We watched the movies “21 Jump Street” and “22 Jump Street” this weekend. They’re kind of dumb, but also fairly fun. I remember watching reruns of the original show back in the 90s. My little sister really liked it. I remembered approximately three specific things from the show:
1) they did one of those “pretend to be a parent by carrying an egg everywhere” episodes
2) Booker smashing the TVs as performance art
3) a guy on death row tapping his thumb to stay awake as he died, except I wasn’t even sure if that was from “21 Jump Street”
So, I searched around and found the right episode, called “2245” which is easy to watch for free online, and I rewatched it. And damn, I can see why that episode stayed with me when almost nothing else from the show did.
“2245” is a really heartrending, unflinching look at the death penalty. It’s also one of Rosie Perez’s earliest performances. Not to mention Don S. Davis from Stargate. Just all around, a really quality, well-done 47-minutes of television.
It’s amazing how thirty years can condense a whole TV show (or at least, a bunch of a TV show) down into just a few moments, but yeah, those were the moments that stayed with me as something striking and complicated enough to still think about randomly sometimes decades later.