The Breakfast Club: what do you think happened next?

Watched The Breakfast Club for the first time in a long while. Still funny and as someone who was around their age at that time, it still resonates with me. So at the end of the movie the five kids become something like friends and even pair up in two couples.

So what do you think happens after? Do Claire and Bender stay a couple? Does Andrew and Allison? Do any of them stay friends with Brian or each other? Or do they all go back to their cliques like Claire said would happen?

What do you think?

Like most adolescents, the emotion of the day overtook them and they “became friends.” As the reality and pressures to conform within their own social groups returns, they’ll drift. Likely before the next Saturday.

I think Happy is being a bit too pessimistic. The couples probably stay couples getting some weird looks until they split up a few weeks or months later, the others probably keep remembering each other fondly but drift back to their regular social circles once the glow wears off in a couple of weeks. The individuals probably still think of each other as friends, but don’t really stay in touch or hang out for long.

I see Andrew & Allison lasting longer because, in my 80s high school artsy-loner experience, “art class weirdos” is more of a loose confederation than a real clique. So there’d be less pressure from her end and, on his end, provided she cleaned up nice with her new makeup and hair ribbons I doubt the jocks would really care. They’ll probably break up eventually for the usual high school reasons and lack of mutual interests but they won’t be torn asunder by external peer pressure.

Claire & Bender is more of a class struggle than a high school clique struggle. You can put Bender in a suit and he’s still a lower class guy with shitty grades and no future. And Claire won’t be seen as anything other than a rich girl going slumming for kicks by Bender’s fellow drinking buddies. Add in parental pressure and I don’t give them long at all.

Brian is destined to a few “hey” nods in the hallway and probably not getting shoved into a locker by Bender or Andrew but his social calendar won’t be any fuller.

Bender knocks up Claire. They rent a squalid apartment above the shoe store and try to make the best of things. Claire is a stay-at-home mom and suffers from depression. John Bender works as an apprentice in a tire shop and spends his evenings drinking and gambling. They eventually separate and divorce. Their kid suffers from autism and gets in trouble with the law after the incident at the burrito place.

Allison and Andrew date for a while, but he’s a jock and she’s a stoner, so they end up parting ways. She gets him to lighten up and smoke pot on the weekends, but once his dad finds some pot in his room he’s grounded for life. He ends up committing suicide by swallowing his Baby Bean toy Giraffe, head first.

Allison becomes a Van Halen groupie and goes on tour with the band. She’s banging Dave, but occasionally does DP with Alex too, but the others don’t like her and kick Dave out of the band.

Brian qualifies for Jeopardy, wins $10,000 and blows it in one weekend in Las Vegas on hookers and blow. He ends up on skid row and dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Superbowl.

The criminal earns his name when he finally snaps and punches his asshole father, causing him to fall and crack open his skull on the kitchen table. Thanks to an indifferent public defender, he gets 20 years for second degree murder. The basket case slits her wrists while soaking in a warm bath and listinging to a Debbie Gibson CD. After a sudden collapse while wrestling, the jock is diagnosed with a career-ending heart condition and eventually becomes a moderately successful used car salesman. The princess marries a Wall Street wizard and is set for life in a Manhattan penthouse with a distant husband and a gaggle of socialite friends that she secretly hates. The brain staked his future in computers. Unfortunately, instead of getting in near the ground floor at Apple or Microsoft, he invested all his time and energy in Wang Laboratories. Today he is a manager at one of the few remaining Radio Shack locations.

This is addressed in the movie.

Claire gets married, has a few kids and then puts on a few pounds.

Bender doesn’t amount to much and completely forgets his high school experience. Then one day out of the blue, his old vice-principal shows up and kicks the living shit out of him.

Clair stays with Bender, explaining away her black eyes and swollen lips as “walking into a door”. Andrew never gets that football scholarship and ends up working at the plant. He and Allison lose contact when she goes to NY for art school where she nearly dies from an heroin overdose. Brian eventually becomes a successful YouTube blogger with many inspirational and instructional channels. He and Claire stay close. He eventually talks Claire into taking their her and Bender’s kid and leaving him, only to have Bender stalk Claire, ending up stabbing her in a fit of rage and jealousy.

Maybe I’ll come up with a happy ending later.

You guys are dark.

I’ve never seen the movie, but I’m willing to bet Leaffan totally nailed this.

I’ve only got Brian’s future.

He and his family move away the following month, to a cookie-cutter neighborhood at the bottom of a large stand-alone hill with a single house at the top. Brian has a growth spurt, which results in him being selected for the football team the following fall (and he is surprisingly good at it, snagging the QB position, and being named captain). Flush with newfound social acceptance, he starts dating a cheerleader, and turns into a low-grade arrogant, entitled, high school jock. He looks locked into a future as a moderately-successful aluminum siding salesman.

Then his girlfriend’s mother, an Avon Lady of no particular skill, brings home a mysterious stranger from the house on top of the hill…

I only know John Bender’s fate. John pawns the diamond stud-earring that Claire gave him, for $2000 and next friday takes it to Vegas where he spends the weekend holding his own on standard, and they eventually high-stakes, poker, but eventually loses it all on a string of bad hands. On the way out of the casino an old lady stops him and asks him to push her buttons (on the slot machine!) for good luck. He obliges and hits the jackpot. After a lengthy and contentious investigation the casino awards all the winnings – some 23 million dollars – to him. The next few years are a blurr of dirty nasty live-in whores, drug-fuelled rampages and Very Bad Decisions. But this was the 80’s and 23 million sitting in the bank generated more money than he could even spend. At 23 and his second heart attack, John found God and moved to Argentina for rehabilitaion and a complex series of venerial disease treatments. He studied philosphy in his spare time at his isolated Rio Negro ranch, leading him to an eventual abandoning of his faith and a renewed outlook on the ephemeral nature of existance. He gathered all his money and developed a private compound in Tiajuana devoted to the study of cryogenics, brain transplantation and personality downloading technologies. He had his brain frozen on his 50th birthday, and a trust funded the care and further research of his organisation. Eventually, in 2996, his personality was downloaded to a robotic shell, serial number 2716057, known only as Bending Unit 22, Bender Bending Rodríguez.

Leaffan wins the thread for making me laugh out loud. I also think it is not far off.

Isamu. THAT was a thing of beauty. Please take a bow.

I’ve read that John Hughes intended to reunite the cast every ten years or so in sequels. I’m torn as to whether that would have been a good idea as I often find it better left to the imagination (looking at YOU Star Wars prequels!). Yet, I still sort of hope it might happen some day.

Realistically, I agree with the idea that the emotions of the day were stronger than their lasting effect. Although I think each of the characters would hold strong memories of the day and feel it was important for the rest of their lives. But real relationships don’t always develop that way, and since they were young, they were destined to grow a lot and become new people. Great friends of mine from that time are still my friends, but our relationships are not nearly as intense because we’ve grown in different directions.

Hell, if the four characters in Stand By Me can drift apart after what they went through, these five people aren’t gonna make it…

I would totally go see this sequel in the theater.

Morrissey. The Basket Case would die before she’d listen to Debbie Gibson. Goth/emo chicks never like bubble gum pop.