What is your favorite episode of the ABC after school special.

[JVS]

I was a bit too young to want to watch them, but I'd like to know any amusing story lines that they had. Maybe they'll release them on DVD soon.

[HEyHEY]

1. We had our CBC ones up North

"How's is going eh? Wanna buy some dope?"

[Reverend_Smitty]

2. The one where Helen Hunt falls out of a window

I think she was high on Meth or something, I never saw the whole thing but the parts that I saw were hilariously bad

[arwalden]

3. That Episode Was Called "DESPERATE LIVES" (1982)

Actress Helen Hunt, famous for her voice work in the cartoon Captain Planet, wasn't always so famous.

In the early '80s, Hunt starred in what may have been the most memorable and truly great After School Special: Desperate Lives.

A school psychologist (played by Dr. Joyce Brothers) is making little headway in getting the kids off drugs. It isn't until Sandy (Hunt), a wayward teen who enjoys a few tokes of the old Mary Warner now and again, smokes a joint laced with PCP and jumps through a second-story window that administration begins to notice the burgeoning drug epidemic.

Apparently, Hunt enjoyed the angel dust so much, she also appeared in the made-for-TV movie Angel Dusted, about a young boy who smokes some homemade dust and freaks out, thinking he's covered with bugs. Mad about you? More like mad about angel dust.

The lesson: Helen Hunt's drug problem is far worse than any of us expected.

[Culture Mind]

11. Desperate Lives

Is that the one where she jumps out the window and then uses a piece of the glass to scrape the "omg i'm trippin' on pcp" bugs off of her arms?

I remember one (might have been a movie of the week or something) where the main character/drug-addled teen beats up her little sister for money for dope and ends up at a tough-love type prison for kids on dope. classic.

[JVS]

13. Welcome to DU

[Nevernose]

18. Welcome! And I think I know that movie

Was it Not MY Daughter? It was a movie of the week, if we're talking about the same one. Pure cinematic genius.

[Nevernose]

15. Wow, that PCP sounds like some good shit

I'm gonna have to go find some...

[arwalden]

4. The Fawn Story

This was truly a one-of-a-kind After School Special. By that, I mean, it was on after school...but I guess there really wasn't anything special about it. Jenna (Kristy MacNichol), a little girl whose heart is bigger than her respect for authority, finds a dying deer on the side of the road.

Then, in a very un-After School Special-like fashion, decides to nurse it back to health with the help of her little brother. But, little does she know, helping dying animals is illegal. The authorities get involved and Jenna totally gets busted.

The lesson: We've got to start wiping out hippies while they're young. Helping animals is a "gateway good deed" that almost always leads to stuff like recycling, feeding the homeless and listening to the String Cheese Incident.

[Gothic Sponge]

5. Strangers with Candy

Oh..... wait! ;)

[Reverend_Smitty]

6. "Best Little Girl in the World"

Thats a gem about eating disorders that we were forced to watch in Health class. It stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and the Priest from the Exorcist as well as...Helen Hunt

[JVS]

7. what happened in it?

[Reverend_Smitty]

8. Heres a link

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=4934

[flamingyouth]

9. Death of Richie (1977) with Robby Benson

http://imdb.com/title/tt0075923/ :D

[meegbear]

10. Ooops ...

the one with Timer and the 2 kids who explore Little Red Riding Hood's body.

[JVS]

12. you changed your episode

[meegbear]

14. I don't recall ... had to edit it ...

that was an ABC movie of the week. D'oht!

[JVS]

19. Close enough

[TlalocW]

16. The story about a little girl at school

Who was rejected by her classmates, and no one would play with her so she would go home after school and eat ice cream - gallons of it, and before long she was huge - not fat - I mean Godzilla-sized, and she rampaged through the town knocking over buildings, uprooting trees, etc. and then she stomped the school while everyone was in it.

Taught me to be nice to little girls who liked ice cream.

I think Helen Hunt was in it too.

TlalocW

[JVS]

20. Surreal

[CanuckAmok]

17. "Marv Hammerman is Going to Kill Me"

Good ol' "take your punishment like a man" parable.

[JVS]

21. kick

[baldguy]

22. "I was a teen-aged Investment Trader"

About the horrors of being seduced by Republicans.

[pagerbear]

23. "Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack"

About a girl jealous of the attention her mother gives other adolescents as a drug counselor, who sabotages an award ceremony for her mother as revenge.

[SarahB]

24. Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic

Starring Linda Blair. Wasn't an after school special, but I remember seeing it somewhere (when it was probably 10 years old at the time). Probably some church group thing. Creepy. :scared:

http://guardian.imdb.com/title/tt0073659/