Clean School Jokes

"Altar Egos"/"Justice Is Blind"

“Altar Egos/Justice Is Blind” (season 1, episodes 17/18; original airdates 3/17 & 3/21/04)

I don’t know if there’ll ever be an Arrested Development movie, but if there is, I hope it’ll be a lot like the first-season two-parter “Altar Egos” and “Justice Is Blind.” Not because these are the show’s best episodes—though they’re top-shelf, I’d say—but because they’re a prime example of how AD ’s writers, cast and crew can sustain an intricate, comedically fertile, largely self-contained story for longer than just 22 minutes.

In fact, a new viewer could almost drop into these episodes cold, having never seen the show before, and not miss much of what’s going on, beyond a few long-running in-jokes and some basic character detail. The Narrator fills in most of the rest. There’s really only one storyline in “Altar Egos” and “Justice Is Blind” that’s superfluous, and that’s GOB’s dare-marriage to an unnamed woman played by Amy Poehler (Will Arnett’s real-life wife). That will play out in later episodes. Pretty much everything else that matters begins in “Altar Egos” and wraps up in “Justice Is Blind.”

The main plot has to do with Michael meeting and having a one-night-stand with Maggie Lizer, a blind attorney played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Or I should say a “blind” attorney. Because the main theme of these two episodes—or one of them, anyway—is people pretending to be something or someone they’re not. Maggie, we soon find out, has been faking blindness for years because it helped her cheat her way through law school and it earns her sympathy in court. Michael meets Maggie in a bar frequented by lawyers and through a series of misunderstandings ends up introducing himself as Chareth Cutestory, a “lawyer of the sea.” (This all connects back to Michael playing a lawyer as a boy in a school production of the musical The Trial Of Captain Hook .) Elsewhere, George-Michael learns that Maeby has been bilking their classmates out of money by pretending to be her own sickly, wheelchair-bound twin “Surely Fünke.” (“You don’t get checks if you’re healthy,” Maeby shrugs.) And Barry Zuckercorn announces that he’s “trying to get back in the dating world,” which involves him cruising City Of Industry looking for men dressed like women.

Schools: How to Promote and Support Clean & Healthy Schools ...

(Available free – plus shipping and handling – from the IEHA) and other aids to help other parents understand the role of cleaning and maintenance for good health. Give a copy to the facility manager and/or cleaning department manager and ask them to join the discussion. Ask them to evaluate their ability to provide healthy schools with the resources made available to them. Offer to help and develop a team approach with teachers, principals, facility cleaning and maintenance staff, and the school nurse.

Get support from local health organizations. Ask them to come to a PTA meeting and talk about chemical contamination, infectious diseases, and the best ways to provide healthier indoor environments in the schools. Solicit support from other parents and community members for better indoor environmental quality in schools. Get suggestions from EPA’s “Tools for Schools” program, and from Clean and Healthy Schools For Dummies . Form a task group to develop a strategy. Write short articles for the local newspaper on healthy schools, and on the goals of the task group. Frequently report on meeting agendas and progress for the newspaper. Include quotes from various members.

Invite supporters to go to school board meetings dealing with budgets, green school programs, health, cleaning and maintenance, or general planning etc. Argue for giving a high priority to cleaning and maintenance programs. Suggest that the school board sanction a task force to research the subject and provide a formal report. Get local press coverage when the report is released.

If needed, suggest that the school district start with a single school as an experiment. Develop a program in that school and include measurements of results. Report on reductions in chemical and microbial contamination. See if it can be related to sick absences. Get children involved in hand washing and general good hygienic behaviors. Interview children and parents on their attitude to the program and include interview results in the report. Use the results to argue for expansion of healthy school programs to other schools.

School boards or administrators may be fully committed to having green schools and healthy schools. Why then do they often follow that commitment with budget cuts to the cleaning and maintenance programs when resources are tight? Simple: They just don’t realize how inadequate budgets inevitably lead to poorer health and reduced academic performance.