Thriller

Ah, the sewer. I grew up 600 feet from the city sewage plant. When they opened the locks on a hot summer day, it could be (and was) stifling. I’ve burned into my mind the image of teenagers with turtlenecks pulled up to their eyes as they slink past the sewage yard.

Did I ever own a turtleneck? Maybe a mock turtleneck—I mock you, turtleneck!—but never a full-blown one. I’m sure of it. I couldn’t have; I just don’t like things on my neck.

I’m rationalizing.

At any rate, I’m thinking of sewers. I watched an episode of Bones recently that prominently used a society of sewer people. Many points of the god-awful Demolition Man movie (Sandra Bullock, Sly Stallone, Wesley Snipes) make me laugh, and it’s a good laugh. (Seriously.) That has a sewer society. Zombies crawled out of the sewer in Whacko’s mid-80s “Thriller” video. And, of course, there’s the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…who seem to have made a comeback in pop culture. I swear they went down for the count in 1993. Maybe they just went into the sewers?



Today, it’s the open manhole plotline on Days that I find horribly wonderful. I was disgusted to see they used the open manhole initially as a half-baked way for Shawn to save Belle. She's distressed over the recent marriage of Shawn and Mimi—whose hump calls travel through the building’s air vents into her apartment. Oh, her heart still pines for Shawn. So a distracted, upset Belle wanders out in the middle of the night, head down, arms folded. She trips. Slow motion! I realize that this is the sewer society plotline I’ve craved. Alas, Shawn is out mailing a letter. He sprints over, saves her.

“I don’t know why the city leaves these things open,” he says.

Crap. I cussed at the screen. I said, "Ahhhh! It would have been so much more fascinating to have Belle fall into a sewer society with sewer people!"

Oh, but the gods of Days heard my calls. Later in the show, Bo gave Chelsea the right fine talking to she's deserved for MONTHS, and in her distressed state of havin' been told exactly what one ought to say to her connivin’ self, she went out walking on this street I swear to you has NEVER been on the show, and OH! OH! she falls in that same manhole.

She's unconscious now in the fog-riddled sewer. It looks like an elf kingdom down there, sans elves. Awesome. Can you say Ninja Turtles? Can you say orcs?
-cK