Season 1, Episode 11, "Thanks For The Memorex"

Blossom sits at home watching a home movie from a few years earlier.

The old Russo family, the one that included Maddy, drives somewhere in the family car. Mom, Dad and the kids all cheerfully sing “Baby It’s Cold Outside” together, a song about a man trying to keep a reluctant woman indoors so he can have sex with her.

The regular actors all play younger versions of themselves—including Mayim Bialik—but Joey is played by Joey Lawrence’s younger brother Matthew.

So Blossom was already a teenager while Joey was still a kid, and a few years later they switched? This is unbelievably confusing.

Also Paige Pengra plays another Fake Maddy. I’m not sure if she’s the actress whose professional black-and-white headshot is intermittently displayed in Blossom’s bedroom, so she’s either Fake Maddy #2 or Fake Maddy #3.

Blossom turns the TV off when she hears someone enter the house through the kitchen, which people for some reason do.

Pop Culture References: Thanks for the Memories (title), Memorex (title), Baby It’s Cold Outside

Blossom finds Anthony, urgently searching for Joey.

She tries to get him to watch the video with her, but Anthony is tweaking something fierce and can’t hear any of it.

Since Joey’s not in the kitchen, Anthony assumes he’s not home and leaves, also through the kitchen door.

Blossom goes back in the living room and finds Joey going down the stairs in a hurry, which is odd since she probably should have known he was home. She tries to tell him Anthony was looking for him but he runs out, telling her he has baseball practice and a big game, which are completely different things, but since the writers needed to pad the dialogue they opted to use them as synonyms.

Nick enters from the kitchen, wearing… what? What is this?

I try to stay away from commenting on the costumes on this show because A) fashion is volatile, and B) who fucking cares, but this so fuddy-duddy I can’t not gawk at it. It looks like something an old person would wear in a dream sequence on this show. Or what one of the kids would wear if they were dressing up as an adult to go to the bank to hand in Nick’s mortgage payment or something. It also highlights Ted Wass’ unfortunate growing gut. Remember when this guy was a cool musician just a few episodes ago?

Anyway it’s his first scene of the episode so Nick delivers the ol’ Russo kvetch, this time about how a tire salesman ripped him off. He grabs his own spare tire while this is happening. It’s surreal.

Before Blossom can talk to Nick about the video he announces he’s late for his recording session, which he reveals in another kvetch is “laying down tracks for a bunch of dancing raisins.” I dunno.

Blossom says “Nice talking to you, Dad” after Nick leaves the room, trying to keep her spirits up.

Pop Culture References: The California Raisins 

The next day, Blossom makes pancakes in her mother’s apron while again singing the song about the guy trying to have sex with the reluctant girl, this time by herself. This is like something out of Silence of the Lambs.  

From right outside the door, Anthony yells Joey’s name, then opens the door to enter the kitchen. As if there were any doubt, Anthony then proves he’s the world’s worst tracker as not two seconds into searching for Joey inside the house he’s distracted by the smell of the pancakes.

Anthony is convinced whoever is making pancakes is someone (or something) impersonating Blossom, since it's slightly out of character. Blossom proves it’s her by burping, so Anthony hugs her hello.

This is truly one of the strangest vestiges of pre-Seinfeld sitcom writing: literally any time someone acted uncharacteristically on an old sitcom—even for a moment—they’d be accused of being an impersonator. Was this some remnant of Cold War paranoia? I’m assuming it didn’t happen with as much regularity in real life, but the implications of any given person being openly accused of being an impostor because of the slightest change in manner are pretty frightening.

Anyway Blossom says she’s using Maddy’s recipe to make pancakes, so they can all have a family breakfast like the good old days, which apparently meant making an entire meal without telling anyone they’re obligated to attend. What would have happened if Anthony didn’t just walk through the door at this moment? Anyway Anthony asks “What good old days?” before rattling off fights Nick and Maddy used to have in public. Blossom continues her project, saying she’s even making the pancakes in funny shapes, just like Mom. “It doesn’t look anything like Mom,” Anthony shoots back as he looks at the frying pan. Ha. 

Joey comes in, again through the back door, moaning. Anthony asks what his problem is this time and Joey announces he failed his English test, and now he has to ask Nick to sign it. How Joey came to find this out just before breakfast is a mystery, as is why he was at school that early in the morning. You could make the case that he was at baseball practice, but he doesn’t have any of his gear, and he was shown taking cleats with him to practice in the previous scene. 

Anyway Joey blames Anthony for not helping him on the English exam, and Anthony suddenly remembers and apologizes. Joey gets sarcastic for the first time, saying, “Oh, great, now he remembers.” Then they trade barbs over who was supposed to remind whom.

Wait, what?

There’s only been two scenes in this episode so far, and Anthony was frantically looking for Joey in both of them, including the scene we are currently in. I sort of applaud them for trying to give Joey an interpersonal conflict with a main character for the first time, but this doesn’t make any sense.

Joey too does the ol’ Russo kvetch and says why does he have to learn English anyway, because he’s never going to use it after high school, which is highly reminiscent of an equally stupid joke in “I Ain’t Got No Buddy.”

Blossom says maybe Joey will get lucky and Nick will be in a good mood, which is also the setup to a stupid joke that was also used in that same episode.

That’s Nick’s cue to enter in a foul mood.

He’s yelling at the mail carrier, saying thanks for all the bills, then giving them an unseen middle finger, which establishes that A) there’s no way by the time this bit is over that the person won’t be revealed to be a woman, and that B) the Intentionally Absurd Element of the episode is that the Russos’ house has been rotated 180 degrees, so that family members enter, leave, and receive their mail through the back door, which now faces the street.

“Dad, you yelled at the mailman,” Blossom says. “She had it coming,” Nick says. I wish I was lying that I called this punchline before the reveal.

Even though none of the Russo men are interested, Blossom guilts them into having breakfast as a family.

Blossom serves the pancakes and reminds them about the cabin by the lake they used to go to, as well as telling those of us at home. Maddy used to make egg salad sandwiches and lemonade, which will be important later. 

None of the Russo men pay any attention to Blossom and have a conversation right through her entire speech, which is hilarious.

Joey comes clean about failing the test. Nick goes apeshit, and Joey tries to shift the blame to Anthony, who was supposed to help him, while also expressing the root of the sudden conflict he has with Anthony, which is that Joey’s always getting the business end of Nick’s fury while Anthony fucked his life up and now has an apartment over the garage. (A conflict for Joey and continuity! I’m floored.)

Anthony reasonably says he was busy, and when Joey says with what, Anthony says busy staying sober, which even Nick says is an excuse that’s getting old.

“So is this conversation,” Anthony says, before storming out through the front of the house, seeing as the garage is now near the front door. The others promptly leave, too.

“Well guess what, guys,” Blossom says to an empty room. “I’ve had those old movies transferred to video tape.”

Pop Culture References: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Stepford Wives, Heather Locklear

Blossom goes into the living room to watch the videos alone, and puts on a much earlier one.

Fake Maddy #2 or #3 stands pregnant in the woods with an even younger Anthony and Joey, plus toddler Joey who of fucking course is played by Andrew Lawrence. I wonder how many weeks the Lawrence brothers' parents vultured outside the writers' room before they could suggest a story that would allow the other kids to play younger versions of Joey so they could get them SAG cards. Oh, relax, I'm kidding. I meant how many months.

Nick works the camera and the studio audience laughs at his shaggy hair which is really not all that different from his present hairstyle, and the fact that the Russos are a vaguely hippie family.

Blossom sighs. 

Some later night, Blossom shows the first video to Six in her bedroom, on a TV we’ve never seen before.

Six says they’re great, and that she forgot how pretty her mom is. Wait ‘til she sees all the reconstructive surgery she’s had in Paris to look just like Melissa Manchester! 

The girls turn off the light so they can go to sleep, so several other lights can turn on over them like some alien operating theater.

Blossom asks if Six ever wonders about things, which of course opens a whole can of worms because Six can’t stop wondering about things like what it’ll be like to have breasts and to see her husband naked someday.

Blossom says she looks at the happy people in that video and asks why she can’t make things be like that again. Six says she can’t.

Blossom asks why, and Six says she doesn’t know. 

Another day, Blossom enters her bedroom while Nick works on something on her door. He’s finally putting in a hook she asked for, so Blossom of course asks if maybe Nick should hire a guy to do that. You know, to put a fucking hook in a door. Nick says he is a guy, then proceeds to ask her to hand him the drill, invalidating his whole point of dominance.

Blossom asks Nick if he’s noticed how bad things have been lately, and he says it slipped his mind for a minute, so thanks for the reminder.  

Blossom reminds him about the lake and he’s pretty apathetic, then he asks her to hand him the screws. All these tools have been on Blossom’s desk, all of four feet away, so the fact that he needs an assistant tells us that he may have actually been a professional contractor at one point. As he gets the screw into a hole in the door we never saw him make, Blossom puts forward her plan in no unclear terms: She wants to go back to the lake.

Her assertiveness gets Nick’s attention and he asks what this is all about.

Blossom says the last time they were at the lake they left something there. Nick asks what it is, and Blossom says it’s the talking, the singing, the good times. “I want that back.” 

Nick says if it means that much to her, sure they can go. “Thank you Daddy,” Blossom says, calling him that for the first time in the series.

Nick finishes installing the hook and puts Blossom’s jacket on it. “There,” he says, realizing something as he closes the door. He put it into the wrong side.

This is actually hilarious, and the audience laughs for a while.

“Can I have one on the inside?” Blossom asks. Ha.

We go back to the video tape, only this time we see that it’s just Blossom’s memory as they drive to the lake. 

They’ve been sitting in traffic for a while, it turns out, and Joey and Anthony gang up on her over this. This somehow turns into a fight between Anthony and Joey to build to a later scene, and Nick breaks it up.

The two food items they established earlier get payoffs, as the egg salad sandwiches are stinking up the car, and Blossom drank the thermos of lemonade and there isn’t a rest stop for another twenty miles. This is actually progress.

Nick takes charge and says they haven’t been much of a family lately, and apologizes to Blossom. He then twists Anthony and Joey’s arms so they apologize, too. Then he announces he’s going to take a shortcut, which takes us into the commercial break for some reason.

Pop Culture References: Raymond Burr

Some time later, they do that scene where the car stops in a set designed to look like the woods. I think the Winslows are still out there somewhere.

They’re lost. Anthony says maybe it’s just a coincidence, and an exasperated Nick says they’ve passed the same silver canoe three times. Blossom suggests they look at the map and Nick obviously has a problem with this. Nick says they’re not lost, then has a nervous breakdown about it, which is kind of funny.

Nick calms down and asks if it would be okay if they just went back to the main road. The kids agree to it, and then the car won’t start.

The kids run off, scared. Ha.

Some time later, Nick’s got the hood up on the car. Anthony and Joey saunter off to make out or something and Nick tells them to watch out for snakes out there.

Blossom asks if there are really snakes, and Nick says no. The audience laughs. This would normally be the part of the review where I’d say “Wait, what?” again, and go into a rant about how snakes are found almost everywhere in nature, but I’m actually starting to like this episode, which is a lot scarier than a bunch of poisonous snakes.

Blossom and Nick have a heart-to-heart. Blossom says she’s sorry she dragged everyone out, but they used to have so many happy times on vacation. Nick tells her the last time they went out to the lake was the beginning of the end for him and Maddy.

Blossom asks what happened to them. Nick says life happened, and he and Maddy just couldn’t get through it together. Blossom asks how it’s working out now, and Nick says tell him. Blossom says not well lately, and that they’re not a family anymore. They agree that they all need to start taking better care of each other. This is a pretty good scene.

Pop Culture References: Peter Pan, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Anthony and Joey keep walking alone, and stop in front of the studio cameras. Joey’s still afraid of snakes and Anthony correctly says it’s dark and damp out here so there definitely could be, so good thing I didn’t go into a full rant before. Anthony says this so he can spook Joey, which is funny. 

Anthony apologizes to Joey for not helping him on the English exam, and that if he ever needs help, Anthony is right there for him. Joey says Anthony hasn’t been right there for him in years. Joey always had Anthony’s help, and then when Maddy split, Joey lost his big brother, too. Anthony apologizes, and says he was scared of everything, which spiraled into a lifestyle of drug dependence.

Joey asks how he got away with it, which Anthony says was pretty easy with Nick and Maddy fighting all the time. By Blossom’s standards, this is such a good story reveal that I’m convinced the writers must have been replaced by some doppel-ganger from a better show. Wow, that impostor thing really is a slippery slope.

Joey asks what finally tipped them off, and Anthony says it was either the police car or the ambulance. Ha. Joey says maybe if they hadn’t been so busy fighting, Nick and Maddy would have noticed Anthony was in trouble. Anthony lays out a delicate bear trap, saying that maybe they could have grounded Anthony when his grades started to drop.

That was fucking cosmic. Even Joey is impressed, and asks how Anthony did that. Anthony says it’s a big brother thing.

They hug! Then they pull away two seconds later.

I’m a little terrified how this episode is suddenly nailing it. Also, against all odds, it establishes that Anthony indeed disappeared before Maddy split, which was a question I've said was something they'd never address concretely. Fool me once...

Pop Culture References: The Food & Drug Administration

Some time later, reassembled Russos are in a roadside restaurant. Anthony remembers the pie and says they’ve been lost here before.

Blossom recognizes a moose head mounted on the wall to confirm it, recalling that Joey went outside to see where the rest of the moose was.

They all start laughing, and go through some genuinely funny anecdotes, like the time Nick made them count out the footsteps from a sign that said “World’s Best Fudge, 500 Feet.” 

Blossom brings up a story about Maddy, then apologizes to Nick for bringing her up. Nick’s cool with it, though, and I think we’re witnessing the moment Nick is actually over Maddy. This episode is gold.

Nick spots a piano, and begins playing the family’s favorite song about seduction that they paid the rights to for this episode. Blossom starts singing, and soon the whole family is.

This is really nice, though it reveals Michael Stoyanov absolutely can’t sing, and also, this must be tremendously weird for the rest of the patrons in the restaurant.

Pop Culture References: Git Along Little Dogies, Hopalong Cassidy

The family gets back to the house, singing cowboy songs. The kids turn in, and the momentary bit of continuity we saw earlier is destroyed as Anthony goes upstairs instead of to the garage.

Nick says he’s sorry they never made it to the lake, and he hopes Blossom isn’t too disappointed.

Blossom says she’s not disappointed.

Pop Culture References: Butch Cassidy And the Sundance Kid

Blossom goes to sleep, and in her head, recalls the Russo family 2.0 singing in the roadside restaurant.

This is very sweet, but I don’t know why her memory is stamped with the camcorder’s “REC” label, especially since this scene was not being recorded on a camcorder in the story. You know what, just this once I’ll allow them artistic license. They’ve earned it.

Well, that’s about as perfect an episode of Blossom as I think is possible. I’m scared. Or is it scarred?

Intentionally Absurd Element: The Russo house has been rotated 180 degrees

References to France: 0

Pop Culture References: 14