Sometimes the brainstorm meetings here at Atom go, shamefully, something like this:
“Hey, what can we do for Angry Old Man & Gay Teenage Runaway?”
“Wow, that could be tough…”
“What about a list of our favorite runaways?”
“Dude…”
“…”
“What about Joan of Arc?”
and things sashay rapidly downhill from there. But yes, our newest series starring 30 Rock’s Lonny Ross got us thinking about the funny side of child endangerment, and while we are FIRMLY AGAINST IT, here are a couple lovable, and FICTIONAL, runaways who captured our hearts.
Stephanie Tanner

Full House was a show, once upon a time, about 3 dudes raising 3 babies, a la “Three Men And A Baby” except with two more kids and one less lip sweater. The show is rife with runaways, as one would expect from a family in which the parenting tactics revolve around Vaseline-smeared close-ups of painfully pastel heart to hearts, punctuated by shitty Popeye impressions.
In Season 3, Episode 20, spazzy middle child Stepahnie runs away to her friend’s house after crashing uncle Joey’s new car into the kitchen. Somehow, she ganked the keys to his new wheels, and, mistaking the “R” on the gearshift for “Radio,” she wound up driving through the kitchen. The resulting groan-worthy commentary would make me runaway, too:
DJ & Kimmy: WHOA BABY!!
DJ: There’s a car in the kitchen!
Michelle: I told you so.
DJ: Michelle, do you know how Joey’s car got in here?
Michelle: Yes, I do!
DJ: How?
Michelle: Through the window!
Wokka wokka!
Punky Brewster

Punky’s very origin myth stems from a wayyy heavy plotline that’s alarmingly tragic for a kids’s show. The first runaway to mention is her mother, who peaced out on the little squirt in a department store parking lot, leaving the 8 year old to squat by herself in an empty apartment. It’s there that the Punskter meets the guy across the street, a crotchety old man, Henry Warnimont. Henry tries to take Punky to a shelter, but what with all her abandonment issues, she’d rather stay with the weird old slumlord she recently met, than actually give foster care a shot.
Dorothy

Dorothy Gale runs away because her dog Toto bites someone. Specifically, he bites that old bitch on the bike with the theme music that to the day scares the pants off me, who then calls the Sheriff to have the dog murdered. Oof! Tough stuff, bitch on the bike. Tuff stuff.
Somehow, Toto the bitch-biting-dog escapes from doggie death row, and Dorothy decides that the only way to keep Toto alive is to run away with him. Her great plan is to take her dog and to escape into the endless, desolate farm land of Kansas, where she plans to survive by gnawing on corn husks and drinking dust(?) Luckily for her, she runs into a geeze of a fortune teller who totally rips her off, and tells her that her aunt is broken-hearted, which sends Dorothy home, only to get sucked into a tornado and put into a hallucinatory coma. Success!
Joan Of Arc

Sucks to be burned at the stake at 19, huh? Maybe next time you’ll think twice before claiming divine guidance, turning an Anglo-French conflict into a religious war, and leading thousands of French troupes into battle. Kids those days!
Benji

I saw Benji in theaters as a kid, as did most of America (that movie was a huge hit!), and I spent the whole fucking time waiting for that dog to say something. Spoiler alert: Benji just hangs out in the woods most of the time. He does not talk. At all. TRY AGAIN, BENJI. I expect my animals to talk, if I’m going to fork out dough to see them in theaters. So while Benji was the most profitable runaway animal of his day, I too escaped that boring ass movie, to dreamland.
King Kong

The circumstances of Kong’s escape (and subsequent scaling of the Empire State Building) are understandable. When you’ve been kidnapped from your cozy, dinosaur infested home, why wouldn’t you want to steal the tiny movie star you’re enamored with, scale the tallest building you can find, and fuck some airplanes up? Lord knows I do that when I’ve been kidnapped. So maybe Kong isn’t strictly a runaway, what he lacks in forlorn walks down dusty roads and make-shift satchels filled with peanut butter sandwiches, he more than makes up for with his temper tantrums.
Haley from The Wizard

Haley from The Wizard is kind of your ideal, modern day runaway. She’s scrappy, cunning, and willing to use an autistic kid to hustle suckers for money. And oh yeah, she’s down to accuse someone of pedophilia at the drop of a hat.
You may have grown up to be an indie-folk darling, Jenny Lewis, but in our hearts, you’re still trying to get to Reno.
Casper The Friendly Ghost

Now, this is based on no knowledge of the Casper back story, and we were all unwilling to do the research lest it compromise the joke, but if we take the premise that Casper is a friendly ghost, then we can assume that at one point he was Casper The Friendly Child. And then, once we rule out the methods of death that don’t result in the need for your eternally tormented soul to walk the Earth, the odds of Casper at some point being some kind of runaway are worth taking. QED, Casper was so probably a runaway we’ve eliminated the need to look it up.
The Train From Unstoppable

In a very reasonable concession that not all runaways must be animate, and just edging out the bus and then boat in the ‘Speed’ series, give it up for a very charming runaway train.
If you’re not entertained enough, here’s a clip from Angry Old Man & Gay Teenage Runaway. We’ll be premiering two new episodes a week for a month, so come back next week!