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One of the biggest topics on the list (at least in the early days) was the way they changed the set after the first season. The first appearance of the alterations, in ``Crush'' (#114), just happened to coincide with the founding of the mailing list.
This page also contains comments about objects seen in Clarissa's room.
Was it just me or was anyone else bothered by the major remodeling done to the house in the new episode?
Yeah, I noticed that remodeling, too... bothered? Why? Care to summarize the changes you noticed?
Well, the main stairs go up a different way, there is a new room off of the living room, there are stairs in the kitchen now, and Clarissa has a new closet in her room. The thing which struck me the most though was that everything seemed so sparse. There was no more of Marshall's architecture clutter in the living room. There wasn't as much stuff hanging on the walls, and especially in Clarissa's room, everything seemed so clean and new. I just don't believe that she could live like that for long. I liked the stylish disarray of her old room. Also notice that out her window you can now see in the distance, whereas before I think it was just the tree and ladder.
Clarissa has LOTS of nifty things in her room. Its wonderful! That reminds of what might be the biggest change in the new episode: ELVIS IS GONE! <sniff>But Clarissa has lots of cool stuff. A baby locker. A hubcap collection. And all those clothes!
And man, her room was so clean!And that staircase in the kitchen...
And they moved the front door a bit...
Finally, there was a full shot of the thing hanging above her walk in closet in last Saturday's show. I've been wondering all season what that thing was that's tacked up there. It turns out that it is a Clarissa Street sign.I'm wondering what ever happenned to the They Might Be Giants Flood Logo poster.
I find it hard to keep up with how Clarissa decorates her room. When did Bill & Ted's time machine show up there?
This is the first time that a telphone booth has shown up in Clarissa's room. Inside the phone booth is a red Keith Haring Dog. I wonder if someone on the show makes trips to the Keith Haring Pop shop in NYC because there's also a Keith Haring poster of a dog jumping through a person in her room, and Clarissa was wearing a Keith Haring t shirt on Saturday's show.It looks like they've made a bunch of changes to the show. Clarissa also has a new desk, and there is now a parking meter in her room. The kitchen got wallpapered. The beige wall near the stairs in the living room got painted wine/purple.
Well, I went to Universal Studios and I went on the Nick studios tour. [...]
The next stop was the set of CEIA. When Clarissa walks into her room, is there a computer on the desk? I didn't see one on the set. I got a pretty good look at it too, although it was rather far away. The computer was off somewhere else completely. Also, the rack of clothes aren't in the 'back' of her closet but on the side so that when she parts them, she's facing forward. The video explained how Sam has a blanket and a pillow down by the ladder so that he can take a name during the all the takes where they never get to his part. They also explained how the house 'across the way' is just a model and is slightly smaller to give the impression of distance. They also explained how the plants in the front make the front of the house look real. They also listed her address as 44 shadow lane, unless I remember wrong. Maybe I should have taken notes. The next stop was a 3 window area. Through window 1 was wardrobe. Couldn't see clarissa clothes but with everything hung up it was hard to see anything. The second was the kitchen where they make their gross stuff. There was a demo of that for all the kids. The third was makeup. I looked on the wall for a pic of MJH but didn't really have time to look carefully.
I'm curious-- could you tell us how the different parts of the house are arranged in space on the set? I expect that they don't really walk upstairs and find themselves in the hallway with the bedrooms, do they?
It's not like a house at all, of course. The living room and dining room and front door (outside) are all connected. There's a little 'hall' with a door and clarissa's room connected. The other bedrooms are separate. Her computer is somewhere else entirely. Of course, Sam doesn't climb a real ladder. The whole area of the set is the size of a few football fields. It isn't like the set of I Love Lucy, where the whole thing is actually connected so an audience can watch all stages at once. Instead, while most of the sets face the windows we were looking out of, some face the other way. I didn't get to look at everything. I was one of the last into the room and had to look while walking out the far end. We didn't get a lot of time there. And, from two stories up, everything was rather far away.
On Thu, 3 Dec 1992, Paul wrote:
> It's not like a house at all, of course. The living
> room and dining room and front door (outside) are all connected.Thanks for the info! Of course that blows several of my theories. I thought the living room and dining room/kitchen were disjoint sets. The transition from one to the other never looked quite right.
> There's a little 'hall' with a door and clarissa's room
> connected. The other bedrooms are separate.Strike two for me -- I thought Clarissa's bedroom, the hall, and Ferg's bedroom were contiguous sets. There's a shot in 'Total TV', where Clarissa is showing Sam and Hillary what Ferg's been up to, that has them (apparently) looking into Ferg's bedroom from his door, with Clarissa's bedroom door behind them. Fooled me.
I guess you didn't have a chance to see the 'back yard' set, but I've always thought the topology of Clarissa's window/the house back yard didn't quite work. Of course they would be distinct sets.
There have been plenty of episodes showing Clarissa's and Ferguson's rooms on opposite sides of the hallway. Furthermore, in the first episode, Clarissa walks directly from the bathroom into her room. Of course the set's been changed since then, in ways some of which have serious consequences.There's one question which I'll ask now, which is not about the arrangement of the set. In that first SNICK episode, was it implied that Clarissa could get to the attic through her closet? That's really notable!
>I guess you didn't have a chance to see the 'back yard' set, but I've
>always thought the topology of Clarissa's window/the house back yard
>didn't quite work. Of course they would be distinct sets.And I guess you didn't get to see if they had a basement. Of the episodes I've seen, that first appeared in ``No Parents, Please,'' their pre-Halloween Halloween episode (I guess). Quite a long time between first being mentioned and being shown.
It seems the list emerged at a critical time--just after the start of the second season, with all the changes it brought about upon Clarissa's world.I confess that the changes to the house did disturb me. I could accept the fact that Clarissa had rearranged her room, and that the tree outside her window had been cut down (``Oh, who cares, it's just a TREE!''), revealing another house and a better view of the world outside, but Clarissa's home had been significantly altered without explanation. It was a breach in the unreal reality of the show that contradicted the fact that all the previous episodes had taken place in the house as we had seen it.
For those who are not convinced of the seriousness of the situation, consider this: In the critical First Episode, Clarissa managed to get her brother into a straitjacket by luring him into the closet under the front stairs. But that closet does not exist! Talk about not leaving any evidence...
On the other hand, the changes to the set indicated that they were actually spending more money on the show. (The Darlings, in contrast, did not have enough money to build a treetop observatory.)
One contradiction I doubt anyone else notcied: in the Valentine's Day episode Clarissa installs a weathervane because the house had previously been lacking one. But in ``Life without Television,'' Sam had related how he had gotten caught on the weathervane the last time he'd gone up onto the roof.
It is interesting that Jack Arnold Jr., discussing episode 2.2, remarks how clean Clarissa's room is, while in that same episode, Ferguson refers to her as being ``comfortable living with dust-balls the size of tumbleweed.''
In this episode, you can see Clarissa's room from Ferguson's; this would seem to indicate that the two rooms must be contiguous with the hallway on the same set, not on sepearate hallways as indicated by Paul <PRM@BROWNVM.brown.edu>, who visited the set.
A little on the arraignment of the sets. There are two rows of rooms. Clarissa's bedroom and her fathers study are next to each other in one row. The other row (perpendicular to the first) has the ``outside, with front door'', the front room, the hall, and the kitchen. These are all connected, making them flow as they would in a real house.
Was there a Ferg bedroom set there too? In one of the recent episodes (Boy Thoughts?) there was a camera shot looking out of Ferg's bedroom that seemed to look into Clarissa's bedroom through her bedroom door.
See Alternate episode titles for help with an unofficial title or other episode reference you don't recognize.
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