXCEPT at the time this episode was filmed, Douglas Seale was seventy-four years old. The events of this episode are definitely taking place in October 1962. Are we supposed to think that Clapper was serving in active combat when he was in his fifties? And don't even with "Maybe he meant the other War!" because then WHY WOULD THE BIG IN-BUNKER MUSICAL NUMBER (because, yes, there is one) revolve around "We'll Meet Again"? That's a WWII song! I guess we know why this is one of about four facts about Clapper's life that we ever learn: (a) no one on the writing staff cared enough to think through his timeline, and (b) no one anywhere cared about Clapper.
4. Patty
   "Patty wrote a letter to Moscow." Need I go on? No. Farewell, Patty: I hope you eventually figured out you were so hostile to that classmate of yours because you couldn't understand you were both baby dykes.
5. Ralph
   Bobby is kind of a goon, but he's also just a kid. What kind of terrible father is that frank with a child of MAX ten years old about what could happen to him if he didn't properly duck and cover?
   

   The kind who decorates with Einstein portraits, I guess. And also, for someone who says he's so goddamn concerned about losing his security clearance, he sure has loose lips whenever Nick comes sniffing around looking for nuclear secrets, including CALLING NICK ON THE PHONE to try to get him to come to an airstrip and take off for what I can only assume ends up being the island from Lost.

6. Nick
   I could complain all day (and already have, at length) about what a terrible character/father/person Nick is, so it's fitting that the series ends with by far his very worst behaviour yet. I get that the nuclear paranoia of the early '60s generally and the actual thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in particular were a fraught time, and that probably laymen didn't really understand how pressing were the risks the American citizen actually faced. But Nick's hassling Ralph shows his rich-guy entitlement at its grossest, and the way he completely gives in to his panic and impulsively has a bomb shelter built (probably shoddily, btw, given how fast it gets done) proves my point once again that he isn't fit to look after a budgie, never mind five variously messed-up orphans. I guess it's a good thing he finds Patty's letter in the shower and decides that living in fear isn't living at all, so that Diane gets to have her titular party. But then I really hope that social worker from the clip show I ignored comes back and finally removes them all from his care on the grounds of DOOMSDAY FUCKING PREPPER.

7. Mickey
   Oh, Mickey. You tiny sack of crap. Don't pray to God for "everyone to forgive" each other so your family isn't all incinerated in a nuclear blast.
   

   Pray I never find you.