How many of you forgot about this little gem from the 90s? Long before there was the Academy Award-nominated I, Tonya, there was Comedy Central’s Spunk: The Tonya Harding Story. Written by Michael McCarthy and starring Tina Yothers, it’s a tongue-in-cheek look at the Kerrigan/Harding scandal long before we really gave the real Harding a chance to tell her story. Here it is, coming at you right out of 1994.

I have to ask… did anyone else mistrust Nancy Kerrigan the way I did and still do? She seems like that bitchy girl who plays the part of ice princess well and coasts by because she’s marginally pretty and can pass for affluent. We all went to school with that type: the girl who looks sort of strange (they ALWAYS have weird-shaped heads and/or hairlines!), pulls alpha rank and manages to speak every sentence with a fresh coating of disdain. Like, you have to pay lip service and be nice because otherwise, bitch will get someone to start rumors while she smiles and enjoys her carton of milk. Because vanilla bitchery loves its milk. I did not like her one bit. Naturally, I laughed hysterically at this treatment of her as the stuck-up athlete looking for a comeback story to curry favor with the judges. Really, when you look at and think about all the hardships Harding attempted to overcome to professionally do something she loved… if she were a guitar player, we’d be lauding her for showing up the middle-to-upper class stuffed shirts by being good despite not looking the part. That’s really what it comes down to: Harding was social mobility in a world that wanted to present the façade of privileged perfection. In ice skating, looking the part became synonymous with appearing to be as unattainable and upper-crust as you could.

And honestly… no one in my general orbit gave a flying fuck about ice skating until this happened. This scandal was the best damn thing to happen to a sport that people sort of shrugged at for the longest time. Sure, people knew of Dorothy Hamill and Katarina Witt, but really, when it comes down to it, no one knew ice skating from curling. It was something that people with too much money to spend on their kids did. That is, until this spectacle came along. Suddenly, people gave a shit. It was a bit more badass. Like it or not, Tonya being an outsider suddenly opened the door for the long-shot success stories. The working class kids could become ice princesses too because everyone loves a Cinderella story. It was cut throat, it was dirtier, and there was something actually interesting for once in a sport that bored most people to tears. It wasn’t just Karen’s mom sleeping with the trainer or Edgar’s dad buying his way onto a spot in the nationals; it was scandal and mess and everyone loves that. It had spunk.

Happy Saturday.