Reflections

Fearing her parents are about to get a divorce Holly develops an eating disorder. Rejecting help from concerned friends and teachers she ends up in hospital.

Meanwhile Doris is organising the school, leaving Danny and Chris in dilemma about who to ask as their dates.  Morloch asks a reluctant Sherwood to be his date.

This is an interesting episode, dealing with some interesting issues. Sadly like any of the episodes that deal with big issues it comes out of no where. There’s no build up and Holly’s problems are not mentioned again afterwards. The episode does give us a timeline in that it all happens during the 4 weeks run up to the prom. I’m not sure how realistic it is for someone to get so bad with an eating disorder that they have to be hospitalised but are fit and healthy again in time to get to the school prom. People hide these disorders for years so to me it doesn’t feel realistic.

 It would have been so much better if we’d just seen the slightest clues that Holly wasn’t eating very much or was always on a diet in at least one of the previous episodes. In “Team Work” Nicole lives with Holly for a few weeks but even there there’s nothing to highlight this problem. In that episode she even got into an argument with Jesse for eatuing her cake.  Just like the the eating issues also Holly’s parents marital problems and the possibility of them getting a divorce  isn't previously mentioned either. Holly’s Mother has already made an appearance this season so it would have been easy to include something about the marital problems in "The Rivalry" episode.

 As Cynthia was missing from this season for quite a few episodes at the start, personally I would have used that absense to link into this story to show she was having problems back then which then developed as we see in this episode.

 Valerie Landsburg directed this episode, which was her first time directing. She had only recently been married and she is credited as Valerie Landsburg-McVay which I think is the only time she was credited in this way. I don’t know whether it was planned or pure coincidence but as Doris was the one that had many issues with her body image and weight in the past it seemed fitting that Valerie would helm an episode dealing with an eating disorder.

 Valerie has previously stated that the original storyline for this episode was Nicole was to be the one who had the eating disorder and Valerie fought for them to change it to Holly.  This might explain was there was little continuity in previous episodes and establishing Holly’s problems but if the intention was for Nicole to have anorexia then there was no set up for that story either. Personally I think it would have been harder to swallow that Nicole was anorexic so I’m glad they changed it.

Anyway to me it's not really clear if Holly is actually Anorexic because of her problems or if the discussion in class about the little boy who decided not to grow gave her the idea to stop eating as a protest to her parents problems. We certainly hear her mention how fat she is and we see her look in the mirror where she sees a distorted image but in the English class it makes it look as though she decides she could deliberately stop eating. Anyway the episode quickly moves through Holly dieting/fasting to then pigging out and being bulimic to simply stopping eating. Which seems a pretty quick progression. Her friends and family tell her she's going to die but that falls on deaf ears until she sees her new friend does actually die and Holly quickly changes her mind and decides to eat. 

 The subplot is a build up to the prom which Doris is organising and looks at Danny, Chris and Morloch trying to get dates for the prom so that ads a little humour.  Valerie states she had asked the writers to write Doris out as much as possible so she could concentrate on the directing. Although I understand it would be a lot of work to do both at the same time I feel it’s a shame as it’s out of character for Doris not to be more involved in trying to help her friend especially when Doris had weight issues herself.

 “Tomorrow Morning” is a great song and one of my all time favourites, although Billy seems a little awkward during the song and for some reason doesn’t get any solo lines, unlike Carlo, Nia and Jesse.  

 Jesse version of Lionel Richie’s “Hello” also works pretty well although I was a little confused why he sings it twice. It seems like an odd prom where someone ends a song then they announce the prom queen and then they sing exactly  the same song again. It would have been better if the fade from Holly to the prom was just an instrumental dance which ends quickly and we can get to see Jesse perform the whole song in one go after that.

 The Haukilau song isn’t really a favourite of mine and it’s not really a song more of a dance routine. I guess fans of Chris, Danny and Jesse would be happy as they were all shirtless!

 I did think there were a few parts of the script that were a little heavy handed, like near the beginning Nicole says “Ready to hit the showers skinny!” She had never addressed Holly like that prior to this episode and has never done so since, and I don’t think we needed to labour the point that Holly may think she’s fat but she isn’t really.

 I loved Lydia’s reaction and it was interesting to hear that Lydia had suffered from anorexia herself. It would have been nice to hear a little more about that. Maybe in a discussion with Sherwood or something.

 I also liked the end where Nicole gives up prom queen to give it to Holly. I’m not sure who makes the decisions as to who is prom queen  but would the people making the decision not have given it to Holly in the first place for overcoming her issues?

 I noticed right at the start that when Holly gets out of the car and her father follows we actually see the shadow of the microphone, as it moves into position,  on the wall of the school entrance.

Original  air date in U.S.A 04th May 1985

Original  air date  in U.K. 29th July 1985,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Broadcast Autumn 1992

Original air date in Italy 10th September 1986

Original  air date in France 10th February 1996