Recap / My So Called Life S 1 E 6 The Substitute

The Substitute:

Written By: Jason Katims

Directed By: Ellen S. Pressman

Vic Racine (Roger Rees) is the new substitute English teacher, and he becomes popular with most of the students (Rayanne and Rickie start coming to the class even though they're not in the class) - except for Brian, who doesn't like him at all. Then a poem written for the Liberty High literature book (called "Haiku for Him", about someone having sex with their boyfriend in the basement of their house) becomes controversial. Then it turns out Vic Racine isn't quite what he seems.

This episode contains examples of:

• Bittersweet Ending: For the Chase family - the fact Mr. Foster decides not to suspend Angela despite the fact she defied school policy makes Graham and Patty happy, but Angela is disappointed because she wanted to get suspended for something she believed in. Plus, of course, even though she found out Mr. Racine wasn't the adult she could look up to, English class won't be the same again.
• Broken Pedestal: Mr. Racine becomes this for Angela when she finds out the real reason he's quitting as a teacher - he hasn't been paying child support to his family, and when Mr. Foster brings up a notice he received about that fact, Mr. Racine decides to run off.
• Character Catchphrase: Mr. Racine's is "Good question".
• Comically Missing the Point: When everyone is trying to figure out what happened to Mr. Racine:
  Rickie: People are say everything. That he was fired. That he was sleeping with a junior. That he was thrown in jail.
  Rayanne: Which junior?
• Cool Teacher: Mr. Racine starts out as this at first - he inspires the students to go deeper when it comes to their writing, his classes are very popular, and he even gets through to Jordan - but then he becomes a Deconstruction when it turns out he left his family and hasn't been paying child support.
• Drinking the Kool-Aid: Lampshaded by Graham - when he's describing Mr. Racine to Patty, Graham says, "He, um, didn't give me any Kool-Aid to drink, or anything like that."
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The first thing Angela notices about Mr. Racine is his socks don't match (one is black and one is white).
• Foreshadowing: The fact Jordan can't read (or was never taught how) becomes important in the next episode.
• Insistent Terminology: When Brian comes over and sees Graham sewing Danielle's Girl Scouts uniform:
  Graham: What? You never saw someone sew on a merit badge before?
  Danielle: It's not a merit badge. It's a proficiency badge.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Angela feels this way when, after she and Brian have been arguing about Mr. Racine:
  Brian: Look, I have a right not to like him.
  Angela: (Beat) That's true, you do.
• Hurricane of Euphemisms: When Mr. Racine is trying to get Jordan to answer a question:
  Mr. Racine: Well, um, I've had the privilege of reading your entries for the Liberty Lit. And, um, how shall I describe them. Good question. Let's see. Boring. The word boring comes to mind. Fake, false, synthetic, bogus. What do these words have in common? You.
  Jordan: Me?
  Mr. Racine: Yeah. What do these words have in common? Yes, I know what you're going to say. That they're synonyms meaning "not genuine". Well, that's true, that's absolutely true. But what else are they? I mean, how else would you classify them?...If I tell you the class' work was safe, banal, homogenized, cutesy, appalling - all of which is true, by the way.
• Meaningful Echo: Angela's poem is a fable about a little girl who lives in cottage made of gingerbread and candy, until one morning when she wakes up and everything is turning to mold and all the people are made of paper. At the end of the episode, when Angela finds out that she's not suspended, she reads in the voiceover the first part of the fable right up to the line, "One morning, she woke up. She woke up."
• Moment Killer: Again, of a friendship moment - Rayanne and Sharon are bonding over how much Rayanne likes Sharon's poem when Angela bursts in and the two of them turn away from each other (though this is a downplayed trope in that Angela wants to talk to both of them).
• Never Learned to Read: Jordan, which pisses Mr. Racine off to no end.
• Not Actually the Ultimate Question: On Mr. Racine's first day:
  Angela: So, what are we supposed to do?
  Mr. Racine: I've known you all of five minutes and you want me to tell you what you are supposed to do? Fine - follow your hearts and veer away from heroin.
  Angela: No, I meant in the next forty-seven minutes.
  Mr. Racine: I know what you meant. That was sarcasm.
• Only in It for the Money: Mr. Racine claims to be this way at first - he tells the students on his first day he's only there to get paid - but he turns out to be a subversion.
• Oral Fixation: Mr. Racine often has a toothpick in his mouth, and is often offering a toothpick to anyone else. As a matter of fact, his offering a toothpick to one of the students is what gets the class to settle down when he first shows up.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sharon, who projects a goody-goody image (which is partly why Rayanne doesn't like her...at first), is the one who wrote "Haiku for Him". Also, when the students in the English class see Mr. Racine leaving the school (after Mr. Foster announced Mr. Racine would no longer be teaching there), and Angela, Rayanne, and Rickie run out after him, Sharon, after a moment's hesitation, runs out as well.
• Pet the Dog: As much as Brian dislikes Mr. Racine, he offers to help Angela distribute copies of the Liberty Lit (after they've been suppressed) because he agrees with the principle Angela is standing for.
• Phrase Catcher: Angela shows how much she's fallen under Mr. Racine's influence when she starts repeating his catchphrase "Good question."
• The Reveal: Sharon is the one who wrote "Haiku for Him".
• Saying Too Much: After two girls in the bathroom trash not only "Haiku for Him" but also the fact it was submitted anonymously, Sharon, who's also in the bathroom, snaps that Mr. Racine insisted everyone submitted their writings anonymously. The other girls don't pick up on it, but Rayanne, who's also in the bathroom, immediately figures out Sharon is the one who wrote "Haiku for Him", which Sharon is less than thrilled by.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Even though Angela has been told that the Liberty Lit won't be distributed in school (because of "Haiku for Him"), and even after she finds out the truth about Mr. Racine (see Broken Pedestal above), she decides to distribute the Lit anyway, because she doesn't think it should be censored.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Jordan decides to do this when Mr. Racine, on his first day of being a substitute, tells the class anyone who wants to leave can as he has no lesson planned. As Jordan is leaving, however, Mr. Racine admits there is one catch - he and the rest of the class will spend the entire time trashing Jordan in his absence.
• Secret Test of Character: When Angela asks Mr. Racine why he through the class' Liberty Lit entries out the window, he claims he did it as of this, to wake the class up (as well as clean the slate).
• Shaped Like Itself: When Patty refuses to print the entries for the Liberty Lit at first (because of "Haiku for Him"), and Mr. Racine says he'll print them himself to avoid censorship:
  Patty: This is not censorship. This is guiding adolescents who need...guidance.
• Shout-Out: Before Mr. Racine shows up to English class, one of Angela's classmates is blasting "What About Your Friends" on their boom box.
• Stealing the Credit: An interesting version - after "Haiku for Him" gets read aloud, Rayanne starts acting as if she wrote the poem (it was submitted anonymously). When Rayanne finds out Sharon wrote it, and Sharon thinks her life will be over when people find out she wrote it, Rayanne responds her life will be over when people find out she didn't write it. Once Sharon figures out this isn't a trick, and that Rayanne actually liked the poem (which is why she was pretending she wrote it), she asks Rayanne to continue pretending she wrote it instead of Sharon.
• Suddenly Shouting: After they find out Mr. Racine will no longer be teaching there:
  Brian: All that crap about honesty and truth. What a jerk. He didn't even teach.
  Jordan: HE DID TEACH! HE WAS THE BEST TEACHER I EVER HAD! (off everyone's looks) Well, he was.
• When I Was Your Age...: Lampshaded by Angela - when Patty and Graham start to wonder if Angela is getting too excited about protesting the censoring the Liberty Lit, Angela responds that she's had to listen her whole life to her parents talking about all they did during The '60s.