The Accident

The Accident
Season	1
Original Airdate	October 8th, 1994
Directed by	Peter Lauer
Written by	Ken Lipman and Thomas Lynch

The Accident is the first episode of The Secret World of Alex Mack. This episode introduces Alex Mack, a seemingly unremarkable teenage girl who is caught in a chemical accident following her first day of junior high school.

Plot Summary

As the sun rises over the town of Paradise Valley, Alexandra Mack is woken up by her older sister Annie, who informs her that it's the first day of school. More specifically for Alex, it's the first day of junior high school. Meanwhile, across town at the Paradise Valley Chemical Plant, the company CEO Danielle Atron is meeting with her Security Chief, Vince Carter. She informs him that the plant testing facility is ready to begin research on a new chemical compound called GC-161. Vince is sent to oversee the plant staff as they prepare to load three drums of GC-161 onto a truck.

Back at the Mack house, Alex is upstairs getting dressed and feeling miserable, while Annie sees her mother Barbara and father George downstairs. Barbara is busy with a business call, while George is studying notes on GC-161, which he looks forward to researching. Annie shares in her father's interest, though George admits that while GC-161 is reported to have "extraordinary properties", he knows nothing as to what it does.

Alex eventually comes downstairs, just in time to meet her friend Ray Alvarado as he enters the house. Though her parents (and to a lesser extent, Annie) try to cheer her up, Alex remains miserable and nervous. Before she leaves, Barbara gives Alex a gift... a Troll lunchbox, despite Alex having outgrown such a childish thing. Regardless, Alex takes the lunchbox and heads out with Ray.

Walking to school, Ray tells Alex that now that they're in junior high, the stakes are higher, and it's sink-or-swim. Ray claims that he will swim like a shark, but Alex has her doubts. When she arrives at Danielle Atron Junior High, however, Alex has a hard time of it as she gets nearly trampled by a crowd of kids. She drops her schedule and tries to pick it up, but someone steps on it and causes Alex to rip the paper. Finally, she arrives late to her first Math class, and Alex is utterly humiliated when the teacher calls her out to answer a logic problem to which she's clueless on.

Back at PVCP, Vince is glaring down one of the truck drivers, a clueless man named Dave Watt, with a distasteful eye. Dave is more focused on getting lunch than actually listening to Vince, but he nonetheless is sent to drive the delivery truck and its GC-161 cargo to the testing facility.

School has just ended, and Alex is relaying her miserable experiences to Ray, though her friend doesn't seem to be fully empathetic to her problems. As they walk by the basketball court, Alex is tackled to the ground by a player when the ball gets thrown her way. The player, Jessica, insults Alex for being clumsy, but she then sees Alex's Troll lunchbox and teases the poor girl for it. A nearby boy named Scott intervenes and gets Jessica to leave Alex alone, though this doesn't stop her from taunting Alex about the Troll lunchbox again as she goes back to her game. When Alex tries to defend her position to Scott, she ends up stuttering and humiliating herself further. Scott politely walks away and Alex heads home, feeling like a geek.

Not far off, Dave is trying to juggle between driving the truck and eating lunch (despite Vince's explicit order otherwise) at the same time. As he fumbles with his meal, his hand accidently hits a button, opening up the back hatch. At the same time, Alex aimlessly walks onto the road that the truck is on. Neither Alex nor Dave notice each other's presence until the truck is close to hitting her, causing Alex to run in panic while Dave tries to swerve out of her way. Alex dives to the dirt at the last second and Dave ends up crashing the truck into a fire hydrant, sending a geyser of water spraying into the air, and the impact causes a barrel of GC-161 to fall out of the back hatch and burst open. Between the chemical and the water spraying all over her, Alex is completely soaked in the strange gold substance. As soon as she climbs to her feet, Alex runs home, and Dave is unable to get her to stay put.

Arriving home, Alex immediately heads for the garage in search of Annie, but can't find her. As she heads to the sink to wash herself off, a strange humming sound goes off behind her. Alex turns to find that the electric saw is inexplicibly on... and not plugged in. A bolt of electricity then discharges from Alex's hand, causing a nearby train set to turn on remotely. Now frightened, Alex turns to look at herself in the mirror and screams when she sees her face glowing brightly.

Ray, meanwhile, is just passing by the crash site and sees a contamination crew in the area, working to cover up the damage. Back with Alex, Annie has just arrived to see her sister still trying to wash herself off. Alex explains what had happened to her, getting a look of genuine concern from Annie. At PVCP, Danielle Atron is on the phone with Vince over the accident. Danielle is naturally furious, even moreso since according to Dave's report to Vince, an unidentified child was caught in the chemical spill. However, Vince assures her that he'll find the child, as "he" (they all assume it was a boy who was contaminated) left a handprint in the mud and Vince has a way to use it.

Annie has now finished checking Alex's blood pressure and body temperature, which are both normal. However, Alex is still glowing. Ray then comes in and sees Alex glowing, and he asks her what had happened. Annie assures him that she just got into an accident, but Ray immediately assumes that the accident site he saw earlier was responsible.

At PVCP, Vince is interrogating Dave for any information regarding who the kid in the accident could be. Picture after picture of kids in Paradise Valley are shown to him, but Dave doesn't recognize anybody as the kid he nearly hit. Seeing that it's going nowhere, Vince declares his next plan: to use a handprint scanner to identify the kid based on the handprint in the mud he found.

In the garage, Annie, Alex, and Ray discuss the situation with increasing worry. Annie is convinced that what happened in the crash was not a 'minor' accident. For their safety, the three friends agree to not tell anybody until the whole thing dies down. Alex suddenly asks Ray for chips, and Ray reaches for a bag. To everyone's shock, the bag suddenly floats in midair into Alex's hand. Annie and Ray are amazed at Alex's sudden telekinetic manifestation.

Alex's gaze suddenly meets a bottle of water. Before Annie or Ray realize it, Alex is gone. However, they then see a strange puddle where Alex was standing. They quickly realize that the puddle is Alex, and she is still in conscious (though limited) control of her morphed self. George suddenly comes into the garage and the puddle-Alex hides behind a box while Annie and Ray cover for her absence. Once George leaves, Alex reforms... though without her clothes.

After redressing, Alex admits that perhaps they should tell George about this, but Annie quickly tells her not to. It's Annie's guess that the chemical that affected her was illegal, and if Alex told George, not only would he lose his job, but the chemical plant would most likely make her into a science experiment as well. Ray does not help matters by jesting that Alex's brain will end up in a jar, and Annie tells him to go away out of annoyance.

As Ray heads down the street, he overhears Vince and Dave talking from within their humvee. Vince explains his plan to test every kid on the block with his hand-scanner, and Ray rushes back to relay the news to Alex and Annie. Needing an escape, Annie tells Alex to morph again and use the house plumbing to get upstairs. Alex is reluctant to do so out of fear of not reforming, but she manages to flow up into the upstairs bathroom.

Vince and Dave have just reached the front door and are now asking George to see his daughters. Though Annie manages to stall for a bit, George heads upstairs to get Alex, who is now in her room. Back downstairs, Annie and Alex are administered the hand-scanner test. Annie's test comes back negative, but just as Alex is about to scan her hand, her powers go off and destroy the device. Not noticing the odd coincidence (to her credit), Vince orders Dave to get a spare from his humvee. Alex then telekinetically releases the parking brake on the vehicle, sending it rolling down the driveway and its drivers chasing after it.

The threat avoided for now, Alex and Annie prepare for bed. Alex is still worried that the Plant will keep on hunting her, but Annie explains that it won't happen between Alex's powers and her brains. Alex decides to zap the bedlamp off, and this causes all the lights in Paradise Valley to flash on and off repeatedly.

As the lightshow goes off, however, Danielle Atron silently watches from her limosine. She swears that the child will be hers, for "tomorrow is another day"...