Hope you don't zap yourselves!
Chris and Paris from Terrible Book Club return! Jessica slums it in electronics class and Lila scams her pedagogically lazy dressmaking instructor in the TEACHER CRUSH b-plot. Plus, super-spoilers for Olivia's future! Extra drama indeed!
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THE BELOW TRANSCRIPT WAS AUTO-GENERATED. Sorry for any nonsense!
[00:00:04] Marissa: It's extra drama for book number 57 teacher crush
Hello, Chris Paris and Marissa that's me are back again to talk more about teacher crush.
[00:00:28] Chris: Would an appropriate moments momentg up the B plot that we've been entirely ignoring? Cause we're kind of talking about, we're talking about consequences of actions,
[00:00:37] Marissa: I think it's about time that we should get through the B plot. Uh, you guys alluded to Jessica's awfulness , but we haven't said much about Jessica so let's, uh, let's talk a little quickly about what's going on in the B plot.
[00:00:50] Chris: Um, essentially Jessica gets it in her head that Lila is lying about her dad working at some movie
[00:01:00] Marissa: her
dad's dating
her dad is his dad is dating a soap opera star named, Anika hunt. And Jessica thinks that Lilah is making this up.
[00:01:08] Chris: And so, you know, she's ha she has to come up with a project for her, for electronics class. And she has no idea what to do until she has the brilliant stroke of genius to rig up a lie detector, to catch Lila in her lie.
[00:01:22] Marissa: It's going to be so embarrassing when the whole school finds out that Laila was lying about Anika hunt and her dad.
[00:01:28] Chris: of course she did. It's Randy to do the work for her once again, which also Randy just does it. And there's no consequence for this action also
[00:01:38] Marissa: Okay. Although she does get embarrassed at the end of the book, because she's hosted by her own petard. Right? Like she is, they put
her in the lie detector
[00:01:48] Chris: but the hoisting is not even like a foot off of the ground. The patard is comfortable and fine because, so she puts Laila in there, lie detector machine as if a lie detector is like admissible objective evidence, which as I'm sure we all know by now it's true cash.
[00:02:05] Marissa: Right. That's that's a
[00:02:06] Chris: it's made by a high school student and intellect two week electronics course yet.
Totally admissible evidence, Jessica. Anyway, she hooks the thing, turns out Laila, isn't lying about that. Or at least her lie detector says that. And like, there's like one line about a couple of people laughing that at Jessica for like, it was like, not even really laughing. It's just like some people were kind of giggling.
And then Jessica was like, well, all right, I guess, and then nothing happens after
that. She's mildly embarrassed, slightly a little bit. But faces no true consequence for honestly, like putting Wila through a lot of bullshit because previously she's like directly accusing Laila, like basically going, like, I know you're making this up.
[00:02:47] Marissa: And Lila is hurt. Her feelings are hurt that Jessica would accuse her of such a thing. Of course, Lila has got her own drama going on through the mini courses. This book is got a lot of plates spinning and Lila's plate is that she's in this dress design class. And the book has planted for us from the very beginning that Jessica has the dress that Lila is making.
In like, uh, this designed exactly the same way as what Lila is making and, apparently even the same fabric because when Lila screws up her dress to the point that she would be mortified to wear it in front of everybody, which is something she's supposed to do as a part of this dress design class, is that there's like a fashion runway at the big, you know, showcase event, she needs to borrow Jessica's dress so that she can lie and pretend that she is wearing the dress that she made.
So as to save face, luckily Lila has a bit of dirt that she is using as bait to kind of trade Jessica. Uh, like I have a secret. I know you can't stand anybody having a secret. So if you let me borrow the dress, I'll tell you
my secret. and the secret doesn't have anything to do with this book.
That's a secret, it's just set up the next one.
[00:04:04] Paris: I also like, while we're talking about this, this is, this is a moment when, when Laila's grappling with the dress disaster, this is another moment where these course, these mini courses were revealed as total horseshit because Lila goes to her teacher and is like, Hey, you know, I really had a hard time.
I couldn't, you know, something, I messed up. She like sewed a frill on the wrong side of the dress. I don't know. She did something needed help. She goes to the teacher and the teacher says
the whole point of the workshop is to design and wear your dress. The teachers sympathetically after Lila told her what a mess her dress had turned in.
I'm sorry, Lila, but you shouldn't feel embarrassed. I'm sure a lot of students' projects haven't turned out exactly the way they planned.
Well, no, you should be like, oh, man, you're just learning a new skill. You've only been learning this for two weeks. Sure. Let me help you because showing you how to fix the stress is a learning experience in fashion.
Like learning how to salvage something you made that didn't come out the way you wanted is, is a valuable skill in, in fashion. Yes.
[00:05:19] Marissa: Hmm. Yeah, no help from her at all.
She
seems
[00:05:22] Chris: lady is absolutely phoning this shit in that, like, this is a perfect mentor opportunity. This is like the reason you are teaching people. If you don't teach people by just saying, do the thing and then watching them do the thing to like good bad, that's not teaching. You must give them guidance and put them on a path that makes them make slightly less mistakes than they would normally, or at least needless mistakes, or at least give them some helpful advice on how to fix a mistake.
This. And I, you know what, no teacher in this book at all is of any quality. I have none of the teachers here, maybe the electronics guy, but even the electronics guys, like pick a project. Okay. I'm going to sit here for the rest of the two weeks while you do your project,
[00:06:04] Paris: The electronics, uh, Drexel gives them a handout. That's like, here's some electronic shops you can call. I don't know. Like basically you may as well have just said, fuck you kids. Good luck. I'm going to collect this check.
[00:06:17] Chris: zap yourselves.
[00:06:18] Marissa: Well, you know who, so what we're seeing is like the teacher who's the most hands-on, who's the best teacher, really of all the mini course teachers box.
[00:06:27] Paris: well, you know what though? I have bones to pick what the art in this book and Stuart, all right. There's like a, there's a, there's a part in this. I think it's like the, the scene where Olivia and Stewart's kind of relationships starts to foment, where he is talking about, uh, this particular type of painting I think it's most commonly known as the Zorn palette where you use a set of limited colors to create all the colors you need.
So you use for, I think it's usually four colors. Some, maybe five, I'm not an artist, but my partner is sort of, kind of pick up things here and there. And, um, basically like you choose these four colors and then you are able to give the impression of other colors based on the way that you use them through the use of like, um, you know, shading and stuff.
And in the book it's like, all right, kids, Stuart's like, all right, I want you to paint green without painting green. But then instead of, you know, using this as an opportunity to actually talk about the and pallet or like, or some real art techniques, Stuart just kind of goes, you know, just do it. And then there's no explanation.
And Olivia just magically knows how to do it. It boggles my mind and like the other parts where they're talking about art, we really only get one description of a painting and it's Olivia one of Elizabeth Olivia's early paintings and it just says it's flowers in a garden. Everything else. It literally is just like shapes and colors and textures.
Like there's
[00:08:00] Marissa: yeah, we have no idea what style of painter,
uh, Stuart is or what style of painting Olivia is doing that she is succeeding at. So while we know that she's working in a car,
[00:08:12] Paris: I mean for, yeah, for God's sake, tell me it's a rippling blue square or like a matte red circle or like a seascape on the Atlantic coast. Like it doesn't take a lot of effort to give me that detail. And I just drove
[00:08:27] Marissa: Yeah, it, it makes me think that they must be abstract paintings or else they would have been described more, but who knows? Maybe the author just really couldn't decide or didn't know anything about art. It's possible.
[00:08:39] Paris: It's true.
[00:08:41] Marissa: So Lila has this big secret that she is, holding out over Jessica.
And she ends up not even actually, Jessica doesn't even get the secret as like payment. Like if the secret comes out at the birthday party that Olivia has at the end in front of everybody but I really want to tell the gladiators what the secret is. Do you guys remember,
[00:09:01] Chris: It was someone's ex-boyfriend is moving back to
[00:09:04] Marissa: right. It makes sense that it wouldn't have stood out to you all in, uh, you know, having read the book, uh, you know, weeks ago at this point because you haven't read the other books, but for me I'm, I, my eyes are wide. Todd Wilkins is moving back to sweet valley and , they put Elizabeth in the very end of the book.
They put Elizabeth in Jessica's lie detector test and Lila in like the bitchiest move she possibly could have pulled, asks Elizabeth point blank. So are you worried about the fact that your boyfriends would be back to town and you will have another boyfriend now? Like, is that a problem for you at all?
Knowing full well that Elizabeth has no idea that Todd is moving back to town and that's how she breaks the news.
[00:09:52] Chris: Okay. So Elizabeth also mildly sucks too, I guess.
[00:09:55] Marissa: We'll wait, why does Elizabeth suck?
[00:09:57] Chris: I am incorrect. I can't keep track of these people.
[00:10:01] Marissa: Elizabeth is the one who. Um, Todd Wilkins is her ex boyfriend and they broke up because Todd moved away and then Jeffrey moved to town and then Elizabeth and Jeffrey started dating. So,
[00:10:13] Chris: Elizabeth. Ex-boyfriend. I'm sorry. I will. Wow.
[00:10:16] Marissa: all right. I mean she's, sometimes Elizabeth definitely does suck, but in this particular case, but I think the suckiest thing about her is that she might still be harboring feelings for her ex boyfriend, which is not great when you have a new boyfriend, but,
[00:10:29] Chris: also, I feel like a heated coat hanger would be a lot easier to make than a fucking lie detector. In two weeks he had coat hangers, like a couple of resistors, right. A little insulation,
[00:10:39] Marissa: Yeah. Then she Randy.
[00:10:42] Chris: and he like builds. Like he like, oh, here's a pulse oximeter, Jessica. Like, he just makes one also actually, hold on, there's this point?
This, I completely forgot about this until now. I think Jessica might also be a little stupid about this lie detector works because at one point earlier, when she's like testing out the lie detector, She's like, oh, let's get your like baseline pulse reading. And she goes, oh, okay. I've got it. It's one 20 over 80, which is a blood pressure reading.
But then later on someone else like sets up the lie detector and
they're like, okay, let's take your, yeah, Randy Mason sets it up. He's like, okay, let's take your baseline pulse. Oh, 73 resting heart rate, which is like normal resting heart rate reading. So I was trying to struggle to think if like the, the author just didn't understand what was like a pulse reading or if that was just a subtle jab at Jessica, not knowing what the fuck you're supposed to even be reading on the pulse oximeter part.
[00:11:39] Marissa: I like that second reading, because we are, the book keeps us a little bit in the dark about the play by play of what work Jessica's doing, because she's definitely doing something like she's clearly very enamored of this invention. He's works on it a little bit at home and she takes it with her from school to, you know, to the party.
Cause she's just so excited about it. But all of the ideas for how to make it work, come from Randy. And he must've helped her with the actual electronics. Cause I don't think she was really paying attention in class. So I think she's into it more, maybe more than she cares to admit. But I agree with you that the book gives us no sense that she actually knows that much about how it works. Winston's invention is a voice-activated toaster. Lila teases, Jessica, at one point that maybe she is going to invent an electronic boy finder.
[00:12:33] Chris: That's just Tinder, right? That's just Tinder,
[00:12:42] Marissa: We're at a point now in sweet valley diaries where I have not read any further than where we're at for the first 50 books I had already read them and we, before the podcast started, but once we got to book 51, it's all been new material for me,
[00:12:56] Chris: okay. So can I bring up the one thing that I learned as I did a little bit of mild research for sweet valley high, which is a future spoiler here. So I suppose listeners,
[00:13:07] Marissa: Spoiler alert, spoiler alert
[00:13:08] Chris: yeah, this is for like, I, I was just, I was just on the sweet valley high Wikipedia page. Cause I was looking, I was trying to make sense of who, what characters were, who
and like so there's a character section. And for some reason, the Wikipedia page on sweet valley high decides to tell you the ultimate fate of every character, there's like one line about who they are. And then like the horrible shit that happens to them later on. And I'm not going to say all of them, but this is what convinced me that sweet valley was cursed.
But I just, I want to zero in on Olivia's ultimate fate, apparently,
because this recontextualized a lot of lines in the book for me here. So once again, spoiler alerts to all listeners here and I hope Marissa. I mean, I'm,
[00:13:47] Marissa: I can take it. I can take it.
[00:13:49] Chris: Okay.
[00:13:50] Marissa: found out all sorts of interesting things about what happens in these books. Although I do try to avoid the, the danger, the danger zone. That is,
uh the Wikipedia
[00:14:01] Chris: Also, but like Olivia has like two lines on her character on the Wikipedia page. It's like, Olivia is kind of the artsy student at sweet valley high later, she dies in an earthquake and I'm like, what the fuck? Like it doesn't, it doesn't say when at all. So like when there's a line in the book, that's like, this was the best birthday that Olivia ever had.
I'm like, yeah, fucking was, I guess wasn't it.
[00:14:28] Marissa: Man. I can't believe that it's going to even be an earthquake book, man, every once in a while these books get so blood thirsty, they just have to kill somebody off. And I'm sorry, it was Olivia.
So by, by book 57 point, we have definitely had, at least, I hope I'm not forgetting anybody. Sorry. Gladiators. If I am, we have had two deaths in the series so far already, Tricia Martin and Regina Morrow.
[00:14:53] Chris: Oh, I see. I know one of these, I also read one of these. One of these is pretty fucked up. This is
[00:14:56] Marissa: it was Regina probably who you're thinking of. I never realized how much sweet valley high was like, uh, the game of Thrones books. It was just like everybody that you love don't get too attached to their they're getting offed eventually. Not literally everybody, but a very high percentage of them do seem to pass away at some point for drama's sake.
That's what we're all about here. Drama. And today of course, extra drama. Maybe we gotta bring you guys back on for whatever this Olivia earthquake book is. You can
[00:15:30] Chris: There's also that. And then there's the, there's the other Jessica thing that I read that once I read that on the Wikipedia page, I was like, truly fuck Jessica from all angles at all times.
Which again, we're not going to say anything. I don't want to spoil too many more things, but
[00:15:43] Marissa: Well, now that I, now that I'm not sure what's coming, it's not always readily evident from the books and the books, brief descriptions, what wild things are gonna happen. So maybe we'll maybe it'll come as a surprise, but if I see it coming based on the plot description, I will call upon you to, to be my guests.
And thank you so much for being my guests on this week's and last week's episode of sweet valley diaries. And for reading this book and bringing your, a unique brand of a book dissection, terrible book dissection to our humble, uh, program.
Hey guys, Marissa, just chiming in here real quick. You may have noticed that our friend Paris was uncharacteristically quiet during much of this extra drama episode. That was due to a technological difficulty that I didn't notice in time to fix. If it had in fact been fixable, who knows. I gotta be honest with you. I don't even remember if I asked her to tease book 58. Uh, but I would hate for you to miss this very exciting cliffhanger. So I'm going to read it for you right now, before the episode is out.
And I'll try not to sound too excited about it.
What will happen to Elizabeth and Jeffrey when Todd Wilkins returns to sweet valley. Find out in sweet valley, high number 58. Broken hearted.
Well, thank you so much again, guys. And remember gladiator to check out terrible book club, wherever fine podcasts are distributed. And, uh, we'll talk to you next time.
[00:17:15] Paris: thanks for having us on today.
[00:17:17] Marissa: I've got it all right in my brain here. Yeah.
[00:17:28] Chris: I like it.
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