The Future Mrs. Bueller

Almost all of my favorite movies were made in the late 1980s. I don’t know if it’s because that’s when I grew up, or it’s just a coincidence, or I really like Velcro.



Whatever the reason, I love late 80s movies. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club and Field of Dreams were some of the best flicks ever made, and they were not ruined by tons of nonsensical sequels (I’m looking at you, Batman). The problem with having no sequels, however, is that we have no way of finding out what happened next. Until now.



We can now discover what happened to some of the best movie couples of all time, thanks to a special invention called the “humor column.”



Ferris Bueller and Sloan Peterson, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ferris enrolls at the University of Wisconsin while Sloan finishes her senior year at Shermer High. But plans for Sloan to join him in Madison are derailed when Ferris is expelled for an elaborate scheme to ditch classes. In hindsight, it would have been easier for him to just not show up, like all the other college students. Ferris takes a year to “find himself” in Europe before becoming a fry cook at Venus – a strip club on Chicago’s South Side.



Maverick Mitchell and Charlie Blackwood, Top Gun

Now that Maverick and Charlie are both Top Gun instructors, school is in session – love school, that is. Especially when the academy starts admitting female cadets. It turns out that Maverick hadn’t changed his stripes (badum!) when Charlie catches him with a new student – in their special elevator!



Josh Baskin and Susan Lawrence, Big

Susan is forced to register herself as a sex offender for sleeping with a 13-year-old boy. Josh spends the next year wishing for girls his age to have grown breasts already, and finally runs away with Susan on his 14th birthday. With the help of Zoltan, the two begin their own company: making toys for more mature consumers.



Claire Standish and John Bender, The Breakfast Club

The couple lasts through the end of senior year and Claire going off to college. But when Claire comes back for Thanksgiving Break, she and John reveal that they’ve both been “considering” other people. They break up, and don’t speak until Brian Johnson organizes a ten year Breakfast Club reunion. At the reunion, it is discovered that John was right – Claire is a fat girls name.



Harry Burns and Sally Albright, When Harry Met Sally

Harry and Sally spend the first few years madly in love, before things start leveling out. It’s nothing to divorce over, but there is a definite rut. Problems escalate when Sally says, “you never take me out to eat and fake orgasm anymore.”



Ray and Annie Kinsella, Field of Dreams

After making hundreds of millions on their new tourist trap, the Kinsellas purchase the Montreal Expos and move them to Des Moines. Ray’s big plans for improving the team are stopped, however, when commissioner Bud Selig extends Shoeless Joe Jackson’s lifetime ban to cover returning from the grave. The Kinsellas eventually sell the Expos and use the rest of their money to hire James Earl Jones to follow them around and announce their names in a deep voice.



Adam and Barbara Maitland, Beetlejuice

After seeing Lydia off to college, Adam and Barbara get bored and start experiencing empty haunted nest syndrome. But they get a second chance to be ghost parents when Lydia is arrested for shoplifting.



Baby Houseman and Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing

Nobody puts Baby in the corner, except herself when she realizes that she has been cornered into a relationship with Johnny. And after the Housemans accept Johnny for what he is, the attraction fizzles and she breaks up with him. Johnny spends the next few years having sex with everyone he can in a desperate attempt to forget almost landing a rich chick, while Baby must find new and more creative ways to get back at her parents.



I realize that I have most of these couples breaking up – but that’s because it’s a humor column and not a movie. If we made a bunch of sequels instead, everyone would end up together. Except in the Batman movies, where no one remembers the chick he was with in the last film.