Season 6, Episode 3: The Tale of Jake the Snake

Synopsis: Season 6 has already featured two episodes about a potentially lethal game, so for a change of pace, episode three is about - wait for it - a potentially lethal game. Instead of zombie dice or magicalforestland, though, The Most Dangerous Game in this episode is ... hockey. Hey, no one said that AYAOTD couldn't tackle the pressing cultural issues of our generation. This is like point/counterpoint with The Mighty Ducks, the point being that hockey is awesome and helps kids make friends and the counterpoint being that hockey will turn you into an evil reptile person.

We're back with the New, Improved, and Slightly Uglier Midnight Society. My favorite thing about the Society is that they're not actually friends, which begs the question: how did they manage to get this off the ground? Are some middle schoolers just known for their love of late-night forest meetings and scary stories? Did Tucker advertise on Craigslist? Near the end of this episode, sassy black Society member Quinn says, "If you tell anyone I'm doing this, you'll meet my friend, Senor Fist." If there's one thing that will ruin your social standing in middle school, it's a secret ghost story club. Never mind your pink high-tops and awkward overbite.

Because Tucker is the leader (and part of a long dynasty of Midnight Society participants), you would think he would start off with a story that made sense, had a cool title, and didn't have gaping plotholes. In case you didn't catch it, the key part of that sentence was, "You would think." Tucker obviously didn't, because this story is one of the worst I have ever heard, and that includes RL Stine's Chicken Chicken.

So Tucker throws the magical, smoke-producing crazy sand into the fire, and what are we in for? Zombies? Vampires? Lonely ghost children? Oh no, something even better. "The Tale of Jake the Snake." Of course.

Wiley is a lanky high schooler who just wants to play hockey, because when your name is Wiley, you don't have many other options except professional pickpocketry or chasing very fast birds with explosives. When I say he's "lanky", of course, I mean that Wiley looks like the thirty year old pizza delivery boy who hangs out at your local bar. That's why he's trying out for hockey and not, say, show choir (stay tuned for THE TALE OF THE POSSESSED SHEET MUSIC.) Unfortunately, Wiley isn't very good at hockey, and during the seventeen-day intensive tryout process, he embarasses himself time and again.

Wiley manages to break his stick at hockey practice, so the coach sends him to the "storage area" to pick up a new one. What's that? Your high school didn't have a creepy, abandoned basement under its hockey rink either? Shucks, and here I thought we'd been missing that high US News and World Report rating for a reason. So Wiley goes into the basement, and whaddyaknow, a shadowy figure is hanging out there, just waiting for the next kid to come and replace his broken hockey stick. This problem could be solved so easily if the town didn't rely on balsa wood.

Wiley follows the figure and eventually comes to a door, and through the glass he can see a shadowy, hooded figure who knows an odd amount about high school hockey. He tells Wiley about Jake the Snake. Who's that? Wiley asks. A 45-year-old prison convict with a meth addiction and an inferiority complex? Oh, no, it's the greatest hockey player the school has ever known. Well, that was my second guess.

In a confusing turn of events, Hood Man disappears into the floor and Wiley wanders around this abandoned room, eventually finding a jersey ("AWESOME!" he says. Does their hockey team not have a very big budget?) and a TOTALLY SWEET HOCKEY STICK. You know it's totally sweet because when he picks it up, the music goes, "Sha-wiiiing!" Also, it's emblazoned with the name Snake, so no prizes for guessing who put it there and whether that person is actually an evil snake man. Oh, oops.

Wiley takes the stick to practice the next day, and man, he is awesome. No one can stop him. Unfortunately, the side effect of the hockey stick is that it also turns you into a huge douchebag, so Wiley refuses to sit with his best friend at lunch because he's not on the team. Friend assumes that Wiley is joking, which I'm guessing isn't his first mistake in their seemingly abusive friendship. "Do we look like we're joking?" Wiley asks, and the camera pans over these very serious looking high school hockey players. It's slightly unclear whether the stick is affecting them too, or whether hockey players are just inherently evil. Wiley's friend walks away disappointed, because eating lunch with silent, angry people totally rules.

After school, Wiley looks down at his arm and realizes he has the beginnings of a disturbing rash. Maybe the Midnight Society should tell a story about the terrors of staff infections. Wiley goes to bed with the hockey stick next to him, because that's what dedicated hockey players do. That's why the Mighty Ducks could never form successful adult relationships. While he's sleeping, the hockey stick disappears under the sheets, and I was honestly worried that this might be the episode that tackled the ground-breaking topic of sexual assault by an evil inanimate object. Alas, though, the reality is much more sane: the hockey stick TURNS INTO A SNAKE and bites Wiley on the neck.

The next day, everything seems normal. Oh, except for the fact that Wiley is visibly more evil and his skin is peeling off. Did I say normal? I meant ridiculous. When Wiley's friend notices that his skin is shedding to reveal a snakey undercoat, Wiley shrugs it off and accuses his friend of being jealous. Well, of course. Who doesn't want to turn into a mutant snake man in order to win the Stanley Cup? It's actually the most common submission to the Make A Wish Foundation.

After a disturbing scene where Wiley attempts to eat his friend's science project mouse, he decides to go back to the basement and figure out why he's turning into a reptile. It's called puberty, Wiley. Too bad they never got around to writing What's Happening to My Body?: A Book for Snake-Boys. He finds the hooded dude again - what, has he been hanging out down there this whole time? Does he have wireless, at least? - and GUESS WHAT! It's not just the deformed janitor or an embittered ex-coach! It's a CRAZY SNAKE PERSON! Who saw that coming, because I really, really did not, seriously.

Hooded snake man tells Wiley that he's Jake "the Snake" Desmond, the high school's greatest and unfortunately most snakelike hockey player. Just like Wiley, he wanted to be the best. Don't they all, though? I mean, count your blessings, Wiley, at least you aren't stuck in a pinball game.

Jake reveals that he's been luring kids into the basement for years, tempting them with the glory of the high school hockey championship and then BAM!, turning them into snakes. Wiley seems totally screwed, but luckily, his ever-loyal best friend followed him to the basement and saw the whole thing. Herein follows a confusing fight sequence where the best friend gets dragged into an air vent, at which point I had stopped worrying about the end of the episode and started worrying about the demise of my personal sanity.

Speaking of which, hold on a second. Are we supposed to believe that this snake-human has been living in the high school basement, tempting students to use the hockey stick, so that he can turn them into snakes and ... put them in a box? Well, glaring problems with the story aside, Jake the Snake then dangles Wiley's friend over the box and threatens to drop him into it. The snakes are pretty small and look an awful lot like non-poisonous garters, but again, we're on a budget here. AYAOTD can't afford cobras.

There seems to be no way out of this horrible dilemma, except for the very obvious way out, which Wiley picks up on despite his previous complete lack of common sense. He breaks the stick over his knee, and the evilness rushes out in a cloud of green smoke. Hooray! Jake the Snake falls into his box of snake friends, who, like the hyenas in the Lion King, forsake him and swarm all over his body. Idiots! There will be a hockey champion! I will be hockey champion! Stick with me ... okay, enough of that.

Wiley and his friend have a touching, homoerotic moment, and they walk out arm-in-arm, as high school boys are so wont to do. And in the very surprising ending, we see the snake hand reach out of the box ... STILL ALIVE. Shit, what will we do? Surely more hockey players won't be tempted by greatness and turn into non-threatening snakes? This town's been going downhill ever since Jake the Greatest Hockey Player Ever gave up his career and moved into the high school basement.

Token minority character: Don't worry, Quinn's not just stereotypically black. He also introduces us to his good friend, Senor Fist. Esposo de Senora Knuckle Sandwich.

Abusive childhood friendship: I get that interventions are hard, but when your best friend tells you that you're turning into a snake, it's time to put down the stick. Man, are all these episodes just metaphors for drug addiction?

Interesting fact: TV.com says, "Believe it or not, this isn't the first episode to deal with the main characters turning into reptiles." You're right, I don't believe it. I don't think I believe in anything anymore.

Not very interesting fact: This is the only episode with a rhyming title. How unfortunate. I guess they must have scrapped The Tale of Schmampire the Vampire.