Learning Day: White Rabbits Can't Jump (Patreon)

In the early '90s, there was a murder you've probably heard of. The suspect was a Heisman trophy-winning NFL Hall-of-Famer, a movie star, and the celebrity spokesperson for Dingo cowboy boots, Hertz Rental Car, Pioneer Chicken, Chevrolet, Wilson Sporting Goods, Treesweet Orange Juice, Schick Flexomatic Razors, and Honey Baked Ham. If it's still not ringing a bell, when the suspect fled the police, he did it live, on all of the channels, while everyone was watching game 5 of the NBA Finals. The conditions will never, ever be right for there to be a more famous murder, so Disney decided it better not air the episode they just filmed of Adventures in Wonderland with special guest star, O.J. Simpson.

Unfortunately, the novelization had already been sent out.

This is not an article where I Photoshop together some nightmare thing. This is a real book adapted from a real episode of TV Disney erased because the guy talking to all their puppets just stabbed a lady. It really had that name, and it really looked like this. Really take it in. It looks like the world's sickest boy made a wish to get put out of his misery by 5-Time Pro Bowler O.J. Simpson. It looks like a man who fucked a kangaroo 45 years ago is finally meeting his son. And it gets worse when you open it up.

The book's first page looks like the Buffalo Bills got together to make a The Shining parody. It looks like Gary Busey said, "Don't ask any questions; wake me up in 1000 years after I turn into a bunny," and someone did. All I'm saying is, what's the point of being a world-famous murderer if you're not going to kill this? It looks like the seventh place finisher in a Weirdest Mold on a Ham contest.

The story begins with White Rabbit learning about Leap Day for the first time, which means he's younger than four-years-old? This was surprising because whatever White Rabbit is, he looks too old to be alive. If I saw this, I'd expect it to say, "Can anyone hear me? Hitler glued me into this suit in 1938."

We'll never know how faithful this novelization is to the original show's dialog, but I think we can all agree Adventures in Wonderland can fuck itself. This is an accidental pun (if you're being really goddamn generous) getting explained to a monster who insists, "No it's not." We are looking at a hard-working writer using every tool he has to destroy happiness. He might as well have said, "Hyuk! I become one twelfth more rabbit every time I taste the flesh of man!"

"Oh, that's a very funny joke!" the Queen says with a laugh. "Get it? He became eight percent more rabbit after he ate a man!"

White fur erupting from the last of my human skin, it is pure agony, the White Rabbit replies.

White Rabbit doesn't want to compete in the Leap Year Games because he's not sure if he can jump, so he does what would have been totally normal only one double homicide ago: he uses his imagination to think about what O.J. Simpson would do. This causes his O.J. Simpson poster to come to life, but not a poster like you're picturing. White Rabbit owns a poster of O.J. Simpson in a dinner jacket holding a football like a pastry chef who just discovered a new shape of bread. Before anything, the spirit of O.J. Simpson should have turned around and said, "Where'd you get this weird picture of me, rabbit monster?"

Oh good, here's something normal. White Rabbit tells O.J. that he can't jump and O.J. asks, "How do you know if you haven't tried?" And I get we're looking at the rotting remains of the first mall Easter Bunny crying in front of America's best-known murderer, but it's so dumb for O.J. to immediately assume a rabbit claiming he can't jump has never tried jumping. And it's even dumber that he's kind of right. If the special guest star of this episode wasn't currently in police custody, they should have considered throwing this episode in the trash anyway.

O.J. convinces the rabbit to go to the Leap Year Games where everyone tells the only white actor they want him on their team because his kind are known for their jumping. It's a really heavy-handed racial allegory, but not in a way that will pay off. If the original show had the lesson "stereotypes are hurtful," it didn't make it into the book. Which means the middle-aged caucasian author they put in charge of writing this novelization saw racism get carefully spelled out in an episode of a black-coded show called "White Rabbits Can't Jump" and thought, "this is a story about being a good loser!"

White Rabbit decides to go home, but O.J. Simpson stops him to scold him for abandoning his teammates. Then White Rabbit says the same desperate thing everyone says moments before a ghost knife goes into their heart: "You're not the real O.J. Simpson!"

This doesn't advance the story, but it's worth mentioning that a sudden gust of wind caves in everyone's skull and they joke about it. So it's possible that while he was on the set, only a few months away from killing two people, Adventures in Wonderland's guest performer O.J. Simpson said, "Man, this show is crazy violent."

Back to the story, the not-real O.J. Simpson has convinced White Rabbit to participate in the games, and his event ends up being leapfrog. And you can tell this must have been an action-packed episode of television because the next third of the book is pictures of him playing leapfrog. This is going to sound obvious after you hear it, but there's no great way to adapt a game of leapfrog into still photos.

What a cursed sequence of images. These pictures are what an investigator would hold up and say, "got it," if he was searching for evidence related to a string of petting zoo sex crimes. This looks like AI tried to colorize The Ring video. And here's how I can prove how fucked up they are: not a single one of these photos gets more unsettling when you remember 1994's O.J. Simpson is standing just out of frame.

White Rabbit's team loses badly and they all blame him. He tries to make excuses, but no one believes him. His story has more holes than a Charlie Kirk speech.

Ashamed and alone, White Rabbit is not comforted by how right he was about not being able to jump. "Joke's on them," says the voice of O.J. Simpson. "Second place trophy still counts as a trophy." It's pathetic, and sounds sarcastic coming from football legend O.J. Simpson, league MVP who had five different 1000-yard rushing seasons. Maybe save this "losing is fine" lesson for when you book Danny Ainge on the show.

The sad consolation of a man who isn't really there is no consolation at all, so White Rabbit sits in silence next to no one, starring O.J. Simpson as no one. Look at this shot. This looks like they should be at a WonderCon table with no line under a banner that says "Meet Accused Murderers OJ Simson & the Original Hoppz from Karate Spagetti Rabbits!"

So the Leap Year Games wasn't much of anything. It was two teams of untrained amateurs assembled from whoever was nearby, going head-to-head in two events, and one of them was cut short due to head injuries. There are only two trophies to hand out: Fastest Leapfroggers, and Did Not Finish. And yet they still held an opulent award ceremony featuring celebrity guest, O.J. Simpson. That's right, O.J. Simpson is now playing two different O.J. Simpsons, and together they're like the answer to some dark puzzle. What's the only time you can be sure O.J. Simpson is telling the truth? When the real O.J. and the idea of O.J. each hold up a knife and say, "One of us is a murderer."

"[I'm a fucking idiot who has no idea what's going on] You can't be in two places at once," said White Rabbit to the imaginary O.J. Simpson. "What? Say that last thing you said again," said the real O.J. Simpson's lawyer.

The imaginary O.J. reminds the White Rabbit, the same white rabbit who said O.J. wasn't real two emotional meltdowns ago, that he's not really there. "You dumb shit," O.J. forgets to mention. "You look like someone wanted to see what would happen if you gave a lab animal every disease," O.J. doesn't add. White Rabbit looks like the scene where E.T. is hiding in the closet of stuffed animals, but if they filmed it after they found him dead in the river. He looks like he should be asking a teenage mutant ninja turtle if he has any meth. He looks like Bugs Bunny dressed up like a sexy lady to seduce Elmer Fudd and it worked to completion.

After all that, the story limps across the saddest finish line. The moral of this story about racism causing someone to be shunned and humiliated for failing to conform to prejudices ends up being "last place is still technically a place, everyone go get your participation trophy from O.J. Simpson!" No one has ever been allowed to see this episode, so there's no way to be sure, but I feel safe calling this book worse than the original. Most of it was troubling leapfrog pictures and misunderstood racism, and the rest was O.J. Simpson and a second O.J. Simpson. And if you're wondering how being attached to this accursed project while also doing a very bad job affected the author's career, here's a pie chart showing their productivity before and after the novelization of "White Rabbits Can't Jump":

Before White Rabbits Can't Jump, M.C. Varley wrote 24 children's books. After White Rabbits Can't Jump, he stopped working for eight years, published one book about a fish, and then never wrote again. The show Adventures in Wonderland was cancelled one episode later, too. O.J.'s trial was also responsible for the cancellation of Gargoyles and ended with the verdict of not guilty. So I guess the real moral of the story is nobody generated more unhappy endings than NFL great and homicide standout, O.J. Simpson.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Justin B, the only person on earth who has the original VHS master copy of the missing episode. But he sold his VCR to buy it, what a conundrum. Also wait, that's why Gargoyles was cancelled? Is this common knowledge? 

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