
I couldn't find this in your archives, so I decided to send it in. If you have it, well, I gotta get this out anyway.
PUNKY BREWSTER was my all time favorite show as a tyke. I developed my first unrequited crush on SOLEIL MOON FRYE, wrote her a fan letter, the whole nine yards. There was something so perfect about that show to elementary school-aged me. Perfect.
Until Season Two.
Season Two featured a very strange two-part episode called "The Perils of Punky." In it, Punky, Cheri, Alan, the dog Brandon and Margeaux end up lost in a cave during a camping trip. They get told by an old Indian about a lost princess who was captured by an evil spirit and trapped in the cave. One by one as they explore the cave, they disappear. Only Punky is left. As she sits down on a rock, all hell breaks loose:
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was terrified. What had been up to that point a relatively benign episode of a beloved sitcom, turned into a whole bucket of nightmare fuel for weeks to come. I stopped trusting the television, especially my formerly favorite show.
At the end of the episode, Punky fights a demon (!) and rescues her friends, but I didn't see that until the season was released on DVD. Years later.
Punky. I'll never trust you again.

