Wimp

[Smartboy]

As much as I liked most of the episodes, there is one issue in which I thought that they "really" wimped out! The issue that I am referring to took place in the finel season. It was at this point in which we meet Little Earl and he has a "huge" crush on Dee! The age difference is somewhere between four and five years. I have no problem understanding his crush. In my growing-up years I have had, countless crushes on teachers, nurses est! However, what I did not like was how the only thing that they ever did with this issue was use it for comic relief. I have no problem with the fact that they never got into the racial issue. If they had, it would not have been "What's Happening!!" anymore. However, they could have dealt a little more thourolly with the age difference. It was "very" clear that Dee was embarrassed by the situation and that she was "terrified" of hurting Earl's feelings! This was the basis for a lot of the comic relief that I was writing about. However, I think that one thing that would have made a "great" episode would have been if they hit the age issue head-on! One way that they could have done this could have been by having Little Earl walk into the soda shop and see Dee at a table with a boy her own age! Poverty, divorce and teen pregnancy are only a few of the issues that the show has dealt with in its three-year run. If they were willing to take on these realities, I see no reason why they could not have dealt "seriously" with a little boy's crush on a girl!

[ThomasE]

I thought that the crush was cute. There could have been different ways to deal with the matters, but for some reason, it was decided to deal with the situation that we see on the show now.

[Smartboy]

Hello ThomasE,

I just finished responding to two of your posts regarding "Nurses". When I am finsihed with this, I will go to your post on "What's Happening Now!!" I can understand what you mean about Little Earl's crush on Dee being cute. However, one thing that was made clear almost since day one was that both Dee and the grownups in both of their lives were very embarrassed by the situation! Becasue most of the adults looked at Little Earl as being a nice little kid, no one wanted to hurt his feelings. In the episode in which Dee and her anglo friend tried out for the cheerleading squad, there was a side story in which Raj sort of tried to sit down with Little Earl and discuss the situation man to man. However, even then it did not become much more than comic relief. I happen to know from experience that, in real life, these issues "do" get taken seriously! Like I said when I started this thread, during my teenage years, I had crushes on "lots" of teachers and other grownup females in my life! Having these crushes caused me to act at "least" as silly as Little Earl did on the show! At one point, a crush on a teacher was one of the reasons that I went back to a phychologist that I had seen earlier in my preaddolocence and then stopped. There was a time when my father (who happened to be a social worker himself) went as far as saying to me "if you want to talk about getting laid, we'll talk about getting laid!" Now granted that, given the type of show that "What's Happening!!" was and the time that it was made, they would never have the characters use this type of termonology. However, they could have made an episode about dealing with this issue once and for all. Like I mentioned before, in other episodes, they dealt head-on with such things as death, divorce and poverty. This adds to why I think that they "wimped out" with this issue!