Despite featuring episodes about time travel, supervillains, and the mystical city of Shangri-La, the weirdest installment of Jem's 60-episode run is the one that features a relatively realistic plot. The word that's doing the heavy lifting there is "relatively," but "Intrigue at the Indy 500" is set at a famous real-world event, and features an almost distressingly real consequence for Eric Raymond, who is in danger of having his legs broken after his gambling gets him in debt to the mob. There's even a scene when Synergy's holograms are used in a surprisingly practical way, providing an intangible 3D blueprint for the band to rebuild a race car after it's torn apart.
The events that drive the plot — so to speak — are even technically possible, although they're so far on the edge of what could actually happen in the real world that when you look back as an adult, they seem even stranger by comparison. The short version is that Jem, a world-famous rock star, has to compete in the Indy 500, a massively well-known sporting event. While she's racing, Pizzazz, who is also a world-famous rock star, jumps over the fence, runs into the infield, hijacks another racer's car, and starts racing herself. Pizzazz takes the lead, but she's so reckless that she causes most of the other racers to crash. The two musicians then come in first and second, with Jem sliding across the finish line and into the win after her car loses a wheel and careens into a fiery crash, with Jem herself being dragged from the wreckage unconscious as the car explodes.
Got it? Great. Now go back and replace "Jem" in that summary with "Beyoncé Knowles," and "Pizzazz" with "Taylor Swift," and imagine this happening in the real world. "Beyoncé Wins Indy 500, Narrowly Escapes Exploding Car After Attack By Taylor Swift" is the kind of headline that would make the moon landing look like page three material at best. And yet, one this episode is wrapped up, it's never mentioned again. You'd think it would come up at least as often as, say, the importance of literacy, but no. It's just another day in the endless battle for glam rock supremacy.
