Accidental Aesop: The plot of "Gather Ye Acorns", a small troll tells Jonathan "Jono" Quick to forget about studying to be a doctor and that hard work is not a virtue. "There's doctors aplenty is this world," he says, "What we could truly do with is a few more dreamers." We switch from 1932 to 1938 and he winds up spending all his hard-earned money on a fancy car. His dad is a little peeved, to say the least, and boots him out of the house. Years go by and Jono is now old, broke, friendless, homeless and trying to beg for enough money to gas up his car to commit suicide with it. But a wealthy lady notices some collector's piece in his collection of junk and offers him $10,000 for it. Cut to him now wealthy from selling all his childhood collectables. It turns out that all his artifacts are worth millions. He's now Wealthy Ever After, but it has cost him most of his life and now he has only a short amount of time to enjoy it. This is treated as a happy ending, with the message: Don't work, don't make plans, don't have relationships with friends or family, and hoard. Money is the most important thing in life, and someday you may become rich when you're extremely old which will make up for the poverty, loneliness and misery you have made for yourself up to that point. Maybe Jono would have lived a more fulfilling life as a doctor helping people? Or perhaps he could still have worked and maintained relationships and held onto his keepsakes?
Awesome Music: Arguably the most impressive lineup of composers ever to work on a TV series. Check this out:
Danny Elfman (alongside Steve Bartek) (two showsnote Unfortunately, Intrada only released one of them ("Mummy, Daddy") on their albums of the series because the masters for "The Family Dog" couldn't be found)
In 2006, Intrada released three compilation albums featuring the score of 31 episodes of the series. The collection also includes the theme song (as well as two alternate versions of the theme song), the end credits theme, the score of the show's two bumpers and even the score of the logo of Spielberg's production company Amblin Entertainment (and just like the theme song, the album also includes two alternate versions of the Amblin logo score).
In "Santa '85", Douglas Seale plays Santa Claus, who winds up getting arrested. Three years later Seale would play Santa again, and the same thing winds up happening to him! Heck, both times have moments where the police attempt to take his fingerprints, only for things to not work quite the way they usually do.
"Mirror, Mirror", where a horror novelist sees a Mirror Monster in every reflective surface coming after him. Click here for a full recap and screenshots.
"Miscalculation", a story where a college geek attempts to use a mix of chemicals to bring pin up models to life in hopes of making a girlfriend for himself. It goes about as well as you'd expect. And even worse, by the time he starts getting it to work right, the final shot of the episode shows the chemicals pouring on an image of a grotesque monster...
Visual Effects of Awesome: ILM and Dream Quest Images did them. The intro by Robert Abel & Associates as well, while dated nowadays, was also incredibly impressive for 1985 CGI techniques.
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