It's time once again to cover another weird episode, and this week we're looking at the television series Goosebumps. I mean, for Goosebumps, a show based on the bizarre horror works of R.L. Stine, weirdness is pretty par for the course. I should know, I covered the original 62 books. At first I was considering covering the television adaptation as a part of the Gooseblog, and that might still be the case, but when I reminded myself of this episode from the third season, I figured it was worth a look. An Old Story is the television adaptation of a short story from Still More Tales To Give You Goosebumps, a short story compilation. And in terms of creepiness for all the wrong reasons, it might just be the best candidate for this blog.
We open the episode with our protagonists Tom and Jon lamenting over having nothing to eat, so they head downstairs to the basement to find food. Jon is the scaredy cat of the two and is quick to dash back up the stairs, when the two kids see a figure above the stairway.
It's their creepy aunt Dahlia who they've met before, but seems more eager to be around them. She pinches their cheeks and talks about how she knows the girls are going to go wild for them "when they're older". Okay, alarm at yellow right now. They leave her as she pulls out an ominous bag from her purse and begins to whip something up.
While the kids are enjoying playing on their virtual reality headsets that are so cheesy looking they're amazing (it literally looks like they glued random K'nex pieces on them), Aunt Dahlia scares them, and hands them a plate of cookies. Cookies with moving filling. Alarm starting to dip beyond yellow, but not concerned just yet. They're prune cookies, which she says is an old family recipe. She then guilt trips them into eating some, which they ultimately oblige. They end up enjoying the cookies. Viewer beware, you're in for taste testing.
Sure enough, the two kids wake up the next day and they've suddenly started to rapdily age. As in they're old men already, complete with arthritis and poor hearing. Their hair is even falling out in clumps. Aunt Dahlia is fine with all this, not in the usual Goosebumps parental figure way of sheer ignorance, but because this is all part of the plan. What plan you might ask?
To pimp these now elderly children out to her old cougar friends. And now we are are full red alarm, people. And they don't even make it out like this is the first time either. They've clearly done this before. But there's a dilemma, they're out of milk! Tom offers to go get more, but Jon is left to entertain these horny old crones.
By the time Tom comes back, both kids have now aged even further, and the lust from the old ladies has gotten even steamier. They try to find a way to escape, but are ultimately caught and forced to play the most awkward game of Bridge you've ever seen.
Jon goes to find any way to reverse the effects, but almost gets caught by Aunt Dahlia and one of the old women who explain things further. And there are no shades of gray on this, well other than the hairs in their head. Dahlia literally turned these two kids old and sold them to these old women to marry. To hell with looking for actual old people, let's just rob twelve year olds of their youth and pimp them out. This is the most pedoriffic thing I've seen out of Goosebumps, and I've read Egg Monsters From Mars!
Tom and Jon seem to be out of luck. Even Tom's given up, realizing he'll have to get used to his "early retirement". Then he raids the cupboard and finds a jar of baby food and starts eating it. And somehow, this counteracts the prune cookies, turning him back to normal. Jon follows suit. The old crones show up again, not happy that their suitors are now youngsters. We get a struggle between the preteens and the septuagenerians over the baby food which spills on the floor. Aunt Dahlia has a back up to age them back up with prune juice in the fridge, so Tom grabs it and throws it at her, the effect turning her into...
Keith Richards?
And with creepy pimp Dahlia literally dusted, Tom and Jon send the other old crones running off. It's a happy ending... if this weren't Goosebumps and needed a twist.
It turns out that Jon really liked that baby food and ate more, literally turning him into a baby. With no other alternative, Tom tries to force feed the toddlered twelve year old a prune cookie as we end this weird, weird episode.
And that's An Old Story, which is definitely a scary Goosebumps episode for all the wrong and disturbing reasons. The story is paced well enough and the effects of the old faces and Aunt Dahlia's death are fine, even for this show which is interesting as the effects on Goosebumps are usually the dirt worst. But let's review this plot again. An old witch who is apparently the aunt to two young boys uses magic prunes to turn them old so that she can pimp them out to a pair of old women who have apparently done this before with other kids. Honestly, if the genders were reversed, I think this would have never been made, but in a double standard universe where it's "cute" that silly old women want these boys, it's all fine and dandy. Nah dude, it's still gross and wrong. How this concept got off the cutting room floor is beyond me. Goosebumps is a weird show, but this episode may be the most awkward and definitely the most weird.
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