The Main Attraction

The premise is so ludicrous. Let's face it. The story is designed so an obnoxious kid gets "his." He has mistreated others, he is filled with arrogance, and has no respect for the people around him. Of course, those people dote on him as well, so they are not to be admired. The plot is formulaic and predictable, but that's the curse of shows like this. We are set up to believe something will happen. As with the previous "train" episode, for a half hour anthology series, the special effects are quite astounding and we end up satisfied. It must be that Stephen Spielberg had a lot of influence on the pocketbooks of the production staff.

I remembered "Amazing Stories" rather fondly when I decided to try re-watching the series recently. Imagine my surprise, however, when I saw "The Main Attraction", as it turned out to be a terribly written and amazingly stupid program! I know this sounds very harsh, but after seeing this one, I think it deserves it. The bottom line is that the the characters were more caricatures--very, very broad stereotypes that seemed completely unreal and even annoying. The main character is a stuck-up jock but he's not just A stuck-up jock--he's 1000 times more obnoxious and the fellow students even bigger suck-ups than you'd find one a bad 80s sit-com! It was all so bad that my daughter kept begging me to turn of the TV!

The story ends up being all about meteorites and magnetism--which is odd as many fundamental precepts about these were pretty much ignored by the writers. After all, if the jock is attracting metals very, very strongly as is the super-nerdy girl, shouldn't they then repel each other?! Plus, a HUGE rock comes hurtling out of space and lands in a guy's bedroom and he's physically unharmed!! The bottom line is that at least this episode is god-awful and dumb pretty much from start to finish. Tedious, hard to watch and a bit embarrassing. If you like the idea of "The Twilight Zone" written for 4 year-olds, then you pretty much get what this program is.

This "AS" episode 2 from season one of the "NBC" Sunday night hit called "The Main Attraction" was memorable funny and clever proving that in life you never know what can strike and change things! It's set in sunny L.A. and it involves a hunk and cocky snob like all state male high school kid named Brad Bender, all Brad has to do is score the Homecoming queen and be named king to make his high school years complete. However big changes come for this stud as he said it only god can stop him. As when a meteorite hits unexpected life is changed in a sticky and magnetic kind of way! It's a little silly yet still the episode is memorable and fun proving that fate and unexpected science can change the way of life for some.

There were a lot of laughs in the first part of this episode, because of the exaggerated characters. Here, the egotistical high school hotshot jock is exaggerated. The guy looks like a young Ted Danson and acts like him: totally in love with himself with very funny scenes at home and at school. Lisa Jane Persky is very funny as the school nerd. This stud is bent on becoming the next Homecoming King, figuring he's a "lock" until the principal changes it from a personality contest to a selling-tickets contest.

The big change, though, comes after our Romeo brags that only and "act of God" could prevent him from winning and he didn't believe in God, anyway. Well, a meteorite proves otherwise!

The second half of this got carried away with the slapstick and a predictable ending, which was a shame because this was on its way to becoming a very funny episode.