PRODUCTION/CULTURAL REFERENCES (written on 2/3/15)

-Well, this was two weeks too late. Thank You, Heavenly was originally supposed to return to television on January 18 with "Illegal Business." Well, that idea fell through when I realized I had no idea how to execute it. Yeah, from now on, I don't plan on working with broad, high-concept ideas like "Illegal Business" without a plan. I need to know exactly how the episode is going to go down before I write something like that. So, I decided to settle with "The Girl Next Door is Mine," an episode involving Buster and Jaylynn fighting for the affections of a girl named Denise (voiced by Larisa Oleynik). There was not enough time to finish it so I decided to put it on the backburner for a couple weeks. It might air this Sunday in time for Valentine's Day (which is six days after that) or the 15th, I would still have to work that out.

-"Super Bowl Cum-Day III" was then slated to be the midseason premiere on January 25. I wasn't going to write the episode the same way I have for the past two seasons, which involved the gang simply going to the Super Bowl and getting into something wild. This time, I was going to take a "Treehouse of Horror" approach and write three short stories in one episode. And then, that didn't work out because with all three ideas that I came up with, only one was really appealing to me: "The Report from Hell." That's why I decided to put it in this episode because it had the most comedic potential and I didn't want it to go to waste. Had "Super Bowl Cum-Day III" gone to plan, "The Report from Hell" would have been the last segment. Here are the other two shorts by the way:

"To the West, Whitewards"

Testicular Sound Express decides to have a race to see who gets to Phoenix first for Super Bowl weekend. Sparky and Buster are one team, RK and Jaylynn are another and Wade goes solo. RK decides to wait one night to travel and rents an RV for him and Jaylynn to travel in: The Wondervan 6000 (which is a direct reference to the My Wife and Kids episode "R.V. Dreams"). The two meet some people who want to travel in the Wondervan, believing it is some kind of party bus taking people to Phoenix. RK and Jaylynn agree after getting paid by the people, but they immediately overstay their welcome and the two have to work together to get rid of them. In the end, Wade makes it to Phoenix first after Sparky and Buster collide with the Wondervan 6000.

"The Great Patriot Mystery"

Wade, a devoted New England Patriots fan, is pleased that the time has once again reached the Super Bowl. However, he is fully aware of the fact that the last two times the team got to the big game, they lost. So Wade decides to go back in time to Super Bowl XLII (Glendale, Arizona) in 2008 and Super Bowl XLVI (Indianapolis, Indiana) in 2012 to figure out what New England needs to do to win Super Bowl XLIX.

-This episode was completely written out of real-life experience and certain circumstances. I was caught cheating just recently on my trigonometry final for the semester. It was one of the most humiliating and devastating experiences in my life, because I never thought I would be so desperate to do that. However, it made sense and I ended up receiving credit, just like Sparky did. I actually came up with the idea for this episode the day it happened, and started writing it a week ago. Originally, the episode was going to feature RK in the main plot, but I then realized that the point I was trying to make would not be as strong with RK. The problem is that RK is usually an underachieving student, so it makes sense for him to cheat not out of desperation, but of his own volition. With Sparky, he routinely does well in school and cares about his grades, so the episode worked best with him. However, since the episode was not going to be strong enough with just that one plot, I decided to have RK in the subplot as he finally recognizes the benefit of working hard in school.

-I decided to use Mr. Robertson because just putting in my real teacher's name is lazy. I also knew right off the bat that it had to be William Daniels voicing him. That was a must. By the way, for you younger people, Daniels played Mr. George Feeny on the hit television show Boy Meets World on ABC (1993-2000).

-The ending of the episode was changed. Originally, Wade was supposed to tell Sparky at school that he was one of the people Mr. Robertson caught cheating at school. Mr. Robertson was then supposed to tell the boys about the time he was busted for cheating. However, it was altered because it just didn't seem to fit with the timeline since it was all happening on the same day.

-This episode was hard to write in some areas, mostly because having the characters get in situations like this sucks me into the story and makes me a fan again, wanting to root for them to get out. Regardless of what happened in real-life, the episode was always going to end happily for Sparky, while he also took away a valuable lesson.

-While writing this, I started thinking it was similar to the season five Arthur episode "Nerves of Steal," where Buster steals a Cybertoy from the local drugstore and hides it in Arthur's bag. That episode is actually the most depressing for me, because it ends on a low note. It's especially depressing because that was when the show did not take itself as seriously as it does now.

-One more thing to keep in mind: This will be the final season of Thank You, Heavenly. With me probably having to focus on school in 12th grade and other activities to help get me where I need to be for college next year, I won't have enough time to focus on the show. This is something that I had to take the time to think about. Does it have anything to do with the show itself and that as it goes by, I'm running out of ideas? No, those things happen naturally. It's only season three. While I wouldn't want the show to wear out its welcome, there are many places it can go if it went to, say, season five or six. I'm still looking for that Simpsons sensibility that gave it arguably the greatest run in the history of television. I don't exactly know what's going to happen next year, but as for right now, treat season three as the last of Thank You, Heavenly. There will definitely be a movie coming this summer that will be the series finale.

I still don't know exactly what I want to do, but all I know is that it has to be the kids' biggest adventure ever. I'm still keeping the European tour thing in mind, but it can't just be based on my experiences. The kids go to Europe, stuff happens. Yeah, it needs to be more elaborate and interesting than that. For the feature film, I'm going to do all I can to make it incredible, as if it was actually going to be released in theaters. Once I get into that mindset, I take it more seriously and tap into my creativity more often. If, by some chance there is a fourth season, the episodes in that season will be completely unrelated to the movie and not be chronologically set after it. Or maybe it will. Who knows? All I know for sure is that Thank You, Heavenly is ending before I go to college.

-This episode (and "The Report from Hell") came from the prototype "RK Gets Tough." RK finds out he's in danger of failing for the semester and potentially being held back so he starts taking his schoolwork more seriously. A history report is assigned to the class with kids being paired off, and Buster is assigned as RK's partner. Buster repeatedly goofs off and acts defiant towards the assignment despite RK working hard. Sparky, Wade, and Jaylynn tell RK that he's a soft touch and one day, he has to put his foot down. RK doesn't want to since Buster thinks he's cool, but when Buster goes too far and nearly deletes the report, he finally snaps and berates Buster for it. The episode plot was inspired/influenced by "Joey Gets Tough" from Full House and "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie" from The Simpsons. Now I don't know for sure if I will still do that episode. Eh, maybe I will, maybe I won't.

-The episode title is a reference to the "Deflategate" scandal of the AFC Championship Game a few weeks back, where the New England Patriots were accused of illegally deflating their own footballs in their 45-7 win over the Indianapolis Colts. I thought it would be perfect to give it a nod since this episode is about cheating. The working title for this episode was "Sparky the Brady," but then I felt like it was too on the nose.

-Mr. Feeny would always refer to people by "Mr./Mrs./ Ms. Name Here," so Mr. Robertson took that trait as well.

-The episode's opening cutaway was based off of real-life experience. My Juicy Juice was stolen right in front of my eyes in second grade. How do you take juice that's not yours?! We were in second grade and really stupid, that's how.

-The scoreboard gag in "The Report from Hell" was one of those "in the bank" jokes planned in advance. The gag would change based on which teams reached the Super Bowl. In this case, the score is a reference to last year's Super Bowl when the Seahawks defeated the Broncos 43-8. This joke pokes fun at the AFC and its lack of depth or competition when compared to the NFC.

-I really enjoyed writing "The Report from Hell," since it was shorter than a regular Thank You, Heavenly episode and I could focus more on jokes and gags.

-Buster's new rock being named after Donovan Patton is a reference to Steve Burns, the original host of Blue's Clues, leaving the show in 2002 to focus on his music career and being replaced by Patton.

-Gilcania was originally supposed to perform a rimshot in an earlier episode (have no idea which one it was) but the gag never made it in.

-RK stating that Mr. Robertson will be his math teacher next year for no reason is a double entendre: It refers to the semi-floating timeline of Thank You, Heavenly and the fact that the characters barely age, but more so to a certain plot point of Boy Meets World. On the show, Mr. Feeny was constantly teaching the main characters, following them all the way to college. This ended up even being referenced by the characters themselves and on the spin-off Girl Meets World ("Girl Meets Game Night").

-Another Boy Meets World reference was made: The show joined ABC's TGIF block in 1993 when it first premiered, and stayed there for its entire seven-season run.

-I'm still trying to get the sibling rivalry running gag with RK and Jaylynn down pat. I want to make sure their lines always come from a place of just being misguided and childish rather than being outright cold and malicious.

-I've been on a Nas kick lately so that's why two of his songs were featured in this episode. Both "Nas is Coming" and "Take It in Blood" appear on Nas' 1996 album It Was Written, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut album Illmatic. At the time, Nas was accused of pandering to the latest trends in rap music with It Was Written, which had a more commercially appealing sound compared to Illmatic. It ended up becoming Nas' best-selling album (and still is), debuting at #1 on the Billboard 200 and being certified double platinum (sales of at least 2,000,000 copies in the U.S.) by the RIAA two months after its release.