Season 1, Episode 13: The Tale of the Pinball Wizard

Gary's Introduction: When you play a game like this, it really doesn't matter whether you win or lose, because you can press reset, and you get another game. Another chance. But what if it really did count? What if you had to beat the game, or the game would beat you? And there were no resets, no replays. No second chances. (It's almost like the GAME OF LIFE. How depressing.)

Synopsis:
This episode begins with Frank's troubling addiction to GameBoy. Most of the members seem pretty emotionally invested in the game, and when Eric takes the game away, Frank's hands start to shake a little bit. Is this episode going to be a metaphor about the dangers of heroin addiction? Oh, no, don't worry, it's ANOTHER DEADLY GAME.

Ross Campbell is apparently the kind of kid who is "on his own a lot", which might explain why the episode begins with him fishing coins out of the mall fountain. I could understand this if the fountain was full of, say, Sacajawea dollars, but the camera zooms in on a pile of dirty pennies. Sweet! If he just does this about 1,000 more times, he'll be well on his way to six issues of Nickelodeon magazine.

Ross reaches in for the penny, but times are hard in the Shadybrook Mall, because he gets intercepted by a bag lady who claims she "saw [the penny] first." Man, how bad was the economy in the 90's? Unfortunately for Ross, the fight over the priceless penny gets spotted by a mall cop, who finds it necessary to run down the stairs to arrest the homeless woman. Hey, maybe he wants a slice of that sweet penny action, too.

After his narrow escape from mall security, Ross wanders into a dark shop, where Mr. Olson is putting a model throne into a box. Let's just put it out there now: what the hell does Mr. Olson actually do? The shelf behind him is full of ceramic horse heads, and then the next room has a broken pinball machine and a bunch of rope. Oh, and the front window features a masked man carrying one of those spikey swinging balls. You know, just the place that all the kids are applying to work over the summer holidays. Ross tries to convince Mr. Olson to give him a job - those ceramic horse heads do not make themselves, people - and says that Olson "won't have to fire him like he did Steve." Wuh-oh, scary music! Either Mr. Olson and Steve had a lover's quarrel, or all the ex-employees have been chopped up and made into pinballs. At this point, I would be calling the Better Business Bureau, but that's why I'm sitting here blogging and Ross is going to get trapped in an un-escapeable game.

Ross goes to play one of the Not Evil Pinball Machines, but Mr. Olson stops him, saying he's closing up shop to go and eat lunch. Ross says that he can watch the store while Mr. Olson's gone, so that customers can come in and he won't miss out on the business. Okay, Olson says, but Ross can't touch the cash register or any of the merchandise. Wait, what? Is there some kind of method of business transaction that I'm not aware of? Maybe in this store, the only acceptable currency is YOUR LIFE. Or maybe this is why Mr. Olson is carving ceramic angel wings and not running a pretzel stand.

Oh, Ross also isn't allowed to go to the bathroom. That was probably Steve's first mistake.

I'm sure no one could see this coming, but Mr. Olson actually can't trust Ross, because he goes straight to the unfinished pinball game and starts to play it. Who woulda thunk it? One minute, you're stealing coins from the mall fountain, the next, you're an unreliable employee. I NEED MORE FORESHADOWING HERE.

The doorbell jingles and Ross turns to see the hottest girl ever to appear in an AYAOTD episode. I mean, really. Wow.

She apparently left her broken music box with Mr. Olson, so either Mr. Olson is in charge of the Island of Misfit Toys, or Gary's getting unexpectedly Freudian on us. We get to watch for about a billion awkward minutes while Ross pretends that he actually works at the store and the girl calls him out on it. This interaction serves as a prequel to one of Gary's later stories, The Tale of the Inconvenient Erection.

I don't remember pinball games having multiple levels and a vast variety of characters, but apparently I have early onset Alzheimer's, because this game is seriously the precursor to Halo. Unfortunately, that means that when Ross is done, the mall is closed and Mr. Olson is gone. It reminds me of when I used to play the Sims for twelve hours in a row, and then realized I wasn't a depressed, hungry, broke thirty-year-old man, but in fact an awkward twelve-year-old girl with bad hair.

So Ross realizes he's alone in the locked mall. A dream come true! Go for the fountain, Ross, the fountain! Before he can get to those sweet free pennies, though, the phone rings and a mysterious voice utters the scariest line ever written: "Got an umbrella?!" Not the Tale of the Scattered Showers, noooo! But the magical mall must know about Gary's monetary problem, because quarters start raining from the sky. Before he can go crazed with greed and fish them all out of the fountain, though, twenty suited, sunglass-wearing men show up and start dancing in unison. Take the red pill, Ross! Go down the rabbit hole! Morpheus knows the way!

Fortunately for Ross and the plot of this episode, everyone is afraid of water, which is lucky when you spend so much of your time in public fountains. Just as he's scaring away the multiple suited men, Hot Sophie appears on the balcony as a princess and yells at him to get the tiara from "the vault." When I say vault, I of course mean the mall lockers, which is probably where Geraldo Rivera made his first mistake.

Ross opens the first locker and gets a hilarious faceful of green goop. Turns out the Secret Slime Action was "looking for the tiara," which, in true 90's fashion, turns out to be a headband. Ross chases after Sophie, only to run into a witch and be blown back by her terrifying feather breath. She takes the headband/tiara, and Ross finds Sophie tied up in the back room of Mr. Olson's shop. They almost get killed by a masked, mace-wielding man, which is followed by a lot of running away, throwing things at the witch, and Ross failing at life and getting sent back to the beginning.

I started to question Ross' intelligence a little bit around the point he said, "Wait a minute! This is the pinball game!" No shit, Ross, all the characters are exactly the same and everything you touch makes pinball-machine noises. I'm starting to think we're not in the Shadybrook Mall anymore, Toto. Ann Taylor Loft isn't even open!

So, realizing the whole thing is a game and he's spent his entire life being good at nothing but games, Ross grabs a water gun and heads to the evil king's crowning ceremony. If you're expecting a sweet final fight scene here, you're probably out of luck, because pretty much everyone is killed with a blast of water. Ross finally has to face the king, who tells him, "You shouldn't play the game, boy!" Wait ... the game, boy? THE GAMEBOY? Goddammit, how many of these episodes were funded by Sega?

Ross crowns the princess, but alas, he ends up back at the beginning of the game, where Mr. Olson's increasingly more unattractive face appears above him. Mr. Olson tells Ross that since he just had to play the game, he can play it ... forever! Too bad that hot chick peaced out, that's going to be a long, lonely life. Then Mr. Olson lets out an evil laugh for, I shit you not, about six minutes. It's at least 1/3 of the episode. Ross looks up and sees a giant silver ball at the top of the escalator, and apparently "when Ross saw that ball, he knew he would never get out." Man, if I had a dollar for every time a pinball signaled eternal damnation, I would have ... nothing. I would have nothing at all.

Possible Plagiarism Alert: I'm pretty sure that title is taken from a popular song by The Who. That's right, I'm of course talking about "My Generation."

Get Your Facts Straight, AYAOTD: Guys, there is no reset button on a Game Boy. So either Gary is twisting the facts to make a deep and profound comment about the permanence of our decisions ... or this is POSSESSED GAME BOY V. 3.0!!1! Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call you on your bullshit, Gary.

Conclusionz: I've often heard that "The Tale of the Pinball Wizard" is the favorite episode of many AYAOTD watchers. I mean, that makes sense. Who wouldn't want to be trapped in a mall for all eternity? So much time, so little variety in Charlotte Russe's fall collection.