Goosebumps: Episode 14 It Came from Beneath the Sink

 

 

As the season progresses this show is definitely getting better. This is an episode that’s way better than it has any right to be. I really get the impression that at some stage this was intended to be a throwaway filler (hence the half-hour runtime), and the people involved just decided to give it their all anyway. It also doesn’t hurt that, relative to most of Season One, there’s a disproportionate number of people who are still working. Direct David Winning has dozens of other credits, mostly for television. We also have Katherine “American Mary” Isabelle as our lead, Kat, and Amanda “SG-1” Tapping as her mother.

Our heroine moves into a new house (a few blocks away from her old one, dodging the “new kid” cliché that this show has already used five episodes ago) and finds a mysterious...sponge. The sponge seems to move, and even has a face when no one else is looking, with bright red eyes of evil, and teeth that an orthodontist would hate. Furthermore, a series of strange events begins to occur shortly after Kat finds the sponge.

This is actually a surprisingly subtle point in the episode’s favor. Rather than making the evil overt from the very first moment, they actually build up a series of events that, in isolation, would not be cause for concern. Kat’s mother’s dishes are broken, her brother (Tyrone Savage) cuts his foot, the family dog disappears, and Kat’s bike crashes. The family’s reaction is also fairly realistic. Everyone is concerned, but no one rushes to panic.

Finally, Kat goes to her friend Carlo (Ashley Brown), an X-Files fan who tells her the creature is a “Grool.” The Grool is actually one of the best monsters in concept not just in Goosebumps, but that I’ve ever seen. A living bad luck charm that attaches itself to a person to curse them, and grows stronger by feeding on their bad luck. However, if the Grool is given away, the owner dies, effectively creating a no-win situation.

Honestly, Carlo is one of the best things about this episode. He’s sane enough that you can believe him, but just crazy enough to be a memorable and unique character. All three of the child actors do decently, and are even fairly smart in discussing the logic of the Grool. (They’re legitimately unsure if Kat loaning the Grool out to a science teacher “counts” as giving it away.)

And yes, the Grool is defeated by the Power of Love. It loves bad, so it hates good. However, the episode manages to make the twist work with one addition: even at it’s weakest, the Grool can never die. Instead, it can only be contained. And so, Kat has to spend the rest of her life greeting the Grool every morning, and putting on pleasant music for it to listen to throughout the day. It’s a cute scene, but as an adult I definitely have my doubts that she could maintain this ritual for the next sixty years.

...oh, and then there’s a vampire potato. Such a creature was mentioned earlier in the episode by Carlo, so it gets at least slight set-up, and honestly it’s probably the funniest stinger this show has ever given us. Most of the “twists” are barely even worth addressing. But “vampire potato?” That I want to talk about.

If this episode was presented to me just as a short film, without the context of being a Goosebumps episode, I’d still recommend it. It’s a nice way to spend twenty minutes, and had a lot more talent behind it than most of the episodes in this season combined. Definitely gets a big, fat thumbs up from me.