Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Thirteenth Floor

There's an incredibly lame intro to this story by David, Betty Ann, and Kristen who hold flashlights under their chins and talk about about how you think you know a person, but they might really be a stranger. (Hey, beats the alternative--Betty Ann talking about how her nice neighbor ended up molesting her when she was five. Lesson there--if someone tells you that you can be the next Dora the Explorer, DON'T LISTEN.)


Betty Ann calls this story:


Billy and Karin are siblings who live on the twelfth floor of their building. They go up to the empty thirteenth floor to play because no one lives there. Today, the elevator guy, Guys, lets them up, telling them that he doesn't like them to play up there because it makes him uneasy.

The kids play hockey. Karin whines about how she's terrible at sports, probably because she's adopted. She wonders about her birth family, and Billy tells her to stop blaming her bad playing on the fact that she was adopted.

They decide to head down. When the elevator comes, Gus isn't there.

It's a guy called Leonid. Jesus, is Vice Magazine doing their photo shoot in kids' shows now? Leonid tells Billy and Karin that Gus has been called away. They decide to take the stairs instead. (Which they should have been doing anyway--they live one floor down! Grumble, grumble, obesity epidemic.)

That night, Karin sleeps while the TV in her room comes on. She wakes up and sees a guy talking to her through the TV, telling her it's time for a little visit. She thinks she's dreaming. Next day she gets a letter saying that there's a toy factory on the thirteenth floor, asking her to come up and test some toys. She can come any time the next day. She's a little reluctant, but that night she has another dream with the same guy begging her to come.

So Karin and Billy go up to the toy factory. They go inside. And it's basically the Fireworks, Candy and Puppy dog store. The kids are impressed--this place is FAO Schwartz on steroids.

Aww, I want free samples from this place even more than I did during that school trip to the veal farm!


A woman with a layered red bob and lots of eye make up introduces herself as Olga.

But I always thought you could tell someone was an alien because of said heavy eye make up and slanty eyebrows, not painfully hip hairdos--you lied, Gene Rodenberry! And, uh, oops, I did it again, I gave away the ending. Okay, I'm resigned--I am The Spoilerer. I can live with that. These people aren't pedophiles--they're aliens, Bruce Willis and Nicole Kidman were dead all along, and Hell is other people.

Olga tells Karin that it was nice of her to bring her brother but he won't be needed, and tells Billy he can leave his young sister in the company of strangers. Billy, having more sense than god gave a mule (and, apparently, Samantha Geimar's mother) insists on staying with her.

Olga introduces the kids to Raymond, the technician, who looks at her and says that he thought there was only meant to be one kid.

Olga explains that they have to deal with both the kids. So Raymond shows them both a fun game with buttons and lights and tells them to play. They both sit down and at first, Billy starts beating the crap out of his sister. But this is the nineties and it's not PC for a boy to trounce a girl at anything--unless he's a black, bespectacled dwarf who sits in a wheelchair and talks via a Stephen Hawking computer. So I expect a thrilling upset victory from Karin.

Karin starts winning and Billy congratulates her on getting the hang of it. Raymond adjusts something at the computer (we later learn he's changing the atmosphere) and Billy says he feels tired as Karin continues to win. (Oh, it's the Billie Jean King/Bobby Rigg match all over again.)

Raymond tells Karin to come with him while Billy continues practicing. Raymond straps Karin into an amusement park type chair and shows her a small ball about ten feet away. He asks her to try moving it.

To her shock, she can! Telepathy lessons. Man, if they'd had that back when Carrie White was alive, Chamberlain, Maine would still be a vibrant, buzzing town, and Stephen King would have no career.

Beween this and Alex Mack, I was so disappointed when I never got powers of my own. And I had a few Miss Trunchbull esque teachers who needed to be taken down a peg or eight.

Then Raymond takes off his face mask and presses a button and she begins to ascend in her strapped in chair. She screams in horror. And above her, she sees grey aliens reaching out for her.

Understandably unnerved, Karin uses her telepathy to push a few buttons and come down. And whatever she pressed makes Raymond freeze up. Seems that despite his technological prowess, he's not the Scotty of the group, but rather the Data. "Whatever you did to me, thanks!" she says.

Billy's still slumped over and won't wake up, so Karin tells him she'll come back with help. She runs off.

Olga comes in and switches Raymond the (dangerously un)Paranoid Android on, telling him they need to get Karin to the ship by six which is their time of departure. Olga looks at Billy and says, "Such poor specimens, these earth children," which is pretty much what Angelina Jolie says in her head each time someone asks if she'll adopt an American kid this time instead.

The aliens chase Karin all around the Fireworks, Candy, and Grey Aliens factory. She finally gets out by finding a remote control that powers Raymond the Android. Raymond and Olga try to stop her, and she points the remote at Raymond telling him to "Hold Olga." With her arm around Billy, she manages to get him to the elevator.

But Lenoid stops her, telling her she should come with them to outer space, how great space is and how you can fly like a bird and go to other worlds. But Karin tells him she won't abandon her brother and she leaves. Surprisingly, Leonid doesn't force her to go.

Finally back in Karin's room, Olga appears on the TV screen telling Karin that this was supposed to be her rescue.

Olga and Leonid are Karin's parents. They left Karin on this planet by mistake ten years ago. when they were visiting. Despite the fact that they seem to be more highly evolved than earthlings, their ability to do a headcount is fairly compromised. (Though let's face it--I think we humans and aliens alike are equally bad at that, from E.T. and his ilk to Kevin McCallister's clan.) Olga says that now it's too late and they'll have to wait another ten years before they can return for her. Billy eye rolls, asking what she's talking about and then turns to Karin, only to see...

He shrieks and runs off.

This moment creeped me out so much. And not just me. Based on blog posts, TV Tropes, and talking to people, pretty much everyone my age who saw this episode as a kid is refusing to adopt when they get older. Between this episode and The Orphan, the number of cute white girls getting adopted is going to be decimated in about ten years.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Midnight Ride

The Midnight Society has had to say good-bye to both David and Kristen, what with their families moving and Kristen needing to go method act by studying Alicia Silverstone's every move to prepare for her role as the smaller screen version of Cher Horowitz. So we have room for two more. Gary brings his little brother Tucker to be the newest member because his parents are making him. The rule is that each prospective member has to tell a story, and if it doesn't suck (or features a cool teen celebrity like Melissa Joan Hart or the Mowry twins), they're in. Of course, since nepotism is the rule of the day, Tucker's audition makes about as much sense as that one lone producer asking Ashlee Simpson if she knew what the key of C was (to be fair, it was his first day).

Frank, Kiki, and Betty Ann are skeptical that Tucker will do a good job but apparently they have no choice. So Tucker calls his story the Tale of the Midnight Ride. (Apologies to Mr. Longfellow.)

It takes place in Sleepy Hollow. Oh, so the twist is you're not ripping off Longfellow, but Washington Irving? Tucker tells us the story of how a Hessian soldier got his head blown off by a cannon ball and so became the Headless Horsemen. Said horseman went on to haunt Ichabod Crane. Right off the bat you know that Tucker probably spent less time writing this and more time in the library with Cliff Notes. (Hey, who can blame Tucker? This was a golden age of TV for kids and he probably wanted to watch Power Rangers that night.)

Ian, our main character, is a dorky bookish type who's really into a pretty girl named Katie. Katie's being courted by the boorish Brad but she's really not that into him. Did you get that? Ian=Ichabod, Katie=Katrina, and Brad=Brom Bones. Oh, subtlety, thy name is Tucker. (And before you can self-righteously pipe up with, "The word is homage," no, Tucker. No, it's not. For anyone who's not a pretentious bohemian art student, it's "send-up," "spoof," or "allusion," but not, for the love of god, homage.)

There's a dance at school where Brad spends a lot of time hitting on Katie but she's more interested in dancing with Ian.

After all, they came in matching his and her three corner hats. When Ian tells Brad to get lost, the two take it outside.

Oh, Ian, I didn't know it was possible, but somehow you make the Cowardly Lion look as butch as a Tom o'Finland drawing. Instad of fighting, Brad tells Ian about the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, how Ichabod Crane took the wrong path and went deeper into the woods instead of across the bridge where the horseman couldn't get him. I wonder if this will be at all relevant later. You know, since we've only been told about Ichabod Crane twice. I think the real twist would be if Rip Van Winkle turned up passed out in the bathroom and the gang had to figure out whether to call 911 and risk not going to good universities, or dump him in the river and brave what insane hooked killers may come.

Brad tells Ian that he should go try to find the headless horseman's pumpkin at the bridge to prove he's brave. (I'm pretty sure that even if this story were based on real events, said pumpkin would be a rotting mess by now.) It's either that or a fight. So Ian goes.

At the bridge, he turns around and sees a headless fellow. Don't get too excited. We're less than halfway in, and if R.L. Stine and Caroline B. Cooney have taught me anything, you always reserve the real scares for three quarters through.

It's Brad in a headless get up. He's also surrounded by everyone who was at the dance who presumably came to laugh at him. Katie's there, too. If she knew what Brad was up to, why didn't she warn Ian?

Brad snaps his fingers and assumes Katie will come with him, but she stays with Ian and asks him to walk her home. He tells her it's the one thing that would make this night worthwhile and extends his elbow to her saying, "Take thee my muddy arm." (Please, please, please, don't ask her to grant you her dainty hoof in marriage, Ian, and we'll be cool.) As they head off, we pull back to see...

He's the real headless horseman. If the fact that he's on a horse didn't clue you in, the swirling fog and ominous music let you know for sure.

Then the two run into a guy in whiteface on a horse who tells them his name is Ichabod Crane and he's the new schoolmaster. Ichabod-ghost simpers, "I'm afraid I have lost my way in these wretched woods. Would you be so kind as to direct me to the bridge of souls?"

They tell him to take the left path in the fork in the road to get to the bridge. "Lucky thing," he responds, "I surely would have taken the right!"

(Note to whoever's playing Ichabod Crane. There's a difference between playing a role gay and playing it old-fashioned. And an even subtler distinction between gay and British but I guess the Joey Tribbiani School of Soap Opera Acting didn't cover that unit yet. I bet it was lessons like this that explain why he went on to such meaty roles as the voice of Mr. Ratburn on PBS's Arthur.)

Ian walks Katie home and then heads back to get his bike at the school. He realizes he forgot his key in his jacket and can't unlock the bike. Katie shows up with the jacket and key in hand. He says, "Come on, I'll ride you home." (Um, Ian? It's 1994--chivalry is dead and Ani DiFranco just did a tap dance on its grave. And also...ew.)

In the distance they see a shadow of the headless horseman. This time, he's actually on a horse and he's got a pumpkin for a head.

They eye roll, thinking it's Brad but they soon realize it's not...when the shadow comes out of the wall and materializes.

The kids run, realizing that their only hope is to get to the bridge because the horseman can't cross. They wonder what the horseman is doing. Shouldn't he be off terrorizing Ichabod Crane? But they realize that they messed up the story when they told Ichabod to take the left path, and now the horseman is after them.

Ian tells Katie the horseman can't get them both so they should split up. He proposes to distract the horseman while Katie runs for the bridge. But because this is the nineties and Katie has been reared on a steady diet of "Take Your Daughter to Work Day," American Girl dolls, Title IX, and RiotGrrl, she immediately says that she will distract the horseman. She runs off and Ian starts for the bridge. But Katie falls flat on her face and girls everywhere put down the Sleater Kinney CDs, burn the zines, and head to Victoria Secret for push-up bras.

Ian turns and runs for the bridge while Katie encourages him. The horseman chases Ian (passing up an incapacitated teenage girl? Well, I guess we know that's not the ghost of William Kennedy Smith running around) but disappears in flames as it tries to cross the bridge.

Why a fiery mass? Well, the FX crew really wanted to try out that insta-flame effect. Don't laugh. Back in Canada in '94, this was a big deal.

Katie makes sure Ian's okay. He's hanging from the edge of the bridge and he pops up saying, "And I thought this place was boring!" Zany understatements. Is there any kind of traumatic experience that they can't smooth over?

Ichabod Crane shows up again to scold the kids about staying out too late. (And not to yell at them for stealing his signature look?) They ask him what he's doing here, and he said he thinks he lost his way and should go back to the fork in the road and take the other way to set things straight. Gotta love literary characters who are resigned to their fates. Though I have to ask--how can you see the ghost of a fictional character?

I also have to smack Tucker with a copy of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow because if we're to believe this is a send-up of the original story, it makes zero sense. In the original, there was no actual ghost. Brom Bones (dressed as the headless horseman) was the one who got Ichabod. And no, Tucker, you don't have the excuse of, "But the movie said--" because that particular love note of Tim Burton to Johnny Depp doesn't come out for another four years.

Tucker finishes and looks around to see if he's in. Kiki's reaction: "That'll do, pig, that'll do." Betty Ann smiles warmly and tells him how awesome it was, and Frank, playing the Simon to Betty Ann's Paula, just warns Gary to keep Tucker out of his face. I'm with you, Frank, I haven't seen such desperate courting of the 7-10 demographic since the Planeteers took on that damned "Heart!" kid and his simian pal. Gary high fives Tucker and then as he puts out the fire, says to himself that he hopes he doesn't regret this, in the same tone of voice as Aaron Spelling when he finally decided to let Donna Martin pop her cherry.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Dangerous Soup

As we open on the Midnight Society, Frank is giving us the background to his story by having all the kids say what their worst fears are. They're pretty ordinary (dogs, heights) except for Sam who's afraid of birds and is probably the only person who genuinely thought that the Hitchcock movie The Birds was scary. Tucker claims to be afraid of nothing and Frank says he has something in this box that Tucker is probably scared of. Frank says it's no secret that he's afraid of the dark.

Kiki says, "Yes! He admits it," as she high fives Gary. And I hate to admit that the ten year old inside of me thinks, "Oh, he's got a tough veneer, but look at that vulnerability! He's like an ethnic Shawn Hunter." Anyway, Frank talks some more about fears and then calls his story the Tale of the Dangerous Soup.

We cut to a guy in a room with fans. A chair appears, and a disembodied voice tells him to take a seat. Oh my god, it's Chris Hansen! Like such great TV hosts as Marc Summers and Mike O'Malley before him, he too got his start on Nickelodeon before going on to such bigger and better things as voicing animated series, doing shows on the Food Network, and mining pedophiles for fun and profit.

No, I'm kidding. It turns out to be Dr. Vink. So the guy sits down and asks, "Now what?" This is strangely surreal for the normally straightforward Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Is this a dream sequence? TV show within a TV show? Oh my god, if I'm watching yet another experimental film about gay cowboys eating pudding, or an off-off-off Broadway play about stripper lesbians with issues talking about heteronormativity, I'm so out of here. So the guy is suddenly strapped into the seat and a statue of a gargoyle creature appears.

This is scary? I've seen lladro more frightening than this.

The voice giggles. "It knows what scares you!" A snake appears between the young man's legs as he starts screaming and we cut out.

Next scene. Neve Campbell welcomes us to a restaurant called the Wild Boar while silently asking herself if she'll appear too desperate if she calls up the Party of Five producers to see if they've made a decision about the Julie Salinger role yet. As she walks by, another waitress hands a couple some menus but they tell her that they've just come for the soup. As one of the waitresses and Neve talk back in the kitchen, it turns out this soup goes for a hundred dollars a pop.

A busboy bumps into them and drops some knives on the floor. One of the waitresses, Jersey, freaks out, screaming that she doesn't touch knives, she just doesn't, and stalks off.

People eat the soup with oddly orgasmic looks on their faces.

Then as the chef emerges, they applaud. Good god, I haven't seen this much excitement over soup since Carole King sang Chicken Soup With Rice. As it turns out, the chef is Dr. Vink. He takes a bow and thanks everyone for coming.

Next scene. A scruffy young man asking only workman's wages comes looking for a job. Neve, er, actually, her character is called Nonnie, interviews the guy, Reed, and explains about Dr. Vink, who's the chef and owner and basically heart and soul of this operation. Dr. Vink pops up out of nowhere and says, "A cook feeds the stomach. A chef nourishes the soul." And Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain rape the spirit and leave it for dead in a ditch somewhere moaning (sorry, too much Food Network this weekend).

Young Reed eye rolls and asks if Dr. Vink is supposed to be the best or something. Dr. Vink eyes him with the look of Meryl Streep eyeing young, fresh-faced ingenue Anne Hathaway, and just as Ms. Streep hired the girl who doesn't know from Dolce and Gabanna, Vink decides to hire the kid who can't distinguish between tripe and his own asshole. (Though to be fair, it's the blind taste test that four out of five Top Chef contestants consistently fail.) As Dr. Vink heads into the kitchen to show him around, Reed mutters to Nonnie that Vink seems like a nutbag.

Vink shows his new employee around the kitchen, talking about how cooking is an art form. He offers Reed a taste of the soup, which he thinks is, "pretty good."

"My friend, the flavor dances over the tongue in a symphony of flavors." (You know, if the restaraunt business doesn't work out, Dr. V. could so write pop songs for 1960s girl groups. Or soft-core vampire porn because that little love note to soup was better than 90% of the first Sookie Stackhouse book.) Vink warns Reed that he's not allowed to have another taste.

"And I am NOT a nutbag," he adds. Dr. Vink? Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Thanks.

Frank narrates that once in a while, someone would just up and quit for no reason. But the Wild Boar flourishes.

Next scene. Jersey and Dr. Vink argue while Reed and Nonnie talk. Reed explains some of his behavior. He mentions that he's always been on his own and it's hard to ask other people for help but Nonnie's been really awesome (she covers for him when Vink catches him trying to sneak a taste of soup). She bats her eyelashes and silently wonders if doing a Nickelodeon show will make it too sleazy when she does her first Playboy spread a few years down the line.

We cut away to see Vink fighting with the waitress Jersey, who says she doesn't do dishes. (You don't do dishes and you hate knives and yet you work in a restaurant? You know, the likelihood of the position of "Padme Lakshmi" opening up at the Wild Boar is slim to none.)

Vink tells Jersey he wants to make her his protege by moving her to the kitchen, and will reveal to her the secret of his soup. Telling her how brilliant she is, he invites her into that little room. Oh, Jersey, you sad, stupid little girl--this situation couldn't be any more of an obvious set-up for your being taken advantage of if it involved Qualudes, Jack Nicholson's hot tub, and an Eastern European dwarf with a penchant for making Satanic horror films.

Jersey goes inside and has a seat. Suddenly a large axe appears from the ceiling and starts swinging down several feet from her neck.

"It knows what scares you," chuckles Vink. As she screams, we cut to a vial being filled with green liquid.

Oh, cool, it looks like my slutty college roommate's pap smear after she discovered "casual encounters" on Craigslist.

Nonnie and Reed hear the screams and come to investigate. Eventually, Vink opens the door and Jersey leaves the room, looking shocked.

Reed wants to know what's going on. Vink offers to show him the secret. He explains that in his travels, he came across a tribe that had a statue that knew what you were afraid of. "It could reach into your mind and actually create your deepest fear. It was only an illusion but the more you believed in it, the more real it would become." The tiny statue also produced an elixir that the tribe would drink for potency because it makes your pulse quicken or something. Nonnie finally realizes that that this is why everyone quits--they get scared away by Vink so he can make the fear soup. Yep, the audience loves these slow learners.

Wouldn't a soup made from fear taste horrible and be awfully fattening? ("Yes, well...it's mostly for show," points out Dr. Vink, and before I can point out that this makes absolutely no sense, he's gone.)

But Reed doesn't believe him and he wants to stand up to Vink. Vink invites Reed into the little room. Reed resists but Vink starts talking about how Reed was an orphan raised by a terrifying old uncle. (Yeah, well, I was practically raised by TV in the early 90s when Full House ruled TGIF with an Olsen twin sized fist, and I'm not afraid of any uncles. Though I did experience flashbacks when I got free tickets to Dave Coulier's ninety minute stand-up act a few years ago. If you thought two minutes of wood jokes were bad...ugh.)

A coffin appears in the room and Reed freaks out. (Oh, you're afraid of clumsily foreshadowed plot points, too?) He opens the coffin and Reed's dead uncle comes to life and starts choking him.

Vink steps away from the window and Nonnie can't bear it any more. She opens the door and the gargoyle talisman flies out.

"You've unleashed it!" screams Dr. Vink. Apparently it's going to go terrorize the entire world. Vink had it under wraps for a while but now it's unleashed on the general public. Dr. Vink runs out of the restaraunt to track it down. When did this become The Howling Man episode of the Twilight Zone and are the members of the Midnight Society going to take up smoking in homage to Rod Serling?

Dr. Vink runs out and kids aren't sure what to do. Then the lights go out and it turns out that the demon statue came back. They open a door and inexplicably it's huge.

Yeah, you know, I always thought that the Room 101 part of 1984 would have been so much scarier with a gigantic flying gargoyle.

Reed tells Nonnie to clear her mind, not think about what scares her. But then a snake appears and she shrieks loudly despite what Reed said. (Great advice, Reed, but she's angling to appear in Scream next, not in Prozac Nation.)

They go into the kitchen and what appears to be wind blows Nonnie conveniently into the fear room and locks it. Then it turns out that her fear is closed spaces and she begs Reed to open the door.

He tells her to face her fear and that it's all an illusion (um, where was all this Dr. Phil meets B.F. Skinner talk when Uncle Vanya was giving your neck the choking chicken treatment?).

Then Reed goes out into the restaurant and sees the coffin. It opens and Reed's uncle trots out staring at him.

Reed sinks to his knees (I guess that's the position he associates with his uncle the most?) and yells, "You didn't molest me! You don't love me!" (no, wait, I changed channels to the Brown Noise episode of South Park). He yells that he's not afraid, that he doesn't believe in it and his uncle disappears. And it should say something that Macauley Culkin's performance where he faced down that scary furnace in the basement was even more convincing than no name actor here.

Anyway, the fear is over. Reed runs into the little room and hugs Nonnie and tells her that it's all over, that Vink won't be making any more soup. "That's where you're wrong, my friend," Vink tells them, staring in through the window.

"It still knows what scares you." (You know, if this fear soup thing were a franchise of movies, that would be a great tag line. Come on, you just know that when Kevin Williamson and his Joey Potter look alike friend were sitting around, brainstorming ideas for the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer, Kevin chanced upon this episode and decided it was brilliant. "Yeah, but you still have no plot," pointed out Joey doppleganger. "Oh, um, we'll put Jennifer Love Hewitt in an even tighter, more improbably low cut sweater and maybe no one will notice?" And the rest was history.)

The episode ends with Dr. Vink laughing in his typically crazed manner as the kids look horrified.

Everyone thinks the story was great except Tucker who thinks that the room wouldn't work if nothing scares you. Frank offers Tucker the chance to be the first to reach into the unknown, offering him the box. Is Frank going to put the box in his lap, opens the lid on top, and unleash his John Thomas? Because that's why I'm afraid of eating popcorn at the movies. Tucker's too scared to open the box. Gary asks what's inside. "Exactly what Tucker's afraid of. Nothing," says Frank, revealing that the box was empty. Oh, Frank, still waters run deep as usual.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?: The Tale of the Nightly Neighbors

Betty Ann's up tonight. Eric whines, saying her stories are kind of gross but always end the same way. Betty Ann's about to shock him tonight, though. She calls this story the Tale of the Nightly Neighbors.

Our heroes are Dayday and Emma. While Dayday watches Night of the Living Dead on TV one night, Emma startles him. Then she yells at him for watching TV when he could be improving his mind. She stares out the window at the new neighbors who are wearing all black. They're moving in and Emma's curious.

(Someone just gave Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane a run for their money in terms of casting for the newest Addams Family vehicle on Broadway!)

The next day, Emma and Dayday go visit the new family to be neighborly. Bring over a casserole, maybe point out the nearest Hot Topic. They see a guy delivering two huge crates. They ask him about the neighbors. According to the paperwork, they're the Braun family (hey, and I thought Adolph and Eva didn't have any next of kin!). They're from the Ukraine. (Oh, AYAOTD fact-checker? Braun is a German name.)

Emma squeals in excitement. (Oh, don't believe what they say about Ukraine girls, Emma--I have it on good authority that Paul McCartney never even crossed the Iron Curtain.)

Delivery guy leaves the two gigantic boxes in the driveway. Emma thinks that maybe the nightly neighbors are "KGB agents who had to bolt when the Soviet Union crumbled." I bet TV writers got terribly emo when the Union fell because there was no readily available enemy to blame everything on. The way things will be when the last Nazi war criminal dies off and writers won't be able to use Nazis as their go-to enemy.

Anyway, they run into the mailman who reports that he's feeling "weak as a kitten" and has "got a touch of something." Turns out the night that the Brauns came to visit him, he started feeling weak. He leaves to spout more cliches and Emma and Dayday gaze at each other.

Betty Ann narrates that all over town, people are getting weak and feeling unwell and their necks are adorned with large, flesh covered bandages.

Oh, guys. Don't be ashamed--Kat Von D makes a great tattoo and/or hickey cover up.

One night, Lex asks if he can come in. Emma says it's kind of late, in the tone most girls reserve for trying to get the town date rapist to go away.

Emma, in all probability, he's the son of really annoying goth/punk types, not a raccoon. You know, the kinds of people who go to Trash and Vaudeville and buy their kids "I love Joey Ramone" bibs and onesies adorned with chains, and whose kids will all rebel by growing up to be i-bankers with lifetime Wall Street Journal subscriptions.

But in all seriousness, Emma has no idea what the deal is. I know the audience loves a slow learner, but they mean more like Forrest Gump slow. You know, slightly dumb but still lovable. Not Keanu Reeves dumb, which is where we are now. Creepy foreign goth family moves in with thick accents, they only come out at night, everyone starts getting weak and anemic, and our Emma has no idea that maybe they could be vamps? Methinks she should have watched more late night TV with Dayday--maybe they'd have seen an Elvira episode.

That night, Emma has a dream that Mr. Braun sneaks into her house in a cloud of smoke and is about to bite her neck.

Emma screams and wakes up. I sympathize. I had that exact dream every time my parents brought me home a new Bunnicula book. (Hey, in my defense, vampire bunny wasn't cute in MY dreams--he was more like a Monty Python bunny, or a Jimmy Carter-attacking bunny. The director of Donnie Darko so mined my dreams when he came up with Frank the Rabbit.)

Finally, Emma decides that we've had enough exposition, and she's going to go look for coffins in the neighbors' house and see if they really are vampires. The Brauns leave for the night and she enters their house. But it turns out they were planning on visiting Emma and Dayday's house. Dayday tries not to let them in but his mother tells them to come on in.

The Brauns say that they're in the States to study our healthcare system as paramedics. It's really interesting work, says Mrs. Braun, but a bit "bloody." (Since this show is written and created by Canadians, somehow I feel there was a U.S. healthcare joke that went way over my head.) Then the Brauns say they must go, and Dayday, worried about Emma, tries to stall them, asking if Lex wants to play video games. Lex's response:

Oh, come on, Lex, it's the golden age of video games--Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, Yoshi's Island. But the Brauns go home and Dayday starts panicking.

Dayday sneaks into the basement to warn Emma. Before they leave, Emma opens the box and it's a refrigerator...of blood.

They look horrified, and so am I. Come on, vampires, are you telling me you guys steal from blood banks? That's as emo as Angel and Anne Rice's Louis only drinking from animals to spare people. And not cute animals--disgusting animals that no one would miss, like sewer rats. Way to miss the point.

Emma vows to hunt the vampires down the next day after school. She wields a baseball bat as she talks. (Well, maybe she's just going to tell them that they can't be on her vampire baseball team. That would shatter them.)

The kids set off for the Braun house. Emma wears a gigantic cross around her neck, as does Dayday. Well, they're from the Eastern Bloc, guys, let's be creative. How 'bout wearing a gigantic Star of David? Or they could be atheists--how 'bout a Darwin fish? I'm so sick of these motherfucking Christian vampires on my motherfucking street.

The kids sneak in and find another padlocked door in addition to the refrigerators they saw last time they were here. Emma tries to open it as Dayday simpers.

Then someone comes downstairs and the kids hide under a table. Whoever it was leaves and the kids go outside again. They see Mr. and Mrs. Braun outside. Dayday hisses at Emma (and Stephanie Meyer), "I thought vampires couldn't go in the sun."

Emma wields her cross and Mrs. Braun just smiles. (See? Told you I was right about my Darwinfish idea.) The Brauns explain that their schedule changed and now they work in the daytime. They also explain that the hospital had a surplus of blood that they were storing.

They bring the blood out to their car. Um, yeah, that's as plausible as the time my friend of a friend's cousin's boyfriend thought there was a surplus of money when he worked at Citibank. Come on, Braun family, are you cribbing cover stories from Bernie Madoff's lawyers?

Then the Brauns ask if Lex could come over that night and play video games with Dayday. Dayday agrees. The kids leave, realizing that they were wrong about the Brauns.

Down in the basement, the Brauns talk as they put more blood in their fridge. They open a padlocked door revealing a coffin that houses Lex. "Wake up, Master," they tell him, saying he was right that they should come to this country for the fresh blood. (Oh yeah? But what about the brain drain? I wonder what the zombie lobby has to say about that.) "And no one believes that a little boy can be a vampire," says Mr. Braun, as he and the Missus laugh and Lex awakens.

To be fair, Mr. Braun, if your vampire had been a little girl, we'd have caught on much sooner. We already knew that young girls could be possessed by the devil, sociopathic murderers, 19th century-era vampires, and we'd soon learn they could haunt video cassettes in Japan.

Oh, for the days when kids' shows could have creepy endings! And for when vampires weren't twisted sad emo creatures, when little girls thought that vampires needed butt-kickings instead of therapy. And for when kiddie vampires were cool. (I blame Jonathan Lipnicki and the people who made The Littlest Vampire for the downfall of child vampires.)