The Tale of the Closet Keepers

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Midnight Society

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Air Date: Saturday, January 7, 1994
Storyteller: Kiki (Jodie Resther)

Frame: Gary (Ross Hull) is not having the best night, as Frank (Jason Alisharan) and Sam (Joanna Garcia) come into the Midnight Society meeting together, giggling, and triggering a bit of jealousy. After a while, Kiki enters the scene in a lovely dress as opposed to her usual tomboy style. She mentions that she's wearing the dress to make a statement: that there are two sides to every person, and that one day, your very life may depend on the side you refuse to see. In other words, "don't judge a book by its cover," which is pretty commonplace for this series.

Story: Stacey (Bethanny Nurse) has everything going for her except that she's deaf, which can make communication frustrating for some, particularly Billy (Tommy J. Michaels), who wants to boot her from their basketball team, seeing her as an inconvenience. Hurt, Stacey runs off and hides in a seemingly abandoned townhouse, where she discovers a green, glowing closet and decides to explore it, only to find herself on the other side, in another world, trapped inside a zoo display. Eventually, Billy finds his way in there too, and the pair have to set aside their differences and work together to figure out an escape.

Review: I will admit that the idea of turning human beings into a zoo display is always a fun, if scary, concept I enjoy, done in many different ways. However, this take feels particularly dated, given how it portrays different races of captured humans, which, sadly, I believe was meant to be educational. There's some pretty harsh dialogue as well, which includes lines like "it's not my fault she's sensitive about being deaf!" To top it off, these aliens use ear-piercing sounds that keep the kids imprisoned, which gets truly irritating. Altogether, it makes for a bad episode that may have had good intentions, but didn't entirely succeed in its delivery.

Final Rating: Calm

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