While this post is the longest it has the BEST episodes of the entire season – I promise! 😉
Season 3: The Perfect Size 6 (Continued)
Episode 56 – “Slam Book Fever”: Amy Sutton tells the girls of Sweet Valley High about slam books and soon it is the newest craze at Sweet Valley High. All the girls buy the same notebook, put their name in it and make up categories like “Biggest Flirt” or “Biggest Jock” and pass them around before getting theirs returned at the end of the day. Who writes what is completely anonymous. Elizabeth Wakefield warns everyone that someone might get hurt, but no one listens to her or cares. Roger Patman and Olivia Davidson break up – no one knows why. Jessica is the first one upset with the slam books when she is named as “Biggest Flirt.” She meets the new boy at school, A.J. Morgan, who is the most gorgeous guy (and a redhead!) that she has ever seen. She becomes shy, quiet and tongue-tied around him and it isn’t an act, but Jessica’s friends think she is just acting this way because of the “Biggest Flirt” thing. The girls create a new section in the slam books called “Crystal Ball” about where and with who they think people will end up. Olivia is starting a school literary magazine to take her mind off her recent breakup, but she needs help and enlists Elizabeth’s boyfriend, Jeffrey French, because of his work as a photographer. Soon people find that Olivia and Jeffrey are paired up as “Couple of the Future” and Elizabeth tries to laugh it off, but she secretly resents all the time Jeffrey has been spending with Olivia. Then Elizabeth is paired up with A.J. Morgan in the same category and Jessica is furious. When Jeffrey breaks a few dates with Elizabeth she begins to lose patience, but then Cara Walker tells her that she saw Jeffrey holding Olivia and leaning in close and that does it. Instead of confronting Jeffrey, Elizabeth decides to move on, and she moves on to A.J. Morgan! Elizabeth starts flirting aggressively, and acting just like Jessica usually does, and A.J. seems intimidated by this. Jeffrey is upset and tries to explain – Olivia just had something in her eye and he was helping her with it. But Elizabeth won’t listen and she starts to go out with A.J. with Jessica secretly miserable about the whole thing. Olivia goes to see Jessica and is trying to find out who started the rumor about her and Jeffrey in the slam books so they can try to fix things between Liz and Jeffrey. Meanwhile, Lila keeps taking Jeffrey out to dinner to strategize how to win Elizabeth back, and spending all this time with him. Olivia and Jessica realize the only person who could have a motive to start the rumor, besides Olivia, was Lila. Jessica poses as Liz and collects everyone’s slam books because she and Olivia reasoned whoever started the rumor would not have written it in her own slam book. They find out it was Lila and tell Liz, who apologizes to Olivia, makes up with Jeffrey and then starts a new category in the slam books “Class Sneak” and writes Lila’s name in all of them before giving them back to people. Lila is embarrassed and won’t tell anyone why she is in that category. A.J. finds Jessica and asks her out. Jessica is surprised since he was with Elizabeth, but A.J. admits he doesn’t like aggressive and flirty girls. He prefers serious, studious, sweet girls who are on the shyer side. Jessica smiles and decides she is going to change for good, so that she and A.J. can be together, because for the first time in her life, Jessica Wakefield is really in love.
Episode 57 – “Playing For Keeps”: Jessica Wakefield has become a completely different person for her new boyfriend A.J. Morgan because she was so quiet and flustered around him before, he thinks that is how she always is. She is convinced he wouldn’t like the “old Jessica” but she goes overboard. She is always going to meetings for various causes like “Save the Whales” and talking about depressing subjects like world hunger. A.J. keeps trying to be romantic with her, but whenever he holds her hand, Jessica is off ruining the moment again. As they are walking along the beach one day A.J. hears something and then dives into the ocean, rescuing a beautiful girl named Pamela. Pamela flirts shamelessly with A.J. who seems to appreciate it, even though she really isn’t his type and she is rude to Jessica, silently daring Jessica to outmatch her. The next day Pamela calls A.J. and says she wants to return his towel from the other day. A.J. tries to make up an excuse since he is meeting Jessica but Pamela says her parents want to meet the boy who rescued her. He agrees, thinking it will be quick, but when he gets there Pamela’s parents are out of town and Pamela tries her best to seduce him, even saying they should go skinny dipping in her hot tub. He leaves, but not before Pamela asks him to a dance the private school she is going to is having in two weeks. A.J. says he’ll think about it. He feels a loyalty to Jessica, and Pamela isn’t his type at all, but Jessica is too serious and he doesn’t like how extreme she is in all the things he usually likes. Jessica’s favorite clothing store, Lisette’s, is having a fashion show contest and the winner gets a customized wardrobe. Jessica knows she could win, and wants to enter, but is worried about what A.J. will think. Elizabeth and her friends convince her and say she can just act like it’s a goof. Pamela is there when Jessica signs up, and decides to sign up too, and tells Jessica how much A.J. likes her and how he won’t be Jessica’s guy for much longer. A.J. and Jessica go on a double date with Jeffrey and Liz and when A.J. and Liz are alone he asks her if Jessica is always so serious. Elizabeth keeps encouraging Jessica to just be herself, because she can tell A.J. is miserable, but Jess won’t listen and has made Elizabeth promise not to say anything, so she is evasive with A.J. At the fashion show, Jessica is in her element and can’t help being more of herself backstage. But Pamela has sabotaged every single outfit that Jessica is supposed to wear in the fashion show. Jessica makes every outfit work and either accessorizes them to hide how they’ve been ruined or changes how she walks in the show. Right before their last outfit, Pamela dumps water all over Jessica and the old Jess is back. Jessica confronts Pamela about what she is doing and how she is only doing it because Jessica is going to win, and Pamela is just insecure. They keep exchanging angry words when Lila Fowler and Amy Sutton pull back the curtains. The audience gets to see what they could already hear. When Pamela realizes it she runs away in tears. Jessica is the winner of the fashion show and all of those new clothes. A.J. and Jessica go for a drive and Jessica decides to be herself and A.J. admits he likes the real Jessica better than the serious Jessica.
Episode 58 – “Out Of Reach”: Jade Wu wants to be a dancer more than anything, and when Sweet Valley High decides to put on a dance and music variety show to raise money to start a dance program, she would do anything for the big solo number. Everyone is sure that she’s going to get the part, but her father is a very traditional Chinese man and does not want her dancing in public. He won’t let her date or stay over at friends’ houses – he expects her home right after her dance lessons so she can cook for him. Jade talks to her mother who promises to try to reason with her father, so Jade auditions and gets the solo. Amy Sutton is angry because she wanted the solo even though she is a terrible dancer. She says she hopes Jade doesn’t get it because she looks too Chinese. The set designer, David Prentiss, really likes Jade and she really likes him back. He keeps asking her out, but she keeps making up lame excuses because she doesn’t want him to know that she isn’t allowed to date. He thinks she keeps turning him down because his family is poor and he has to work to help his single mother out, who is a maid. He decides Jade must be a snob. He confronts Jade who tells him that she can prove she isn’t a snob and then tells him her darkest secret. Her grandparents, who are the ones paying for her dance lessons, own a laundry/dry cleaning business. She is ashamed, but David doesn’t understand why it should matter and tells Jade she has the wrong attitude. Amy Sutton goes with her mother to pick up some things from a dry cleaning place, and she sees a poster of the variety show hanging up. Jade’s grandmother tells Amy her granddaughter is starring in it, and Amy can’t wait to tell the entire school Jade’s secret. The next day, she says something to Jade about what her grandparents do and Jade is furious, certain that David told her secret. They get into a big fight about it, and David quits the show and takes the set he designed with him. Jade is miserable and Elizabeth Wakefield tells Jade how Amy found out her secret. Jade tries to apologize to David, but he isn’t interested. She confides everything to her mother, who tells her she shouldn’t be ashamed of her heritage and her grandparents are very proud of her, and she shouldn’t be down on them for any reason. Jade realizes how awful she has been, and Elizabeth talks to David before opening night. Jade’s father finally caves at the last minute, and Jade sees David’s beautiful set on the stage and realizes that he forgives her. She sees her father in the audience and dances like she never has before. After the show, her father says how proud of her he is, and she receives a coveted spot with a dance company in Los Angeles, but the scout tells her she would need to change her last name to “Warren” just for the company, because the person who is in charge of her spot is very “traditional” and would not be all right with her last name. Jade tells the scout to get lost, she will only ever dance using her own last name. Her parents are even prouder and meet David. Her parents love David, both for his beautiful work on the set, and because he has a job to support his family. He asks Mr. Wu if he can take Jade out sometime and he agrees. Also, the twins’ father, Ned Wakefield, has his 25th high school reunion coming up and goes through a brief, and ridiculous midlife crisis because of it.
Episode 59 – “No Place To Hide”: Everyone at The Sweet Valley News is talking about the Mayoral elections that are coming up. Most of the people there are backing Miles Robertson, but Jessica and the public at large seem more interested in his opponent, Russell Kincaid. No one seems to know much about Russell Kincaid, but Elizabeth has a feeling he is sketchy. Elizabeth Wakefield invites Nicholas Morrow on a picnic the newspaper is having in Ronoma County, forty miles north of Sweet Valley, because he is still depressed over his sister’s death. He roams through the woods when they arrive and comes across a beautiful and neglected mansion and sees a girl in an old fashioned dress and a terrier approaching. Her name is Barbara and Nicholas is in love. Before they can exchange information, a man calls for Barbara and she says her Uncle John gets angry if she doesn’t come right away. She seems scared of him. Nicholas decides to go back the next day, and her uncle tells him to get lost and never come back. Nicholas finds Barbara in the woods nearby and she tells him they have to meet in secret because her uncle would never allow her to have any friends – she is in old-fashioned getup again. Nicholas brings the twins along the next time he visits Barbara and Uncle John almost catches them. They hide and see him handle Barbara roughly and kick her dog. The twins get special assignments at the paper: Jessica is covering an exhibit on a famous local artist Paul Lazarow (long deceased) and the artist colony he started in Ronoma forty years ago while Elizabeth is covering the Mayoral election. On Nicholas’s next visit to her, Barbara tells him about a terrible nightmare she keeps having about a man chasing her off the cliffs near the house on her birthday. And her birthday is next Friday, and she shares the same birthday with her grandmother, who was also named Barbara, who died on her birthday many years ago after falling from those same cliffs. She also tells Nicholas that her uncle is a crazy person and she is worried he or the twins will get hurt. A silver Jaguar is usually parked at the mansion on these visits, and Barbara mentions her uncle gets a regular visitor at night. Nicholas convinces Barbara to pretend she is ill and sneak away so he can take her out to dinner properly. When they get to the restaurant Nicholas notices that same Jaguar is parked there, but doesn’t say anything. A man in the restaurant acts like he has seen a ghost when he sees Barbara, but her back is to him so she doesn’t notice him gawking. The next day Nicholas receives a note on his windshield warning him to stay away from Barbara. Then he sees a picture in Elizabeth’s research and identifies the man who owns the Jaguar as Mayoral candidate Russell Kincaid. He goes to see Barbara who is hysterical because her dog has disappeared and she thinks her uncle has done something with him as a warning for them to stop seeing each other. Nicholas helps her look and when he returns all of his tires are slashed and his windshield is smashed in. That night Elizabeth receives a threatening phone call, telling her to mind her own business. Nicholas, Elizabeth and Jessica go to the museum and see a portrait of Barbara painted by Paul Lazarow. Barbara was his daughter and looks just like present-day Barbara (her granddaughter). They find out that there was rumors that Barbara’s grandmother was murdered and suspicion mostly followed a young Russell Kincaid, who was in Lazarow’s artist colony back then. The three of them are sure that Barbara’s “uncle” plans to kill her and have history repeat itself so they make plans to kidnap her. Nicholas goes to get her, while Elizabeth distracts whoever is inside, but she sprains her ankle so Jessica goes instead, leaving Liz to crawl back to the car. But Uncle John gets to her first, threatens her and then knocks her out with a gun. Back at the house Nicholas and Jessica see Russell Kincaid trying to push Barbara off the cliff. They run to help her, but not before Barbara and Kincaid both go over. Nicholas finds Barbara hanging on to the ledge and he rescues her. They find Elizabeth and Barbara’s dog and call the police. Liz has a sprained ankle and concussion, but she is otherwise fine. Uncle John is caught and brought to the police station. He confesses that he lied about being related to Barbara to get her to come out to her grandmother’s house. He is Russell Kincaid’s brother and Kincaid swindled him out of a lot of money (millions) by breaking their partnership and running for mayor. His goal was for his brother to think he was seeing Barbara’s grandmother’s ghost, think he was going crazy, and drop out of the race. He admits that his brother pushed Barbara’s grandmother off the cliff years ago in a jealous rage because he was obsessed with her, but she married someone else and had a daughter (Barbara’s mother). Barbara finds out her grandfather is still alive. Overcome with grief, he locked himself away in a home. She meets him and it is a happy reunion. Her grandfather decides to accompany Barbara back to Switzerland and Nicholas and Barbara say their goodbyes in typical melodramatic fashion.
Well this is the longest Sweet Valley post there is, if you made it through – I think I owe you something. 😛
Tomorrow’s post is the very last of the Sweet Valley Season 3 posts and includes the last two episodes of the season and all of those fun extras including all of the crazy things the series did this season: epic firsts, memorials and time travel. Yes, time travel. Don’t miss out on all those extras! 😉
-DMW
