A Very Special Episode
I bought the DVD’s of 21 Jump Street back when they came out, and have been slooowly working my way through them. I saw nearly all of the episodes when I was a kid, and it’s fun to see exactly what I do and don’t remember. For instance…I remembered that I had the almost-required crush on Johnny Depp, but I had no idea I’d dressed THAT badly. We lived in such a copycat period that I see kids on the show wearing identical outfits to those I owned. Down to the brands of clothing, the lace in the hair, the plastic hoop earrings, and the velcro Reeboks. Uuugh. I’m watching me on that show.
I own a fair number of television series on DVD at this point, but nearly all of them have some sort of science fiction spin to them. They’re not really grounded in our reality in one way or another. This is the first time I’ve watched something on DVD and had so many “god I remember that” moments that refer to either events in real life, trends of the period, or just stupid things going on in the culture. For example, the Very Special Episode, of which 21 Jump Street had many.
This is the first time I’m glad I bought a set of DVDs not just for the show itself, but for the memories it inspires. Someday, kids can watch this stupid show that I still adore, and see how wacky things were then. Bad kids didn’t shoot good kids, they gave them wedgies; you were told to Just Say No and expected to listen; the Big Bang was stirring up trouble in Bio class (oh wait, that’s still happening…); people were blockading public schools to keep kids with AIDS out – hell, AIDS was an instant death sentence; Bernie Goetz…there are a billion other examples from large to small that I can give from the show.
I’m not calling 21 Jump Street a historical reference or anything. But to a kid who grew up in the 80′s, it does capture a point in time. I will always tie the day the Gulf War started to 21 Jump Street in my head because the news cut into the show to put the President on the air. I remember everything else about that moment, but the fact that my brother and I were watching 21 Jump Street has always been the strongest association for me.
I think if I had caved in and bought the 90210 box set I might have written this entry about those, although that series was later. That’s part of why I didn’t buy them – I REALLY remember all of 90210. Every single time I catch an episode on TV I either remember the entire plot, or remember it was a later episode from the “bad seasons” where I only half paid attention. I don’t really care to rewatch 90210. I barely remembered 21 Jump Street, and I was the right age for them to have shown up in my classroom, so I bought that. I’m quite happy with my decision.
And as an added plus, Johnny Depp’s hotter than Luke Perry. 
