Season 1, Episode 7: "Hello Stranger"

Trivia: This episode was nominated for an Emmy in 2001 in the Outstanding Animated Program (Less than One Hour) category: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primetime_Emmy_Award_for_Outstanding_Animated_Program#2000s

One thing I really like about this show is the seasonal changes. "Hello Stranger" is distinctly set in autumn, and we get a sort-of illusion that the show is progressing in real-time.

It's the little details like this that make the show a smidgen more special.

Ms. Zorski, one of Ginger's teachers, approaches Ginger in the hallway and excitedly asks her which of her poems she's going to present for the fall festival. This is also the episode where it's shown that Ginger is not only a writer, but a talented one. Usually, main characters of a kids' show will have the protagonist bear a specific talent (most of the time the ability to sing or dance or whatever), but this is the only Nickelodeon show I know of where the dream of becoming a writer is presented as a major characterization trait. It opens up to a whole section of the audience who are writers themselves (I'm raising my hand here) or wish to become professional writers, so it's a breath of fresh air to have a  character to relate to.

Ginger wants to write a new piece for the festival, but hasn't gotten inspired yet. I have an idea, Ginger, why not write a poem about Dodie and how she's desperate for attention all the time? Especially since she just butted into your personal conversation and bothered Ms. Zorski about wanting in on the fair too. Dodie, what could you possibly contribute? And Macie, shame on you for enabling her.

The only "art" Dodie could possibly present at the art festival is her secret collection of Courtney Gripling paraphernalia. I just know she has a shrine in the back of her closet.

Luckily, Ms. Zorski quashes Dodie's desperation for the spotlight by guaranteeing she won't have a toe beneath it by assigning her and Macie to be ushers. Flashlights included! She walks away, and the trio's faces simultaneously fall into that classic deer-in-headlights look. It must be a new emotion for all of them. Is Dodie not going to be the center of attention for once? Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!

Ginger continues to struggle for inspiration on her way home. Like I said, write about Dodie! You don't even have to use her name. Just use all her annoying character traits and call her Jodie. Because changing the first letter of someone's name in a cartoon when trying to cover something up always works in the Nickelodeon world!

Anyway, she opens the mailbox and flips through some junk mail, finds a package of Carl's deadly sea snakes that are of no surprise to her, but then--oh my! She finds a letter from her father, Jonas, addressed to her! If you've never seen the show before, you might have assumed Ginger's father was dead or a deadbeat, as he hasn't been mentioned until this point.

I like how these cities are analogous to their personalities. 

Carl runs outside and demands his sea snakes, then cackles with devious glee when Ginger rolls her eyes and hands him the box. Up in Ginger's room, Ginger stares at the letter, wondering what her estranged father could have possibly written. Does this actually happen in real life with other people? I know for a fact that whenever I got a mysterious letter or whatever, I tore that sucker apart the second I saw it was for me. I didn't hold it and stare at it dramatically while taking deep breaths. Really, do other people do that? 

Darren pops through Ginger's window, and Ginger tells him about the letter she still hasn't opened. I guess Darren has some real beef with her dad because he offers to trash it, but Ginger gets really defensive and says she'll open it now. But now isn't now. Way to make a big deal out of the unknown, guys.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Carl continues to cackle with glee while mixing up his sea snakes in a pitcher. He walkie-talkies Hoodsey and says he's about to refrigerate their concoction, and they agree to leave it in there for six hours so it'll be nice and ready for tomorrow's school pet day. What the heck kind of sea snakes are these?!

Ginger finally opens the envelope to a graduation card from when she graduated elementary school--a year ago:

Dear Ginger, Congratulations on your Graduation! I'm sorry that I haven't been around a whole lot in the past, but I would like to be in the future. Love, Dad. Call me whenever you feel like it: 555-6262

Darren mocks Jonas about being a deadbeat, and then reminds her about how one Thanksgiving she begged Lois to let him come, only for him to cancel last minute. That's messed up. Seriously.

Lois comes home parched and, ignoring the clearly-visible box of sea snake mix on the table, she opens the refrigerator and pours herself a glass of what she thinks is lemonade:

Darren offers some advice before heading off, leaving Ginger concerned about whether or not to call Jonas. She practices her opening lines for her fake phone conversation while looking at photos where they both happened to be in the frame together.

"Hi, Dad, I was just looking at a picture of your...leg...and, so, thought I should give you a call." - Ginger

Practicing a phone conversation isn't as good as a real one, so Ginger picks up the phone and decides to call Jonas for real, but gets his answering machine instead. Aww.

Before the scene gets too depressing, Ginger hears Carl screaming from the kitchen and immediately rushes downstairs to see what's going on. Lois is sitting there with a blank stare while Carl dramatically explains that Lois drank his sea snake mix. Lois justifies that it was in a lemonade pitcher in the fridge, unmarked, so how could she have possibly known what it was? She even said it tasted pretty damn good, but just to be on the safe side, they decide to call up the company to see if she's going to die of sea snake lemonade poisoning. Carl begs her to have them order an overnight replacement, but Lois is like, "Hell, no. You ain't doin' this shit anymore." And then Carl blubbers like a baby. Strangely, when Lois calls the number on the back of the box, she gets a human on the line instantly. Now, why can't all companies be like that? She didn't even have to press 1 for English. I guess the company must have figured that too many people have made this mistake in the past, and that no one would call for any other reason, so they probably just got together in a meeting and decided, "Screw it, just tell them what they need to know so there aren't any lawsuits."

That night, Ginger continues to struggle to pull a hat out of a rabbit for the fall festival. Lois comes in to tell her to go to sleep, and Ginger tells her about the card from Jonas. She asks Lois if she should call him, and Lois tells her to do what she wants, because at some point in her (and Carl's) life, she must decide what role Jonas plays in her life. That's actually fantastic advice. Just because Lois and Jonas aren't together anymore, it doesn't mean that Ginger has to be a stranger to him, too. Ginger says that just because Jonas was a total flake in the past, she believes he wants to change that, and that the letter was his first step.

After Lois leaves, Ginger flicks on a flashlight and begins writing the first line of her poem, entitled, "Hello Stranger."

Lois sits down for lunch in the break room. She looks at her food and realizes she's hungrier than she thought. Then, her stomach starts to bloat and pops out of her uniform. She drops her juice and falls onto the table, where her stomach gurgles and bubbles like crazy. As other nurses crowd around her in horror, a snake bursts through Lois's stomach--Alien style. It would have been better if it burst through her chest, but still. Righteous!

"Aaahhh, God!"

Damn, if only Ripley was there... 

One of the surgeons, Doctor David Dave, turns around and tells Lois to wake up, letting us know that this is, indeed, a dream. Lois is confused for a moment, and the confusion makes all the colors in the scene invert. The snake tells her it's 7:15, and its green venom drips off and morphs into the time on Lois's digital alarm clock. She wakes up in a cold sweat, blaming Carl for making her lose sleep. But what happened with the phone call the evening before? She was put on hold, but didn't anyone tell her if the snake she ingested was deadly or not?

At the elementary school, the students all walk in with their pets. Mrs. Gordon gushes over how adorable Higsby's monkey is. He coos over how his monkey likes to swing and jump and play "got your nose" and eat bananas. Carl is insanely pissed that he doesn't have a pet to show off. By the looks of the other kids' pets, I'd be jealous too. One kid has a flamingo, one has a pig, another has a baby lamb, and another has what looks like a hedgehog-chicken-bull crossbreed. Did their parents adopt these creatures from a petting zoo?

How are these animals even allowed into the school? Anyway, Mrs. Gordon leaves the room to tally the votes for the best pet. Once the coast is clear, Carl approaches the monkey and starts teasing him and shaking his cage to try to make him angry, but the monkey isn't budging.

Ginger, Dodie, and Macie are in the library engrossed in some PG-13 literature, I'm sure. Ginger excitedly tells them that she invited Jonas to the art festival to hear her poem. Macie's like, "Well, what did he say?" Ginger replies that she actually just left him a message on her voicemail and is positive that he's going to show up, because I guess a new-found desire to be involved in your child's life is a guarantee that you'll actually go out in public to see them when they ask. She also fantasizes that Lois and Carl will be surprised to see him there, and the four of them could go out for ice cream afterwards and be a happy family again. You know, I admire Ginger's optimism, but we all know that her plans are not going to go down that way. The librarian can't take the girls' incessant yammering any longer, so she kicks them out.

Back at the elementary school, Carl is laying helplessly on the floor, claiming that the monkey bit him. Hoodsey even says that the monkey broke skin. Higsby is shocked that his monkey would act so violently, so when Mrs. Gordon yells for someone to call an ambulance, Carl gets to his feet and pretends to be infected by monkey germs, turning him into a monkey. He foams from the mouth and starts chasing him up the chalkboard. Yes, because teasing a cornered monkey is a smart thing to do.

Lois admits herself to the hospital just to be on the safe side. She explains to Doctor Dave that the company said drinking the concoction was "no different than going out for a shrimp dinner" (so they did say something after all!), so the whole Lois-being-poisoned subplot is merely all in her head. Doctor Dave decides to do an ultrasound of her stomach anyway, and finds something strange on the monitor

I'm no doctor, but I'm sure that is not how you do an ultrasound.

Doctor Dave senses movement in her stomach, but Lois concludes it just might be gas from last night's grande burritos. Doctor Dave ponders about the "grande" aspect of them, and suggests Lois stay overnight for observation. Lois says she'd have to miss Ginger's poem reading, but follows the doctor's orders anyway. Doctor Dave is then called in by a nurse for a boy who got bitten by a monkey. Gee, I wonder who that could be?

Darren's mother, Mrs. Patterson, calls out to Ginger next door to let Ginger know that Lois will be in the hospital overnight, and not to worry. Then, Darren comes by and tells her that because Carl will be in the hospital overnight too, Ginger will be sleeping over at Darren's for the night. Ginger gets upset because now her plan to bring the family together is ruined, and Darren gets offended because he thinks Ginger doesn't want to stay by his house. He then offends Ginger when he hears that Jonas will be coming to see Ginger at the art festival and doesn't believe it, because Ginger insists that he will definitely come, even though we can tell that he hasn't called her back yet. And then they say goodbye. It's like Ginger knows deep down that he isn't coming, but doesn't want to admit it. Poor kid.

The hospital staff peeks through a padded room where they're holding Carl, who is still running around like a feral ape child.

After they leave, Hoodsey and his mom, Joanne, come around the corner to visit Carl, who happily greets them at the window. Joanne says that Carl looks diseased, and I guess she wouldn't necessarily be wrong to say that, considering how Carl pretty much acts like a monkey on a daily basis. Some soft piano music comes on as Hoodsey delivers a heart-felt speech to Carl about how he's his best friend and just wants him to return to normal again. Then he offers him some bananas.

"If anything were to happen to you, I'd spaz really hard." - Hoodsey

In Lois's hospital room, Lois is on the phone ordering sunflowers and a card signed by Jonas, because she knows he's not going to show up but doesn't want Ginger to despise all men just yet. I have mixed feelings about this scene. On the one hand, I think it's very sweet that Lois wants to make Ginger happy, so by pretending her father sent a gift as a consolation for not actually being at the festival, she will believe that he's trying to make an effort to stay in her life. On the other hand, if Jonas actually doesn't show up, Ginger needs to find out the hard way that some people just aren't reliable, and that she can't keep waiting for a relationship that isn't going to happen. I don't remember this episode that well, so let's see where this goes.

Ushers Dodie and Macie alert Ginger that they don't see Jonas in the audience, but Ginger insists that he will be there. Off stage, you can hear Courtney auctioning off what I believe to be a self-portrait for $13,000. Sick. Ginger is up last so she walks on stage and begins reading her poem. It's a little sentimental, but it talks about how Jonas was there for her in her early childhood. Missing teeth, spilled juice, the works. She concludes her poem with, "Hello stranger, I saved you a place. And it hardly seems strange..." and scans the crowd for Jonas right before she reads the last line. It's then that she realizes that he isn't there, so she drops her head and utters the very last line that was intended to be directed at him, "...now that I've seen your face."

Aw, that's heartbreaking. You can't blame Ginger for wanting Jonas to be at the festival after he said he wanted to be more involved in her life. Then again, he never gave her any indication that he was coming, so Ginger shouldn't have expected anything. 

On a lighter note, Ginger's feelings of abandonment and disappointment are whisked away to the round of applause she receives from the audience.

Ms. Zorski and Mr. and Mrs. Patterson congratulate Ginger on her poem at the end of the show. Even Dodie pushes aside her desire to outshine to tell Ginger how awesome her poem was. Damn, when Dodie starts giving a damn about someone other than herself, you know Ginger's poem was boss. Darren comes over and tells Ginger that he's sorry Jonas didn't bother to show up, but because he didn't reply back to her invite, he didn't necessarily break a promise. She almost feels better, until she gets her flower and card delivery from "Jonas." And then she feels awful all over again.

In the span of 22 minutes, we've got quite the intel on Jonas Foutley and his priorities:

- He doesn't know how old Ginger is (sending a graduation card a year late)

- He feels guilty for not having a relationship with his daughter ("Hey kiddo, call me anytime")

- But not his son (seriously, where's Carl's "call me anytime" card?)

- Darren can't even stand his guts (did Jonas punch him as a toddler or something?)

- Ginger called and left messages, and received radio silence in return (💩)

In conclusion: Jonas Foutley is a dick.

In the recovery room, Lois and Carl are watching Wheel of Fortune when a nurse comes in to read them their lab results. Everything is fine, which means they can return home in the morning. Ginger calls their room, and Carl answers in monkey-speak. She asks to talk to Lois, and Lois congratulates her on the standing ovation she got in the audience. She also mentions that there is no snake in her belly. As the camera pans out, Ginger thanks Lois for the flowers. 

It's a sad way to end the episode, but it's definitely better for Jonas's character and more hard-hitting that he didn't lift a finger. Because now I want to know more about this guy and what his deal is.

Lessons Learned From This Episode: don't get bitten by monkeys; sometimes you have to admit to yourself that some people just aren't reliable, no matter how much you want them to be in your life