There are life lessons that only Afterschool Specials and the school of hard knocks can teach us, and the wisdom imparted by Scott Baio’s Stoned (1980) is simple — if you smoke the devil’s lettuce, like Baio’s wiry and acne-scarred Jack Melon (known to some as Melonhead), you might nearly kill someone.
Jack, a lonely, awkward high schooler with an absentee mother and gruff father, plays second fiddle at home to brother Mike (Vincent Bufano), a college-bound standout swimmer who appears to be his only friend. When stoner classmates Alan (Steve Monarque) and Teddy (Jack Finch) offer him weed from their usual bathroom stall, he declines. “A goon like him? Pot would definitely do him good,” they sneer in response to his snub.
One of Stoned’s finer qualities, along with Baio’s knack for physical comedy, is that Jack isn’t given a sob story; his lack of social prowess isn’t pathologized, it’s a natural byproduct of his age and inexperience. He’s a quiet, puberty-stricken geek with a newly gawky gait who experiences boredom so crushing that he walks down the street alone, kicking a can. When a blowup with Mike leaves him vulnerable to Alan and Teddy’s invitations to smoke, he’s less interested in pot than companionship.
Of course, that swiftly changes once Teddy instructs him on proper inhalation techniques and introduces him to the wonders of the humble bong. Before long, he’s devouring cereal by the fistful and marveling at the greenness of grass. “Are you high?” Teddy asks during one of their wake-and-bakes, a question that confuses Jack, who replies “Am I who?” Altered consciousness also gives him the courage to command the attention of transfer student Felicity (Largo Woodruff), who benevolently assumes he’s a sensitive daydreamer and not just high off his ass.
Wiser to Jack and Teddy’s antics is Spanish teacher Señor David (John Herzfeld, pulling triple-duty as Stoned’s writer-director), who has had it up to here with sleepy, giggly potheads disrupting his class. Taking his students outside to speak with them informally, his opening spiel is met with laughter: “I want to talk to you about a plant. It has a Spanish name and it’s getting in the way of my teaching. It’s called, uh, marijuana,” which he pronounces “Mary Wanna.”
Challenged on whether he’s tried it himself, our requisite authority figure acknowledges seeking solace in spliffs when his parents split up and he needed an escape. “But I quit,” he explains. “Because grass made things seem better when they really weren’t. Listen, I was just running away from my problems. Because when I came down, my parents were still getting divorced.” His avuncular lecture on avoidance and the importance of developing coping skills include the obligatory Afterschool Special warnings about chromosome damage, male sterility, and birth defects.
Alas, ol’ Melonhead, like so many of us, must experience negative consequences firsthand to truly internalize this lesson. He does so in an unintentionally hilarious scene set on the water — Ordinary People it ain’t — when a boating mishap leaves Mike, days away from the most important swim meet of his academic career, in mortal danger. Regardless of your sobriety status (I was high on nothing more than life when watching Stoned), you are likely to laugh quite a bit at the film’s final five minutes, and I recommend it for that reason alone. I can’t entirely mock its message, however, as I’m friendly with a number of pediatric neurologists and psychiatrists who would advise anyone whose brain is not yet fully developed to go easy on the wacky tobacky.
For more Afterschool Special content, check out Rob Lowe in “Schoolboy Father,” Nancy McKeon and Patty Duke in “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom,” and Jennifer Jason Leigh in “I Think I’m Having a Baby.”
Streaming and DVD availability
Stoned isn’t available on DVD but you can find it on YouTube, with this being the best presentation available (as of this writing).
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Lisa Coston
Perfect. And don’t bogart that doobie, Chachi! I feel that might have been the apex of his career. Oh wait, there was Happy Days and Charles in Charge…
I sure love a great Afterschool Special.
Cranky
Thanks, Lisa! I looked for a way to shoehorn a “Happy Days” pun into the review but inspiration (sadly) never struck. The singular stroke of genius in Baio’s career, from my perspective, was his Bob Loblaw (brought in to replace Henry Winkler’s Barry Zuckerkorn) on “Arrested Development.” I still wonder to what degree Baio realized he was being mocked, though Bob’s final mention on the show made it clear.
robbes
There is something about the time in which Scott Baio came of age that was suffocatingly nauseating from the psychological perspective of a mature adolescent. Okay, maybe it was nauseatingly suffocating…and maybe that stage sucks for everyone. But not everyone has to go through it as the object of millions of hormone-crazed teenage girls’ carnal desires while simultaneously trying to be taken seriously as an actor. And that last part was never going to happen because he was so consumed by inauthenticity. What do I mean by that? Not gonna tell ya. But I think he might have done better cast in the lead role of ‘What If I’m Gay?’ over on the CBS network. Actually. I haven’t seen it, But if the writing is anything like the ABC afterschool special, “Stoned”, then the soul-crushing toxicity of the early 80s would emanate from every line in every scene like halitosis in a crowded elevator.