All Eyes on 3e (1974–75)

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Published: Tammy 14 December 1974 to 15 March 1975

Episodes: 14

Artist: Mario Capaldi

Writer: Unknown

Translations/Reprints: None known

Plot

Form 3E of Stopes School are always finding ways to get out of classwork with the screwy schemes of their ringleader Mary White, a lazy girl who only works hard at dodging schoolwork. Vicky Field, the class swot, is always annoyed at Mary for this because she wants to make the most of her education. But Mary’s and her gang are just too slick to get caught. Moreover, their teacher, Miss Times, is just not sharp enough to realise the tricks they’re pulling. For example, she does not even realise essays are being copied or the reason the break-time bell rings a bit early is because there is an alarm clock in Mary’s desk.

Muriel Monitor, a famous TV personality, wants to do a real-life series and the subject will be a classroom. Form 3E is picked for the series, but this means they will have to work with those cameras on them and their work-dodging is threatened with exposure. So in addition to dodging schoolwork, Mary constantly comes up with ways to hinder the filming. The stage is set for comedy-drama every week where the girls set to outsmart Muriel and dodge classwork. For example, they sabotage the sprinkler system to make Muriel’s filming a washout.

Vicky informs Muriel about what’s going on. Now Muriel becomes hell-bent on exposing Mary and her schemes and letting the school know what a lazy, work-dodging underachiever she is. But Mary and her gang keep thwarting that as well and prove more than a match for Muriel. Eventually they succeed in getting rid of Muriel altogether and think they can go back to happily dodging schoolwork. Vicky, who was tricked into helping with their scheme to remove Muriel, is furious.

Then, a month later, Muriel gets her revenge. She makes an educational for teachers about classroom work-dodging tactics with the data she collected on 3E and sends it to the school. When Miss Times sees it, she finally wakes up to the classwork-dodging schemes (copied essays, the alarm clock, etc) and now she’s going to keep a beady eye on them all. Party’s over for 3E and now they have to get used to doing classwork. Muriel has finally beaten Mary and gets the last laugh, and Vicky’s all smiles.

Thoughts

Protagonists who always come up with screwy schemes to dodge classwork are nothing new. Jinty took it to a more serious level in “Prisoner of the Bell”, where Granny used hypnotism to break her granddaughter’s school skiving, but things got out of hand. In the 1980s, School Fun/Buster had “Young Arfur”, a weekly funny where Arfur can always be counted on for a crafty plan to help you escape teacher’s wrath if you haven’t done your homework or forgot to revise for a test. But in this case it is done as a humour serial and a weekly battle of wills with plenty of drama to go with the comedy. There certainly is no shortage of drama because Muriel has such a strong personality and Mary a quick brain. If Mary used her brain the right way, she could be one of the best pupils in the class and have a brilliant career ahead of her.

When you think about it, the girls are foolish. Any other class would jump at the chance to be on television, but not Mary White. And just because she doesn’t want to work in class with those cameras on her. She encourages the rest of the girls (except Vicky) to get behind her on getting rid of the cameras when they could all have this wonderful television opportunity. Instead, they are throwing it all away.

You can’t really dislike Muriel though the story implies she has made her share of enemies. She has a colourful, flamboyant personality and she has dashes of humour. You do feel for Muriel as her frustration grows because the girls’ tricks keep wasting miles and miles of footage, which must be costing her lots of money. We are glad to see Muriel eventually win after weeks of constantly losing. Mary is finally obliged to knuckle down and work in class, which makes the ending far more satisfying than the one in “Prisoner of the Bell”, where the school skiving did not change in the end.