Blossom UnWHOAed: Season 1, Episode 3, "Blossom Blossoms"

If you thought Blossom was a period piece just because it takes place in 1990, boy are you in for a lot of trouble! And if you think that joke was in poor taste, be glad I’m skipping over the thirty or forty stupid menstruation jokes in this episode, in which Blossom gets her first period.

We open on a pharmacy where Blossom makes a dash to discreetly buy her first box of tampons.

She rushes them to the clerk, only it’s Giovanni Ribisi of all people. She’s all embarrassed because he’s playing a boy she knows at school, though it would’ve been a better story if Giovanni Ribisi was playing himself and was ringing up Blossom’s tampons. We could learn all kinds of things like why is Giovanni Ribisi is working at a pharmacy, what will the other Russos say when they meet Giovanni Ribisi, will Six try to make out with Giovanni Ribisi and try to steal his soul, etc. Sorry, I’m trying to pad the word count a little since I’ll be skipping over a lot of this episode, as it’s about 50 percent menstruation jokes.

Anyway Giovanni Ribisi rings up the gum and combs that Blossom buys so she can pretend she wasn’t buying tampons.

There’s a two-second fantasy where he asks if she forgot a box of tampons that’s comically oversized, but it turns out he was only asking about the regular sized box. Back in reality Blossom says those must have been left in the cart.

At the Russo residence, Blossom thanks Six for bringing over tampons and maxi pads, because she didn’t know what she’d do otherwise. I’m finding it strange that Blossom does so many things without consulting Six first, when it seems on paper that they have a healthy, sisterly relationship. Maybe she secretly hates Six.

Blossom and Six exchange jokes about her period for about twelve minutes, which I’ll skip over. You’re welcome.

There are two conflicts in this episode, and we learn the first here: Blossom misses her mom in the midst of all the new jokes she has access to now that she’ll be having her period. Good thing she has a friend like Six to help her get over this by disappearing for the rest of the episode.

Pop Culture References: Star Wars

Blossom walks into the kitchen to find Anthony murdered on the kitchen table. Alright, the show’s over. It was a great three episodes, and they chose to end it before the quality started to suffer.

Oh, fuck, it was just a bit. Anthony is helping Joey shoot a video for school. Guess we’re still going.

We learn that the second conflict is going to be about about Blossom turning into a woman while living in a house full of boys, and just as that’s clear, Anthony points out that Blossom’s in a bad mood, and surprisingly this isn’t played for a laugh.

And just as the show has redeemed itself a little, Blossom pulls out a carton of ice cream from the freezer, because she’s on her period, GET IT? It has what I think is supposed to be a severed foot on it, and Blossom tells Joey and Anthony that some day they’re gonna have to grow up.

They proceed to noogie the fuck out of her.

Pop Culture References: Halloween (film series)

Blossom wakes up and walks down the stairs.

She enters the kitchen, to find Nick getting in from another session gig. He jokes about how nice it is to drive in LA at five in the morning because everyone’s out of ammunition. Ha-HA!

Nick deduces Blossom has been up waiting for him, since her pajamas aren’t wrinkled and her face doesn’t have pillow creases, telling her this isn’t his first rodeo. I can’t imagine Joey or Anthony waiting up for Nick to come home, so I guess he means Maddy used to do that, but it’s never stated. Anyway he invites Blossom to talk over some chocolate ice cream, but because oh-ho-ho, Blossom ate it all.

They settle for chocolate chip cookie dough, which is a weird little coincidence because if this were made a few years later, eating raw cookie dough would have been the exact kind of cliché Blossom (the series) would jump at the chance to use for a heart-to-heart talk, and this episode has about eight heart-to-hearts. I know I’ll have to eventually go back and do another tally of something, and I pray to Gustov Youtube, inventor of the YouTube, it won’t be a tally of heart-to-hearts, because this episode alone has got to be in the double digits.

Nick tries to run down what the problem might be, and because we’re only in the first act, Blossom backs out of telling him what it is, and goes to sleep.

Blossom wakes up again, and goes downstairs again. Didn’t she just do that? That’s a little tedious.

Speaking of tedious, Blossom enters the kitchen to exclaim, “Hi Mom!” and around turns Phylicia Rashad.

Not that Phylicia Rashad herself is tedious, but the reference to The Cosby Show is. Fading memory tells me it was a great show and all, but it’s been at least ten years since I’ve seen it, and the idea that that Clair Huxtable is the ideal TV mother is no longer as ubiquitous and unquestioned as it is to the studio audience, who’s finding it uproarious. I realize The Cosby Show was the number one show for like six years at this point, but the idea is that this is inherently funny for some reason is just confusing now.

Clair Russo notices immediately that Blossom has had her period and pleasantly explains the whole menstruation process using the cake she made for Blossom’s afternoon snack. I wonder if she’ll be back for the very special episode about insulin shots.

I get that having Phylicia Rashad be the caring mother Blossom needs for this dream sequence was great cross-promotion for NBC, but wasn’t Clair Huxtable supposed to be, to put it gently, a no-nonsense bitch?

She was loving, et cetera, but any time I watched The Cosby Show or A Different World and Mrs. Huxtable was forced to listen to one of the seventy or eighty idiot kids who inhabited that universe, she seemed to be eternally about two seconds from saying “That’s a great idea, my dear, but if you don’t stop talking I’m going to literally bite off your fucking head.”

Anyway Clair Russo tells Blossom to go back to bed, and that she’ll be upstairs soon with some soup and a heating pad, ready to talk about menstruation for as long as Blossom needs.

Pop Culture References: The Cosby Show

Blossom wakes up, calling for her mom. She at least turns the lights off when she goes to sleep now. We must have skipped over the episode where Nick has a heartwarming talk with Blossom about not running up the fucking electric bill.

Blossom heads downstairs for the third time. At this point I’m convinced every episode has some element that gets intentionally highlighted over and over just to see if anyone’s paying attention to how absurd it is. In the pilot, it was the Russo family’s Christianity, in “School Daze” it was the incongruity of the timeline, and in this episode it’s a fetish for the family staircase.

This time Blossom tries calling the number on Maddy’s most recent postcard, which is in Paris. She can only leave a message.

She checks the kitchen to make someone didn’t break into the house again to make a cake.

The next day, Anthony and Joey are still making their stupid movie, and Nick comes downstairs (oh, come on) and calls a meeting with them.

Nick is concerned about what’s going on with Blossom, hinting to Anthony that he’s worried maybe Blossom is taking drugs. I get that Nick is supposed to be this ignorant chump, but Blossom being on drugs is the last thing I’d read from their conversation in the kitchen. Yes, she was awake at 5am, but it’s not like she was tweeking or advocating Dave Matthews.

Also, Nick’s been working in music for over twenty years, so he should know the signs better than Anthony, who only spent year doing everything, including rehab.

Blossom brings in the groceries to someone else’s house. Hey, it’s Mrs. Swanson!

I have no idea who this is.

We infer that Mrs. Swanson is some neighbor or local woman that Blossom helps out. She’s kooky and she loves the Russos unconditionally, and I’m not sure that those two statements are mutually exclusive.

So she’s a wacky neighbor, an old lady, she dresses gaudy, she talks to imaginary animals, she complains about menopause, the list goes on. She’s so many sitcom clichés rolled into one I’m shocked she’s not being played by Edie McClurg or Billie Bird.

Mrs. Swanson finds Blossom’s tampons, and they trade more wisecracks about it.

Fortunately she’s the only person Blossom can have an emotional breakdown in front of.

And thirty seconds after Mrs. Swanson congratulates Blossom on becoming a grown-up, Blossom is sitting in her lap, crying.

Mrs. Swanson says Blossom’s family loves her, and so does she, and we all have to work with what we have. She hugs Blossom, and it’s very sweet. It’s also very sad, because apparently Mrs. Swanson dies the next day, as she’s never seen or mentioned again.

Blossom finds Nick writing sheet music, and Nick directs her on where to scratch his back, and Blossom chats him up. None of this stops Nick from writing, which is a little weird.

Anyway having gotten what she wanted from Mrs. Swanson, Blossom has the nerve now, and she gives Nick her prepared statement: she’s a woman now.

Thinking this meant she’s been with her first Puerto Rican, Nick looks absolutely furious.

Then she tells him she got her period.

He goes through every “Oh,” moment from adoration to anger, then “Oh no! Already?!” which is probably what he said to Maddy when she announced she was pregnant the first time. Or considering his contempt for Joey, maybe it was the second time.

They have a heart to heart. Everything’s changing, et cetera. Then Nick becomes ecstatic: “Wait’ll I tell your brothers!”

Anthony and Joey get called in. “Great news, guys! Blossom got her period,” Nick announces. It’s pretty horrifying, and pretty hilarious.

We get another heart-to-heart between Blossom and Nick, because the fierce competition between heart-to-hearts and characters walking down the stairs in this episode is still going strong and there’s still like six minutes left.

Pop Culture References: Ted Koppel, for the second time in three episodes

Blossom comes downstairs yet again. Dude, seriously.

The Russo family is going out for Chinese food to celebrate Blossom’s puberty, and kill the remaining airtime with some more stupid jokes about periods. And this time, the guys are getting involved!

Joey asks what this all means, how one day Blossom walks down the stairs and she’s suddenly a woman. Wait, was that a motif? Having someone walk down the staircase five times in a single episode? Huh.

Blossom tells him it just means they’re growing up, and that it doesn’t change anything.