Written by Jennifer
December 08, 2008
What would I do without my daily dose of babyfaced cops infiltrating the high schools to fight crime and prevent drug abuse?
In 1990 I couldn't stand Johnny Depp. He was a BOP magazine poster boy virtually shoved down the throats of teenage girls, and I wasn't buying. Well, neither was Johnny, and as soon as he wriggled out of his 21 Jump Street contract and announced that his own image, manufactured like a Tootsie Pop, made him queasy, I decided he was okay. When Edward Scissorhands came out, I realized he was the cat's pajamas, and the day after I saw it, I became a die-hard fan of 21 Jump Street. The reruns aired conveniently at 6 p.m. every day on a channel we didn't exactly get. At my house, it looked like Claude Monet had risen from the grave to work as director of photography for Stephen J. Cannell. I didn't care. I watched every episode at least four times.
When the reruns were pulled, I felt alone, bereft, incomplete. What would I do without my daily dose of babyfaced cops infiltrating the high schools to fight crime and prevent drug abuse? 21 Jump Street became my white whale, but finally, after ten years of waiting, searching, and begging the DVD gods, I harpooned Season 1 last fall. To be safe, I pre-ordered my copy months in advance (what if they ran out?!) and miraculously, it arrived three whole days before it was set to hit the stores.
Not believing my good fortune, I tore off the cellophane and settled in to watch the episode where the fat girl tries to burn down the prom. Do you remember her? She's also in that scandalous episode of Mr. Belvedere where Kevin takes her on a date because he hears she's easy. No wonder she's such a mess when the Jump Street gang finds her! The show was the same barrel of monkeys I remembered, the picture was clear (no snow! no static!), and I went to bed content that all was right with the world.
After that, I decided to begin at the beginning, so I went back to the first episode. Everyone is so young! The characters haven't grown into themselves yet, and Tom (Johnny Depp) is particularly immature, prudish, and uptight. It's quite funny really. I could almost recite the dialogue with the characters, but there were a few gems I'd forgotten, like the time a girl tells Tom he's cute and kinda looks like the kid in Pretty in Pink. Hah! That must be the best compliment Jon Cryer ever got!
There I was happily reliving memories, basking in the beauty of 80's fashion, and eagerly anticipating my favorite part—when Hoffs (Holly Robinson) teaches Tom how to think, dress, and act like a teenager again. She takes him shopping, they eat hot dogs, and play arcade games, and as Tom begins to see potential in life again, "The Finer Things" by Steve Winwood begins to play. In fact, almost every episode of 21 Jump Street featured great top 40 music from bands like U2 and REM. But when the moment of truth arrived, there was no Steve Winwood—just some generic, no-name pop. Doh!
Of course they hadn't secured the rights to the original music—it would probably be a legal nightmare, but I haven't been so disappointed since I bought Bosom Buddies and found "My Life" by Billy Joel replaced with something unrecognizable as the theme song. I looked around frantically and tried to calculate how fast I could get my Steve Winwood cd into the player and in sync with the scene, but decided this desperate effort would have to be saved for another day.
The music was one of the things I looked forward to the most, so I faced the rest of the episodes with a somewhat deflated sense of urgency. I tried to cheer up and remind myself that 21 Jump Street is great for star gazing—look, there's Sherilyn Fenn, Jason Priestley, Josh Brolin, Blair Underwood, and a bunch of other kids I recognize, but don't know why!—but nothing made up for the missing music until I listened to Peter DeLuise's audio commentary on the episode "Gotta Finish the Riff".
Next to Johnny I always loved him best, and rejoiced every time they were partnered for an episode. Is anything better than the two of them going undercover as the mischievous semi-punk McQuaid brothers? Listening to Peter's commentary is like getting a postcard from a long lost friend, like dying and going to 21 Jump Street heaven. He's so candid and friendly that when he thanked us for buying the DVD, I was inclined to say, "you're welcome." Inclined, mind you—my grasp on reality isn't gone yet.
He makes fun of his overacting, his use of eyeliner, and his large derrière, "I may have sat on a small child once," he says, "and the remains of that child may still be in my ass." He tells us all sorts of interesting, detailed stories about the making of the show and what happened to everyone on it, and has nothing but kind words for the estranged Johnny Depp. When the credits roll, he poses the question that has puzzled every Jump Street fan since the show's creation—why does the girl turning the pages of the yearbook have such long fingernails? Can she really be in high school? Is she a streetwalker? What does it all mean? Now that I have Season 1 for my very own, I can spend the rest of my life trying to figure that out.
