In honour of Gary's birthday, David has a special story, based on Gary’s favoured theme of magic: the kind that comes from within. Guest starring one of Gary’s magical characters, and submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, David calls this story "The Tale of the Dark Dragon."
Keith Saunders, in aid of a limp caused by a car accident, walks with a leg brace. In the school library, his friend Mariah takes a break from shelving. He discreetly hands her a bag of chocolate coated blueberries, salvaged from his dad's shop. Delighted by the surprise treat, she asks if he plans to attend the upcoming dance. He wryly disclaims any flair for dance.
In raucous pursuit of a small bean ball arrives Gary, who mentions his current tiff with girlfriend Shelly.
On the way out, Keith bumps into Shelly, who drops her papers. He apologetically helps pick them up, and asks if she’s going to the Friday night dance. Being in a dispute with Gary, she isn’t sure. She happily considers Keith's offer to fill in for him. Mariah looks on forlornly.
In a magazine, Keith notices a colourful advert for Sardo’s Magic Mansion, which offers a mysterious new potion, purported to stoke self-confidence and to bring out the best in anyone...
In the Magic Mansion, Keith asks about the confidence potion, which Sardo quickly remembers to be his best selling product. He takes a tiny metal bottle, capped by a star-shaped stopper. Only one drop at a time, he warns, as it’s very powerful stuff. While forty dollars is well above Keith’s budget, Sardo readily accepts an offer of twenty.
While Sardo fetches a receipt, Keith approaches a cage, in which a white rabbit laps from a drinking bowl. Keith pours into the bowl a single drop. As Keith peers in amazement, the rabbit’s ragged fur instantaneously reforms to healthy smoothness. It clambers enthusiastically about the cage. Elated, Keith leaves.
As Sardo returns with the receipt, he sees fog pour from the cage. He cries out in alarm: Harold the rabbit is now a growling, rat-like beast.
In his bedroom, Keith swallows a drop of Popularity Potion. He wildly convulses, falls to the floor, and rises to his mirror: his hair is now smoothly styled, and his limp is gone. Jubilant, he sets out in a leather jacket. From a neighbouring balcony, Mariah watches.
At the Charcoal Pit diner, Keith approaches Shelly’s table, and debonairly introduces himself as KC, cousin of Keith. They readily invite him to join them. Through the window looks a bewildered Mariah.
The next day, Keith wakes to find the Potion to have worn off - his limp is back. What's more, his chest has sprouted a growth of dense, bestial hair.
Outside, Mariah brightly comments on his voluminous denim jacket. He nervously dismisses her enquiries as to the identity of the mysterious stranger who yesterday exited Keith’s house.
At dinner that evening, Keith’s dad asks about today’s geometry test. To his dad's surprise, Keith despondently says he flunked it. Seeing a sudden sprout on his hand of Potion hair, Keith excuses himself for homework.
In his bedroom, he takes a phone call from Shelly. In the suave voice of his imaginary cousin, he accepts her offer to come over to watch television. He then has another drop of Potion.
Later, outside Shelly's, she accepts Keith/KC’s invitation to the Friday night dance.
The next day, Keith stumbles out of bed to find, in his mirror, growths of hair across his face, and, in his mouth, bestial fangs.
At the Magic Mansion, Sardo, through a magnifying glass, examines the side effects of the Popularity Potion. He consults his spell book, and finds the relevant entry. Leaning over, Keith spots a further passage: "caution: before bringing out the best, one must fight the Dark Dragon from within." Sardo nervously admits his ignorance of whatever that might be. However, it looks like Keith is about to find out...
At the Charcoal Pit, Gary asks what time to pick up Shelly for the dance. She coolly says she's going with someone else.
With his hood pulled up, Keith stumbles into his bedroom. Outside the house, Mariah knocks on the door. With no answer, she slides away the edge of the doorstep, takes the hidden key, and lets herself in.
Through the closed bedroom door, she hears Keith's choked, sickly cry. She calls through, and submits her concern that something is very wrong. Keith rises from his bed. Beneath the hood, his face is utterly transformed: bald and leathery, with a bat-like nose, neanderthal brow, and fangs set in a bestial grimace. His voice is a choked, echoing hiss. Mariah calls through the door, and stresses Keith’s need for help. In this state, Keith believes himself to be beyond all help. Mariah begs to be allowed to try. At his insistence, she quietly leaves. Keith throws back his head in a howl of mental anguish.
On Friday night, from her window, Mariah sees a hooded Keith run out of his house.
In the empty school corridor, Keith takes another drop of Potion. From behind a door, Mariah watches his pained convulsions. He rises as the suave KC, and removes his hooded top to reveal a sharp grey suit. As he leaves for the gym, Mariah makes for his locker...
As the dance warms up, Shelly uneasily awaits KC, who arrives fashionably late and offers her his arm.
In the corridor, Mariah opens Keith's locker, liberates the Potion, and drinks…
The music briefly stops as the principal takes to the stage with announcement of the annual award for Best Athlete, which goes to Gary. On the stage, he dedicates the award to Shelly, and meekly asks her for the next dance. She involuntarily smiles, and, with an apology to KC, rejoins her boyfriend.
Through the waltzing couples, Keith dejectedly wanders, to be approached by an initially unfamiliar figure. In a white gown, hair delicately curled, arrives Mariah. Now serenely confident, she draws Keith into a waltz. On her stark change of manner, Keith realises her to have taken the potion. Euphoric, she declares her love for Keith, which, she now supposes, the Potion will enable him to reciprocate. She suddenly gasps and convulses. The principal stops by them in concern. Keith leads Mariah out for some air.
In the hall, in Keith's arms, Mariah stumbles before the horrifying effects of the Potion, all of which she confesses to have drunk the entire bottle. In horror, Keith asks why. So that he would desire her, she says. From Keith's chest, she lifts her face, revealing it to bear leathery protuberances and fangs. Keith despairs at the physical corruption of his friend.
She flees to hide her face before a wall. Keith pursues, and laments his purchase of the Potion. She asks why he did. As she sinks to the floor, he confesses: he wanted to be free of the isolation and rejection imposed by the stares of others at his handicapped leg. Mariah gasps a reiteration of her love for what he is. As she falls limp, he hugs her to his chest, begs her not to go, and onto her shoulder, sheds a single tear.
She dreamily raises her head, her face now clear and fangless. Overcome with relief, Keith realises himself to have conquered the Dark Dragon, which dwelled inside him since the accident, but is now gone. The concerned principal arrives to ask what's going on. With all to be well, Keith and Mariah return to the dance.
David draws to a close with a bid of Happy Birthday, closely echoed by the others, to Gary, who grins.
This episode provides examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: As usual, Sardo has to correct pronunciation of his name.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Both Keith and Mariah, when her overdose of Potion seems potentially fatal.
- Enemy Within: Between dosage, the Potion manifests the taker’s sense of isolation in growths of bestial hair, leathery skin and fangs.
- Fantastic Drug: The Potion makes you stronger and makes you feel good, but has very unpleasant side effects, makes you dependent on it to stop the side effects, can be lethal if you take too much at once, and refusing to confront the problems you try to use it as a quick fix for only makes them worse.
- Foreshadowing: Keith first tests the Popularity Potion on Mr. Sardo's sickly rabbit Harold. At first, it seems to make it turn into a healthier, prettier version of itself. But as Keith leaves, the potion turns Harold into a disfigured little monster. Keith ends up going through the same side effects, if more gradually.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: Justified (which is rare for this trope), as the potion may have made Mariah's vision better, just like it cured Keith of his limp.
- Honest John's Dealership: Not as much so as in his last appearance, but Sardo clearly isn't sure about the effectiveness of the Popularity Potion. What's more, he (unintentionally) excluded the fact that Keith's the only one who ever bought the Potion.
- Jekyll & Hyde: The story resembles a high school teen version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, rather than unleash a malignant alter-ego, the Potion enhances confidence, refines personal appearance, and seems to heal, at least temporarily, bodily impairment (such as Keith's limp and Mariah's poor vision). In between dosage, however, it manifests, as bestial bodily mutation, the taker’s sense of self-abasement.
- Just the Way You Are:
- Indifferent to his limp and magical makeover, Mariah still pines for Keith.
- Keith seems to register his love of Mariah not by her Potion-induced makeover, but on her endangerment by an overdose.
- The Power of Love: The desperate longing of Keith and Mariah for each other supersedes their respective self-abasement, which, in both, reverses the Potion's corruption.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: The aspiration magically fulfilled by the Potion includes instantaneously styled hair.
- Shout-Out: Recollection of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is acknowledged by Mariah shelving a copy of the book.
