Hot Slut Of The Day!

The old refrigerator of doom in the legendary Punky Brewster episode that made chirrun everywhere look at abandoned fridges as a death chamber from the depths of hell!

Tonight is the Emmys, and as you watch anti-Scientology warrior queen Leah Remini crash the stage when Elisabeth Moss wins and listen to barely-awarded Julia Louis-Dreyfus give her thirty billionth acceptance speech, tell yourself one thing. Punky Brewster never won an Emmy in its day, so how can you take that shit seriously? PB was nominated for only two Emmys (Outstanding Children’s Program and some technical award), and it never got the honor it truly deserved, specifically for the very special episode that will forever be ingrained in the minds of 80s children. I’m talking about the horror show that was the refrigerator episode. That episode is Cherie Johnson and that refrigerator is my brain: it is stuck in there. I will never forget it, and every time I see an old refrigerator waiting on the curb for the trash people, I want to open it up to make sure there’s not a passed out child in there.

Last year, Mental Floss talked to PB producer Rick Hawkins, Cherie Johnson and director Art Dielhenn for their Oral History of Punky Brewster’s Refrigerator Danger (that oral history really should be taught in all ivy league universities). Rick said that they got the idea for the episode from a kid viewer named Jeremy Reams. PB held a contest, asking for viewers to send in their show ideas, and the winning idea won a trip to Hollywood. Jeremy suggested doing an episode about CPR. Rick said that they got the idea for the refrigerator death tomb from reading about how many kids got trapped in old fridges that couldn’t be opened from the inside.

Early in the episode, Punky and Margaux learn how to do CPR in school. Cut to the kids playing hide-and-seek in the yard of their building. It’s then that we learn that those kids’ hide-and-seek skills are shit. Punky and Margaux choose the worst and most obvious hiding place, the new refrigerator box, and Cherie chooses the second worst, an old fridge that Henry planned to donate. Although, I guess Cherie’s hiding place wasn’t so bad since it took them hours to figure out her ass hid in there.

Punky and Margaux come out of their dumb hiding place just as Henry Warnimont comes into the yard to take the door off the fridge. But then it starts to snow and they all go inside after Henry tells them that he saw Cherie run into the building. So basically Cherie had Henry to thank for almost traveling to the afterworld in a fridge. Henry Warnimont: Almost Child Killer.

When everyone realizes that Cherie has gone missing, they go looking for her and Henry eventually finds her in what almost became her fridge grave. By the time they find Cherie, she’s passed out and is slowly skipping toward the light. Henry’s good-for-nothing ass doesn’t know CPR (Henry really did want Cherie dead) and asks Allen to do CPR since he learned it in school. But Allen is useless too, and just when it looks like Cherie and her hot headband belts are going to end up in heaven, Punky and Margaux save her. You can watch part 1 of PB’s very important episode here, and here’s part 2:

Rick said that the episode actually saved a life!

That show aired and the best reward I ever got was a phone call we got the next Monday afternoon. A woman from the Midwest called to say her husband worked for the power company, had been electrocuted on the line, and had fallen to the ground just as some kids were getting off the bus. They had seen the episode, ran over, gave him CPR, and saved his life.

So yeah, fuck the Emmys. What Punky Brewster really deserves is a Nobel Peace Prize!

Pic: YouTube via Mental Floss