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The kids in The Breakfast Club learned so many lessons. They learned that misbehaviour can lead to the loss of one's whole damn Saturday. They also learned that, thanks to just a few wrong moves in life, they might end up stuck in a high school...for the rest of their lives,cleaning up after self-involved, snot-nosed brats. This lesson they learned from Carl the Janitor, played by Mr. John Kapelos.

Carl the Janitor doesn't get a lot of screen time, but considering the little we see of him, he imparts a wealth of wisdom -- both to the detainees, and to us, the viewers! Carl the Janitor had dreams once -- when Principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) asks what Carl wanted to be when he was younger, Carl admits, "When I was a kid, I wanted to be John Lennon." Carl the Janitor isn't taken seriously now (Vernon's response to the revelation of Carl's childhood imaginings? "Carl, don't be a goof"). And most importantly, CARL THE JANITOR SEES ALL. Bender (Judd Nelson) tries to score some easy points with his fellow delinquents by making fun of Carl, but Carl the Janitor responds by shooting back a monologue to the effect that nothing happens in the school that he, in the course of his janitorial rounds, doesn't know about (which forces contemporary audiences to wonder if Carl's cleaned up, like, secret babies discarded in the ladies' rooms during the prom). Thus does Carl the Janitor earn Bender's grudging respect.

John Kapelos has played more than a hundred other roles, ranging from Late Night with David Letterman producer Robert Morton to Canadian TV star Bruno Gerussi to Rory's community-service supervisor on last night's episode of Gilmore Girls. But none has been as indelible as his wise and world-weary Chicago-area maintenance engineer, Carl the Janitor. Don't sass him, or he'll clean your mouth out and steal the weed out of your locker.