Plenty of things scare me or make me uncomfortable, but I only have one true phobia. I have Cleithrophobia, the fear of being trapped in a small space. I’m not even afraid of small spaces on their own. Tiny rooms with unlocked doors don’t bother me. I even enjoy the coziness of an MRI. But if that machine had a door the technician snapped shut once I got inside? Nope, couldn’t do it. I can’t even look at that photo of a person stuck in a cave without getting physically ill. And I know exactly who’s responsible for this lifelong terror: Punky Brewster. The show traumatized me as a kid with the scariest moment in tv history. I’m forever haunted by Cherie getting stuck in that old refrigerator.
I was too young to watch “Cherie Lifesaver” when it debuted on January 19, 1986, so I don’t know the exact date I finally did. I just know is I was definitely still too young to watch it when I caught a syndicated rerun as a little kid. And I’m still too young for it. I rewatched it for this article and found it extremely unsettling. Somehow it was even worse than I remembered.
If you also saw “Cherie Lifesaver” as a little kid you don’t need me to tell you why. It’s a genuinely terrifying episode for any kind of television show, let alone a family sitcom they used to re-air before school. If you’ve never seen it, though, it’s hard to capture in words just how dark it gets. The episode revolves around two seemingly unrelated subplots: elementary students learning CPR and Punky’s foster dad Henry buying a new refrigerator. Watching it as an adult it’s immediately obvious something bad is going to happen, but “foreshadowing” was not something a young child would understand despite the episode putting them in actual writing.
Eventually the two subplots come together in the most nightmarish way. Cherie, Punky, and their schoolmates Allen and Margaux play hide-and-seek in the yard. That’s also where Henry has put his old broken fridge for now. But snow interrupts both the game and Henry’s plan to remove the refrigerator door for safety reasons. Everyone instead heads inside, unaware Cherie is not still in the building. She’s hiding in the fridge.
Which she can’t open from the inside.
And no one can hear her quiet pleas even amid the eerie quiet of falling snow.
The camera lingers on the isolated fridge. And it lingers. And it lingers as the show goes to commercial. When it comes back from the break she’s still inside and no one knows where she could be.
It was absolutely horrible to watch, and that was before little me realized she was running out of air, something I didn’t even know to worry about. That only becomes obvious when Henry opens the fridge and Cherie IS DEAD. She’s dead. She’s not breathing and has no pulse. But Henry doesn’t know CPR. Neither does class clown Allen, because he was goofing off during the lesson and got sent to the principal’s office when their teacher taught everyone how to perform CPR.
I’m getting anxious just recapping this old episode of TV. That photo of Cherie is making my chest tighten.
Fortunately Punky and Margaux did pay attention in class and they use CPR to save Cherie’s life. That’s literally true because—-and I truly can’t stress this enough—Cherie had died. On TV. On Punky F***ing Brewster. She got locked in the refrigerator, ran out of oxygen, and DIED.
And I’ve been afraid of being trapped in small spaces ever since. There’s nothing in the history of television that has ever scared me as much, let alone resulted in a lifelong phobia.
If you assume I hate this episode of Punky Brewster, well, I don’t. Sure, it’s not fun freaking out when I can’t get my wedding ring off because my finger feels “trapped.” And it’s not exactly a blast having a panic attack on a theme park ride I didn’t realize is fully enclosed. It’s that I am thankful for this far-too-terrifying episode of Punky Brewster. I made sure to learn CPR when I got the chance for one. And second Cherie’s brief death guaranteed I will never, ever, ever get inside a refrigerator.
I’m too afraid of what could happen for that to ever happen.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who understated how much rewatching this episode upset him. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.