PRODUCTION/CULTURAL REFERENCES (written on 7/28/18-7/29/18)

7/28/18

-I came up with the idea for this episode weeks ago, inspired by the Boy Meets World episode "Brother, Brother." At first, I thought about doing this with RK and KG, but I didn't think their relationship would need an episode like this. Then I thought about Anja and Lynne and things became more interesting. This is the most I've explored their relationship at any point in the series, and it would make sense that Lynne would start to resent Anja because she knows they're not as close as they used to be. I thought it would make an interesting conflict and show Lynne's softer, more vulnerable side.

-I used the season five technique with this episode. A while back, I came up with an episode where Wade would get annoyed with the guys' poor diet and start making healthier food for them to eat. It was called "Helpful Eating Hints with Chef Wade," and I even wrote a line for RK in case I decided to go with the idea. However, I decided it would work better as a subplot, and came up with the idea of Wade trying to improve the school lunch menu. I also needed the balance since the episode was focused on recurring characters.

-The time I came up with this episode to the time I finished the first draft was really short compared to a lot of other episodes. Most ideas are thought of weeks or months before they become actual episodes, but the process for this one took almost no time at all. I remember starting to write the episode on Friday, and then I finished it in the middle of the night on Saturday. It was the kind of episode that I just wanted to keep working on, like with "Wade Goes to Junior High" or "RK's Monster." I also didn't have to do a lot of rewriting for this one.

-At first, when I started working on the episode, I wanted to do it through Lynne's eyes. She still sees Anja as her best friend despite the fact that Anja has other friends and more of a responsibility to herself. She did an awful thing for the sake of keeping Anja around because she believed their relationship was getting worse. But then as I kept writing, I realized it wasn't just about Lynne feeling ignored. It was also about how Lynne intentionally makes bad situations worse and refuses to take responsibility for the things she does wrong. At the end of the day, both sisters still love each other but the problems between them will never go away until they work on them, and address the issues on both sides.

-This is definitely a top five episode of the season. I'm glad I was able to come out with something like this near the end, when my mind was already looking ahead to season seven.

-I really liked writing Lynne's friends, especially Melissa. She was like a weird mixture of Buster and RK, with a hint of Bitch Clock.

-I referenced a Cowboy Kyle movie just so I could find an easy way to open up "The Simpsons Movie: Thank You, Heavenly Edition" the week after. Plus, this is a callback to season five's "Cowboy Kyle's Comeback Tour" where Sparky and Buster tried to get the reboot of Cowboy Kyle off the air.

-Back in elementary school, we actually did have to wear baby blue shirts and khakis as our uniform. I didn't start wearing regular clothes again until high school.

-Jaylynn references "The Space Program" when she questions why her friends never get accepted into summer camps.

-I got the idea to have one of the crazy things Anja does in her letter be eating bags of heroin from Eminem. When he overdosed back in 2007, doctors told him it looked like he had ingested the equivalent of four bags of heroin. It made me wonder if someone could actually swallow heroin and I wrote it into the script.

7/29/18

-Jaylynn uses the same "orange in a bottle of Poland Spring" saying that she used in "Table for Five."

-Jaylynn references "The Thanksgiving from Hell." In that episode, Sparky loses the turkey he was going to serve for Thanksgiving dinner. Lynne ends up finding it, but it is later revealed that she stole the turkey under the belief that she was going to spend Thanksgiving alone.

-Lynne references the Degrassi episode "Eye of the Tiger." In an earlier episode ("Time Stands Still"), Rick is humiliated by a prank where he gets hit with paint and feathers after winning a game show. Spinner and Jay were the perpetrators, but when they noticed Rick was in the bathroom, they lied and said it was Jimmy that set the prank up. Rick ended up shooting Jimmy, which paralyzed him and put him in a wheelchair. In "Eye of the Tiger," Spinner tells Jimmy that he was responsible for it.

-The scene where Anja and Lynne fought was inspired by the scene in "Brother, Brother" where Cory and Eric fought, including the dialogue. The only difference is in the original episode, it's more about Cory being frustrated because he feels like Eric doesn't care about him. In this episode, Anja tells Lynne everything about herself, but she doesn't realize that Anja was right until she went too far.