CHAPTER 1 - TUBE'S BROKEN? WHY WORRY?
This is my second Stoked fanfic to be uploaded, something a little more lighthearted this time around. Here, our favorite hotel heiress Lo has a dream where she's a character in a 1960s-style sitcom (as noted in the story header), but with a few 21st-century twists. One of those twists is Lo's awareness that she's a sitcom character in her dream. Fin co-stars as the sensible blonde best friend to Lo's wacky brunette as they get into a little adventure involving the title object.
Also as noted, this story is a tribute to (and parody of) sitcoms of the 1950s and 1960s. Chronologically, it is also set during the same weekend as my earlier fanfic "Luck Has a Way", putting it just after "Charging into the Night" in the show's timeline.
Over at the Surfer's Paradise hotel staff house, it was half past midnight and things were quiet. Just a couple of hours earlier, in Fin, Emma and Lo's room, the three girls had gone online via Fin's laptop computer to watch video clips of old TV sitcoms form the 1950s and 1960s on the YouView site, on a lark. The girls had been laughing at the shows they were watching, not so much because they found them funny in most cases, but because they found the shows kitschy and quaint by present-day standards. While Lo, Fin and Emma each made their own quips about the sitcoms they watched, all agreed that they actually found those shows funny compared with the present-day sitcoms that Reef mentioned he liked watching.
The one time when Reef and the girls watched a DVD of one of his favorite sitcoms, Dorm Life (a show about college freshmen and their misadventures on campus) on his own laptop, Fin, Lo and Emma were barely able to sit through half of the show before the girls walked out on it, with all three saying that the show sucked and was not a bit funny, and Fin adding that she thought some scenes and jokes in the show were sexist. When Reef dismissed Fin's criticism of his show and said he found it funny, Fin retorted that anyone who thought Dorm Life was funny was as moronic as the characters and storylines in the show. Thinking back to that time, it made Lo, Fin and Emma agree about the quality of the comedies from TV's classic age compared with many of the comedies of today, especially after they began watching a clip of one such classic 1960s sitcom, The Lacey Show, which the girls laughed their way through thanks to the physical comedy and the wacky situations the show's main character found herself in.
Now, as Lo, Emma and Fin were all fast asleep in their own beds, Lo started turning in her bed in her sleep as she began to have a dream...
Down in the staff house's common living room, Lo was watching the junky old black-and-white TV set with Fin when she began to realize that something seemed off to her. Okay, hold on a minute, Lo thought to herself as she checked out the surroundings in the living room. Maybe it's me, but why am I hearing music that's not coming from the TV, and why does it sound like the same kind of background music from those old TV sitcoms I was watching with Fin and Emma last night? And wait, she added as she suddenly had an epiphany about what she was experiencing. Why am I seeing everything in black-and-white? Am I in one of those old shows myself? If I am, why does everything in the staff house still look the same? And how come I keep hearing laughter whenever I say something? Lo thought, realizing that she was hearing the sounds of a laugh track.
Lo's perception of her surroundings aside, she and Fin were sitting on the couch as they watched the TV set's only available channel off the set-top antenna, the CBC. Lo was munching on strawberries while Fin was digging into a snack-size bag of potato chips as they watched TV, and both were looking bored with what they were watching. The two girls were wishing they could be out surfing at the Office, but rainy and windy weather outside the staff house made it undesirable for Lo and Fin to want to hit the waves that day.
As the girls continued watching the TV, the picture on the set began to act up, becoming snowy and developing lines. "What?" Fin said, getting up to check how the TV was. "Come on now, I don't need this!" she said as she banged the top of the set with her open hand first, then with her fist, to try to improve the picture. "Work, darn you!"
"Maybe it's the weather outside," Lo remarked. "It's happened before when the weather got bad out there. Maybe if you fixed up the antenna a little..."
"Trust me, it's not the weather," Fin replied. "The set's been acting up like this the past three days in a row and it was nice out all those times. If you want it to work better, banging on the set a few times to improve the picture usually works." She then went back to work on the TV set, exhorting it to work better as she continued to bang on the top, then on the sides, when suddenly, the picture winked out and the screen went black, accompanied by the sound of a buzz from the ancient set's cathode ray tube that faded a moment later. Looking at the now-black screen, Fin sighed resignedly and said, "Well, that's it. This pile of junk is officially dead."
"Oh, crud," Lo said. "Guess all it's good for now is as a vintage-looking stand to put stuff on."
"Calling this set 'vintage' about covers it," Fin said. "Didn't they stop making black-and-white TVs back in, like, 1978 or something?"
Lo shrugged her shoulders at Fin's question. "So, now we can't watch TV because the old set's toast, and we can't really go surfing because it's raining and windy outside," she said. "What do you wanna do, then?"
"Beats me," Fin replied with her own shrug. "What do you wanna do?"
"I dunno," said Lo, shrugging again. "I guess we'll just sit on the couch and be bored, then." As the canned laughter followed Lo's comment again, she and Fin then sat motionless on the couch for a few moments, staring at the blank TV screen while Lo heard that 1950s sitcom background music again, before Lo's eyes shifted to the windows overlooking the front porch of the staff house and she noticed that the wind had stopped and the rain was slowing to a drizzle. An inspiration then hit Lo as she smiled and her eyes lit up. "Hey, I've got an idea," she perked up.
"Right now, I'm open to anything if it means not sitting on the couch staring into space," Fin said. "What do you got?"
"We can go get a new widescreen TV for the staff house," Lo suggested. "I totally miss watching my favorite shows in HD."
"Good call, except for a couple of issues," Fin said, raising an eyebrow at Lo. "A: What's the point of getting a widescreen TV just to watch one channel on," she added, "and B: How do you plan to pay for a TV set? Last I checked, your dad cut off your credit cards and you weren't exactly making top dollars waitressing at the Pirate Ship, even with tips."
"Easy," said Lo. "First, we'll get a satellite dish to go with the new TV so we can get all the channels we like, and second, Daddy may have taken away my credit cards, but I still have a means of getting what we need."
"Reeeally?" Fin said with a sly look. "What do you have in mind, exactly?"
"I've got about $3000 in 'mad money' stashed away back in the penthouse," Lo said. "That's enough to cover the cost of a 52-inch LCD set and a satellite dish and receiver and still have enough cash left over afterward."
"Okay, so how're you gonna get your 'mad money'?" Fin wondered. "Didn't your dad also ban you from the penthouse until you can prove to him that you've become more responsible after what happened with your party?"
"I've got it covered," Lo said reassuringly. "Daddy's out of town for the weekend on a fishing trip and he took Ty and George with him, so it's just Mom at the penthouse. I'll call her and ask her to find the money, tell her what it's for and ask her to bring it down to me, then I'll call the Kahuna to take me and you into town to go TV shopping and hang out for the day. Cool?"
Fin shrugged and smirked. "Okay, you won me over," she said as a happy Lo then took out her cell phone to call her mother at the Ridgemount penthouse at the top of Surfer's Paradise.
As you might guess in this chapter, the old show Lo, Fin and Emma were watching online, The Lacey Show, is a takeoff of The Lucy Show. Would it be surprising if, when writing for Lo on Stoked, some of the show's writers may have been influenced by some of Lucille Ball's characters while writing about Lo's misadventures?
There'll be more to come next chapter as Lo and Fin go shopping for that new TV set and satellite dish, with appearances by a couple of familiar characters along the way - same Stoked time, same Stoked channel. :D
Stoked (c) Fresh TV and Teletoon. I don't own the show or any of the characters.