Family Matters Recused

Last week I promised you the review for Season 4, Episode 19: Just a Gigolo. It’s my fault that you aren’t getting that today. I am sorry. I’m trying to get an academic guest post set up for that one, but it’s not ready. So for this week and the next, at least, we’re going to take a little break from season 4.  This post was originally going to run between seasons 4 and 5, and it’s simply coincidence that I’m posting it on the first Friday of Black History Month.

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Family Matters Assumed

Just over a year ago, through the Perfect Strangers Reviewed Facebook page, I received a message from someone whom I won’t name. Over the course of a week, ze contacted me, Philip J. Reed, and Sarah Portland about our review sites; possibly others.  The question asked of all of us is whether we were going to continue our reviews.  That is: would Phil review the ALF cartoons?; would Sarah review all of the new Star Trek stuff?; and in my case, when would PSR be done, and would I be reviewing Family Matters?  After all, said ze, Family Matters was “a continuation”.  Whoever ze is, ze damn sure ain’t this stock photo of a “lawyer”.

Paul Graham of www.paulgraham.com fame laid out a a hierarchy of disagreements in 2008. I saw it online during the last presidential election (and yes, *sigh*, I’m going to have to talk about that shit in this post) and thought it was useful. Someone going by the handle of “Loudacris” on a site called CreateDebate made a graphic to illustrate Graham’s hierarchy.   Here it is:

So let’s go backwards through these.  First of all, mystery questioner… I’m not going to call you an asshat.  We’ve spoken through Facebook on multiple occasions, you’re obviously a fan of Perfect Strangers, and you read my blog. Morever, you’re a real person. You have feelings, and we all want to be understood by others.  I don’t think you’re an asshat, but the question was kind of an asshat question.

Second of all, you’re hiding behind an avatar.  If you can’t prove you’re a real person, then  what authority do you have about 80s/90s network sitcoms? I owe you nothing.

Third, you asked me about this when I had barely done a year of Perfect Strangers Reviewed. Maybe artists like me are touchy about people asking for free work, but damn if it doesn’t happen again that, when you post hard work online, you’re bound to eventually get “you should do more” as the first comment. At least have the courtesy to first compliment me/us on my/our work. And when will I be done? Am I falling behind your media feeding schedule?

Are all of you getting the message from that pyramid above? Name-calling and ad hominem attacks and responding to tone are mean, made by the real asshats who can’t engage in a discussion.  Let’s continue.

Fourth, to settle matters for all asshats, everywhere, forever: Family Matters is not what I’d consider a continuation.

Fifth, okay, Family Matters is not a continuation, it’s a spinoff.  I kind of want to define continuation by the persons making it, but that doesn’t work; so let’s say that intention is key.  Saved by the Bell: The College Years is a continuation. Extreme Ghostbusters was a continuation. Fuck, The Munsters Today, however it was received, was a continuation. (I’ve actually considered reviewing The Munsters Today after I’m done with this. The answer to the question you just thought is “no”.)

Sixth, the argument boils down to a misunderstanding of the differences between a character and a scenario. It’s a continuation of the character Harriette Winslow, as portrayed by Jo Marie Payton-France-Noble-Clark-Downs-Nahasapeemapetilon, sure, and her husband, Carl, and it takes place in Chicago. But could anyone look at both shows and say that they form one narrative? There’s more coherence between the New and Old Testaments, people.

Seventh, I’ll refute a central (implied) point: I should review Family Matters.  Here’s my answer: fuck no.

BUT

I want to take this opportunity to talk about why that is in more depth. I’m going to take the long way around, and this is ultimately a semi-political statement on race. (Spoiler: I’m a liberal atheist who thinks we’d be a whole lot better off without money. You’ve been warned.)

Family Matters Remembered

I’m not going to ever review Family Matters, but there are some things worth talking about. I’ll start with me as a childhood viewer.

I watched Family Matters as a kid; and just like many white kids then, I loved Urkel.  I had an Urkel talking doll; I had an Urkel backpack; I still have my copy of The Lean, Mean Urkel Machine that I probably got from the Troll book fair at school.  I share partial blame for his success. I’m sorry.

I remembered the episode where Urkel tries to infiltrate a gang and this guy puts on a tiny pair of glasses and calls himself an “artiste”. I had remembered it being Mr. Potato Head glasses, but it wasn’t, which means I need to go apologize to some people I helped put in prison.

I remember Urkel burning down the restaurant.

I remember the one where Urkel had a jetpack.

I know I watched the show with my dad, because he told me what kind of car Urkel drove. I still wouldn’t mind owning an Isetta myself.

I remember Myra.  I really liked Myra, because Myra had large breasts. I remember the episode where Urkel was afraid to touch her breasts.

I remember that I stopped watching regularly around the 5th or 6th season. I remember watching the other shows in the TGIF block around that time – Step by Step, Home Improvement, Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World, but somehow it seemed that the magic was gone. I know I didn’t watch any of those regularly. Was I really only into Full House and Perfect Strangers and Family Matters? Was ABC’s TGIF programming simply not as much of a draw for me once I started watching better-written stuff like The Simpsons and The Critic?

I know I tuned in a couple of times in the last few seasons of Family Matters and being disappointed that it seemed to have turned into the Stefan Urquelle show.

Family Matters Revisited

I watched the entirety of Family Matters for this post. All 215 episodes. Just to talk about why I won’t write about it.

Here’s the first thing that jumped out at me about Family Matters: it’s a show about black people.

From what I understand, the Winslows were originally living in the Caldwell Hotel.  In the pilot episode, you can see a hallway outside their door, which would be replaced with a front porch in every other episode. So maybe it was still in the hotel?  It’s also my understanding that Larry and Balki were intended to show up in the pilot. Consider this: an appearance by the cousins would have been conferring the success of Perfect Strangers onto its child.  I’m honestly glad that somebody was smart enough to nix that appearance.  History is littered with those in power conferring rights and respect to the powerless; when that happens, those in power control the language of the narrative.  (Think, for instance, of when any man says that women should be respected because they are someone’s daughter, sister, mother, etc.; such language denies them respect on the basis of their personhood.)

Anyway, before I talk about Family Matters proper, let’s see how Perfect Strangers addressed the change.

The promo gives the impression that, for the world that Balki and Larry inhabit, Harriette and her family got a television show, replete with relatives that could be removed as needed. And, wow, what the hell happened to Balki’s accent? Am I going to have to listen to that for the next

*counts on fingers*

10 years of this blog?

Not only does the show assertively stand on its own in this way, but Harriette mirrors this behavior.  She loses her job as elevator operator (my guess is that Balki mentioned to the wrong person that the elevator had buttons for all the floors) and interviews for a job as a security guard (my guess is that Lance Dick accidentally shot himself); when she’s initially turned down, she states the case for her qualifications loud and clear to the white manager.

(“A sister doing it for herself” is just one of the many awful and tone-deaf jokes you’d get from me, a white guy, if I reviewed the show.)

Eddie has a Chicago Chronicle sign or something in his room in another episode, but aside from those two things, Harriette’s job at the Chronicle is mentioned only a couple times per season after that. In the 5th season, she loses her job after having worked at the Chronicle for 23 years. It may be worth noting that, by that point, Perfect Strangers was off the air. It’s where the Chicago Chronicle originated; perhaps there was no need to keep that tie once the originating show was gone? And while we’re talking about continuation, Jo Marie was replaced during the 9th season.  Those two things really erode the idea of “continuation”, but that’s not the reason I won’t review it.

Family Matters Refused

The fact that it would take me probably 5 years to do is also not the reason I won’t review it.

I said “fuck you” at Family Matters multiple times while watching it; but that’s not the reason I won’t review it.

Or, actually, here’s my review of the series: I liked parts. I hated parts. It was good. It was bad. I have things I could say about why it was good. I have things I could say about why it was bad. Family Matters was a sitcom. It did sitcom things in a sitcom way.

But ultimately, I won’t review Family Matters because it’s about black people, and I ain’t one.

I know a few things about black people, and it’s all second-, third-, or nth-hand information; some of it from black people; most of it from books. In the first episode alone, I can see some things in the construction of Family Matters that fits in with things “I know” about African-Americans. You’ve got a big family living all together; there’s a matriarch present; there’s a mention of Prince; hell, the littlest kid is named Little Richie. But I don’t know enough. I don’t know half the celebrities that show up. I don’t know half the bands.

You’ve got episodes about making it big in sports, making it big in music, about driving while black, and about racist reactions to Black History Month. And for those first two things? I bet I’m making a bigger deal about them than I ought to, because I think of sports and music as being domains that black people are better in. That’s what I’ve been told my whole life, and I know damn well that if I looked at any amount of data on either thing, my understanding would be more nuanced by some order of magnitude. However, I don’t think that I remember any white sitcoms taking considerable time out of a story to have someone sing a whole song, or to have the characters doing nothing but practicing their dance moves in the living room as a group. When Balki and Larry sing, it’s always meant as some sort of joke. When Family Matters does it, you can tell it’s because someone thinks it’s important.

I’ll come back to the driving while black thing for a second. If you’re in enough of a social media echo chamber not to have seen this over the past half year, I’ll say it here: people of color weren’t surprised at the results of the 2016 presidential election, or any of the language used by the current administration. Being arrested or killed for nothing more serious than holding toys or candy is only a surprise to us. You may have only gotten upset (or not) hearing people asking “why’s there not a white history month” in the past few years. But black people? They’ve been seeing–living–this shit for years. Every god damn day.

When Philip J. Reed finished his ALF reviews, he mentioned that he couldn’t have imagined anyone’s voice but Billy Superstar’s for Full House Reviewed; moreover, that each of the shows we have picked to review are perfect for our personalities, and our voices.  I’m a neurotic, college-educated white guy who holds himself back from approaching women; I’m an overgrown child who still buys toys and wants to believe in people. I write detailed jokes about Daisyworld and put them right beside the easier jokes about Balki and Larry fucking. The internal focus between Larry and Balki mirrors in many ways my own internal struggles about how to do things. I’ve left women in my life hanging, and it’s often because I’m caught up in my own shit. As sad as it sounds, I am the cousins, and Perfect Strangers is the right show for me.

I’m not from a big family; I don’t even keep in touch with all of them anymore. I’ve never once gone to a black church and left Christianity’s fold a long time ago. I may have had “nerdy” interests, but I was never quite the type of social outcast Steve Urkel was. I didn’t grow up in a city. I’ve never been a robot.

And most importantly, I’m not black.

This show is not for me.

This show is not for me.

This show is not for me.

I think that, if anybody’s going to review Family Matters in a complete sense like I’m doing, it should be a black person.

*sigh*

But does that just make me one more white guy telling a black person what they ought to do?

Family Matters; Me, Cued

I hope not! But if it does, and I am, I hope you’ll tell me.

Let me take a page (or two) from Scott McCloud’s 2000 book Reinventing Comics. It’s hard to quote comics, so I’m just going to reproduce the relevant panels.

But let me also focus on the converse of who should write Family Matters Reviewed by saying who shouldn’t. I don’t think me, or any other white person, is the right person for it.  If we’re going to take a teleological approach, even playfully, and say the shows pick people, Family Matters hasn’t chosen yet.

There were two previous attempts to do Perfect Strangers, and both failed*.

Originally, Billy Superstar had wanted to review Family Matters, but all the seasons weren’t available on DVD yet, so he didn’t. There’s another guy who did reviews for a few seasons of Family Matters. I’m not going to link to it now; you can find it if you want. I linked to it once before, and now I regret it. It was written by a white guy. I haven’t read much of his reviews of the show, but I read enough to read one where he makes a joke about Harriette looking like an orangutan.

And you know what? It took a fair amount of work (I’m a research librarian, remember) to find out this guy’s name. I’m calling this guy out: UNACCEPTABLE, SHANE JEFFRIES

Let me get political again here. YOU MADE A RACIST JOKE, SHANE JEFFRIES

At the risk of back-patting, what I hear/read from women and African-Americans and other minorities is that one of the best things white cishet middle-class guys without disabilities like me can do is call out this kind of bullshit when we see it and say that it’s not okay.

SHANE THAT IS NOT OKAY IT IS 2017

Please note the difference. On Facebook, I was asked a question by someone going under a false name, and at first glance the question read as entitled, but there’s just an interested fan behind the avatar.  I didn’t say that person’s name.  “Rambo Homer McFly” doesn’t deserve that level of respect, or privacy. You’re an asshat, Shane. Go back to where you belong.

As far as I’m concerned, that kind of joke disqualifies you from writing about the show. I’m glad you went on to other things!  But I’m afraid that if I review Family Matters, I’ll end up making jokes that are just as racist–or be so cautious that I end up making fewer jokes, and still be racist. Because… I’m racist! I have racist thoughts about real people. I’ve done racist things, and I’m certain I still do in ways I don’t see. I benefit from racist structures and systems. Yesterday was the first day I tried calling a government agency to express my view about a nomination; why the fuck did I wait so long?

I have taken a test developed by Harvard researchers and gotten back hard data that the associations in my brain are racist. I’m from Georgia; my grandfather was in the KKK. I’m ashamed of that, and I’m responsible** for the bad aspects America he helped create. It’s unavoidable that my brain is going to continue to come up with ignorant racist bullshit for the rest of my life; my hope for the future is that each generation will be less so.

An important aside: I make numerous jokes about Larry and Balki being gay. I know only a few gay people. If I make insulting jokes, or say anything in bad taste, or anything that puts you down for being who you are, I want you to tell me. I need to know. I may ask questions, but I won’t argue with you. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Family Matters was a show for black people and, sure, it was also a show written so it would have broad appeal for white people. But I feel that any white person is going to have less to say about the show than it deserves. Because black people know their own experience; and they also know the experience of how they’re supposed to present themselves to white people.  I know next to nothing about the latter, and even less about the former.

Family Matters Pursued

I think Family Matters could use some love (and some hate) from someone qualified to write about it. I illegally downloaded the entire run of the show–only to find out it wasn’t complete. There were numerous episodes missing that I had to purchase from iTunes, which really has more to do with the DVD releases than anything. Much of the season 9 rips were recorded during what was obviously a marathon, because I kept seeing the same show advertised in the bottom third of the screen. Also there’s one episode that’s lost a few minutes in the middle because a storm warning cuts in.  At any rate, for big movies, you can download them as soon as they’re released in Asia, which precedes the DVD release in the US, generally. But I downloaded these in November, a couple weeks after season 9 was released on DVD.  I honestly would have expected it to be on torrent sites, but then again, I’m an impatient criminal. At any rate, it’s out now! If you’ve been waiting to review Family Matters because African-Americans are disproportionately jailed for crimes that white people like me are more likely to commit, now’s your time!

By the way, yes, that’s Donna Summer in some sort of gas-powered egg timer. Family Matters went to some weird places. Just a heads-up.

I’d love to hear what a black woman my age has to say about the show. I’d love to hear what a black guy my age has to say about the show. I’d love to hear what any black person has to say about this show. Because god damn there’s a lot to say.

Maybe Family Matters and its reviewer haven’t found each other yet; maybe they never will. Maybe they have, and that person hasn’t acted on it yet. Maybe it’s there and I haven’t seen it? (down there, the comments, tell me) But here’s a message for that person (or the cooler self they become when they use the “boss sauce”):

Doing this kind of review blog certainly hasn’t been entirely a cakewalk***.  I have a lot of fun with it. It tells me a lot about myself, and about others, and about television, and about comedy, and about fans, and about nostalgia. But the more I invest in it, the worse it hurts when the show goes bad. When it acts like suicidal thoughts can be done away with in the time it takes to microwave a TV dinner; when it decides to let women stay around only if it helps the main characters get laid; when a character takes a moral stance that is then reversed in the next episode, or the very next joke they make; when it tells you there’s something wrong with you for being the way you are, or thinking the way you think.

And if you’re black, or if you’re a woman, or if you’re a black woman? I’ve seen enough to know that when you say anything online, you get hateful comments at the very least, and at worst, death threats (or worse?). And that may not even be the half of what you’d have to deal with if you took this on. Yeah, it’s a dumb old sitcom, but I’ve seen people who look like me get upset over far less. The worst I’ve had so far is a message on Facebook. You’ll likely be surrounded and policed by fragile white eggshells, jealous of your strengths and courage.

But if you’re out there? And you take this on? I will eagerly, hungrily read it. I will sit, and I will listen, and I will try to understand the interiors I cannot see. I will know that this is a larger, harder endeavor than Perfect Strangers Reviewed is in more ways than one. I will share your work, and I will encourage your work, and I will defend your work, and I will make stupid jokes in the comments about Waldo, or about Myra. And you’ll tell me I’m racist. And you’ll tell me I’m sexist. And I’ll learn, and I’ll try harder not to be.

Seriously, though, I’m totally ready to make stupid jokes about Myra.

And will anything I’m saying here make a difference to you? Do you need my allyship at all? Those aren’t questions for me to answer. If and when you show up, let’s talk about those things. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here.

Here’s what I know: Balki and Larry didn’t show up in the first episode; Harriette got a new job all by herself; I’m not reviewing Family Matters.

Ding Ding Mahmoud

So, back to the regularly-scheduled programming of white guys and their arguments that matter only to them. I’ll talk about Family Matters again at some point.  After all, it’s informed my readings of long-running sitcoms in general, and Perfect Strangers specifically, so it will be hard not to.

But I wanted to make sure that I said all this, because 80s/90s sitcom reviewing is a thing I’m doing right now. I think it’s a burgeoning community and I even see its potential as an art form. (I try to be an artiste with this blog.) Independent snarky sitcom reviewing is now a domain I have a voice in, and I’m invested in this, and I’d like to see it become more of a “thing”.  I want it to be a good “thing”, because there were plenty of times when the shows themselves certainly weren’t.

Oh yeah, by the way, there’s a Perfect Strangers Reviewed Facebook page, where you can ask me whether I’ll review your favorite show.

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Urkel count: I lost track of how many different Urkels there were sometime around season 6

*for some goddam reason

**not “guilty of”–I see some white people confuse the two and try to reject the former

***yet another of the many instances of awful and racially-unaware uses of language you’d get if a white guy reviewed the show

Seasons 1 and 2 Revisited

Backtrack to Both Bunches of Bygone Bulletins

or

Bring Back those Bouncy Blonde Babes! (I bet they bake bodacious bibibabkas)

Normally, I’d be doing my review of the whole season, but I have a lot of stuff to talk about. A bootload. A sheep-ton. I would say beaucoup*, but that’s the sound Mary Anne thinks ghost birds make (on account of she’s so dumb). At any rate, part of what I want to discuss has to do with Season 2, so we’re going to have to backtrack. Next week you’ll get your season review.

So there I was, looking through eBay listings for actual Perfect Strangers merchandise, when I came across a copy of The Philadelphia Inquirer TV Week featuring an interview with Rebeca Arthur. The auction photos included the interview, so I read it (hey, there was nothing else going on at work that day).  Not only did I learn that Arthur used to work for a private investigation firm, the article also mentioned that Jennifer and Mary Anne were originally only intended to be in one episode.

Let that sink in.

No really, let that sink in.

Jennifer and Mary Anne were so popular with the studio audience during the filming of “Hunks Like Us”, ABC brought them back for more episodes.

For comparison, here are other characters who had a single appearance but proved so popular that audiences demanded they come back.

I’ll give you some time to process this.  Meanwhile, I’ve realized that if I’m going to see this review blog to completion, and if I want to actually understand this show, what it was and why it was that way, I need to read everything I can find that was written about it.  This means I need to go back and read all the stuff on www.perfectstrangers.tv pertaining to seasons 1 and 2. I know I said I wouldn’t do it.

I don’t really know where to draw the line when deciding what time period to look at for each season, I will lump in** some season 3 stuff here too.  The Laughing Love God knows I have a lot to say next week too.  So let’s see what we can find out about Perfect Strangers based on articles and interviews published through May 6, 1988, the original airdate of “Bye Bye Biki”. I figure any contemporary reviews of season 3 as a whole will do more to inform any changes made for season 4, so I’ll hold off on those.

*sigh*

I have 200 tabs open in my browser. Let’s see if I can get it down to just the hundred porn sites I have set as my homepage.

 

Season 1

The 1984 Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles, California. I’m pretty out of my depth when it comes to recent U.S. history. After all, in July 1984 I had only just gotten my lanugo looking good, so I wasn’t paying attention to the Olympics. But I have vague senses of what was going on politically back then.  A friend of mine told me that when she was in her teens and twenties in the 1980s, she was legitimately afraid that the nukes could start falling any moment. We weren’t exactly on (hmm what’s a good political joke ah yes) warm terms with the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, to the extent that there was a Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games. (They had their own “Friendship Games” that same year.) At any rate, the Olympics happened here, with (I imagine) an undercurrent sense of “some of y’all don’t like us”.

Thomas Miller and Robert Boyett, the pair behind Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Bosom Buddies, noticed that during the Olympic games, Americans were open and friendly to those visiting from around the globe.  When the Olympic games were over, Americans went back to their default setting: grumpy, cynical, and isolationist. Perhaps they wanted to send a message to the world that deep-down, Americans were friendly, but were just dealing with their own issues; perhaps they wanted to send a message that Americans needed the rest of the world as much as they needed us; perhaps Joanie Loves Chachi’s ratings tanked in its second season.  At any rate, they came up with a show they were calling The Greenhorn. Says Robert Boyett: “We thought it would be great to do a series about a man who comes to America and says, ‘What a wonderful country,’ and put him up against another character who has lived here and knows the flaws.”

But their idea kept getting turned down! There were similar media in the works at two of the big three networks: CBS had the TV rights to Moscow on the Hudson, and NBC was developing a Wild & Crazy Guys show.

*takes a solid two minutes to weep silently into a stuffed sheep*

ABC turned them down as well, but their “persistence”, according to that article, paid off. I don’t know what persistence means in Hollywood speak.  Note, though, for the sake of my own take on this show and what it turned into in season 2, cynicism was built into it from the beginning.

But whom would they get to star in such a piece?  Luckily, Tommy Lee and Bobby Lee went everywhere together, even to a showing of Beverly Hills Cop, where they saw Bronson Pinchot act gay and mangle words as Serge.  I still haven’t watched the movie, but I did watch one of Pinchot’s scenes. I don’t know that he “stole” anything from Eddie Murphy. I think Eddie Murphy had star power to get things cut from his movies if he wanted. But I’ll admit it’s effective to see Eddie Murphy surprised and momentarily at a loss for words.

Here is where the narrative breaks down a little, and you’ll get a slightly different story depending on which articles you might read, and how long after the show premiered they were written. Miller and Boyett approached Bronson Pinchot, who initially turned them down.  At that time, Pinchot was the belle of the ball, and he loved telling magazines and newspapers about how, after Beverly Hills Cop, he had to tell Rolling Stone that he would call them back because he was on the other line with USA Today.  Around that same time, he had some bit parts in some other films: The Flamingo Kid, After Hours, Risky Business (from an “inconsolable” Pinchot comes the constant refrain of the bit-part actor: “my scenes were cut”), and a teen sex romp called Hot Resort that I beg one of you to buy me so I can show a clip or two of it for the inevitable Perfect Strangers Reviewed Livestream. He also was in the TV show Sara, where he played a gay lawyer. Sara didn’t last very long. And despite the success of the Serge character, Pinchot was not getting movie scripts thrown his way.

In the summer of 1985 (more popularly known as “the Summer of Love”), he took a vacation in Europe (Belgium, Italy, and then Greece) with his girlfriend.  But it left him broke, and he came crawling back to the Bob & Tom show. While I’m still thinking about that article I just linked (which, by the way, came out around the same time as the very first episode), note this quote from Pinchot:

“My fantasy scenario is to do the little innocent sheepherder in Perfect Strangers until I get tired of it, then sit around collecting furniture until the public forgets about him in a few years. Then I’ll just do movies.”

I’m sure that came together for him!  But come back Pinchot did, because in 1985 The Greenhorn was the best he could do. Luckily, he did have some ideas about the titular character thanks to his recent travels in Greece.  I’m jumping ahead in the publication dates of articles, here, but the name “Balki” was something that Bronson’s sister came up with: she had named her dog “Balcony” and then decided that it needed a nickname.  I’ve told you the stuff about Louie Anderson being the original “cousin”, but in my Season 1 Reviewed review, I figured that it was Anderson’s height compared to Pinchot’s that just didn’t work. But it wasn’t until 1987 that an Associated Press article would say that the original concept of the show was more dialogue-based, which I think certainly fits with what it was trying to say about the characters. The article quotes Pinchot to the extent that Linn-Baker was the catalyst that pushed the show towards physical comedy. Whether cream pies like as of fire sat upon Linn-Baker, and he was filled with the Spirit of Buster Keaton himself; or whether Pinchot took one look at him and said “I bet I could throw this fucker around some”, there you go.

But why did Linn-Baker walk into that room that day? He also wasn’t getting movie scripts! Linn-Baker, after his role in My Favorite Year, went back to the quiet, hungry life of a New York theatre guy.

By the way, turns out “Linn” is his middle name, but there was already a Mark Baker in the Screen Actors Guild, and they spelled his name Mary for his (brief) appearance in the film Manhattan. Given that I’ve been called Tracy, Stacy, Jason, Cassie, KC, Chase (by a therapist!), Robertson, Robertston, Robinson, and even pronouncing the first part of my last name as “robe” instead of “rob”, I can so fucking relate.

Linn-Baker had made a small foray into the television world himself by that point, on the 1984 CBS show Comedy Zone.  Says Marky Mark of that funny bunch:

“There were four layers of bureaucracy on that show, and I’m still not sure which one was running things.  And neither are they.  They talent they amassed on that show!  They had great actors, great writers and four bureaucracies to keep them from doing work.”

I can so fucking relate.

Aside from the regular, albeit low-paying, work in theatre, Perfect Greenhorns was the best Linn-Baker could do at the time.  But the two actors seemed to take to each other pretty quickly! “There has not been one blowup between them”, according to my man Tom Miller. Perhaps I’m reading between the lines: that article seems to be implying that friendship comedies are a little stale on television; but it does let Miller have the last say: “Friendship has never gone out of fashion”.

Again, Linn-Baker’s pretty silent overall in these articles. I’m getting the impression, though, that this is only partially because the show was made for/tailored to Pinchot. I think Linn-Baker just didn’t talk that much. Shyness? No deep psychological need? I dunno.

Let me get some tidbits out of the way before I talk more about how season 1 was made.

Linn-Baker says that he was becoming known as the cheapest man in Hollywood. Haha Jewish joke amirite?

Pinchot and his girlfriend tied for high school valedictorian. And not only that, his high school girlfriend was a male stock Asian stereotype, meaning that “The Graduate” is the closest this show has come to biographical.

Linn-Baker was directing a play the summer between seasons 1 and 2.

Pinchot on Balki’s accent and English: “The way I figure, Balki grew up in Europe, and he learned his English by sitting through three old movies a day.  That explains why he talks the way he talks.”

Oh, of course, that explains all the specific references to American television commercials. And uh, okay, Mypos is in Europe. Fine.

Linn-Baker signed a 5-year contract, and I have zero idea how that works. I’m going to venture a guess that it only binds him for 5 years, but not ABC.

There are plenty of mentions about how they both went to Yale, and just as many mentions about how they never ran into each other there, and they most certainly didn’t engage in homosexual sex, no sir, not at Yale.  This is another point where we start seeing gloss, but in the multitude of articles truth is established. Bronson did actually see Linn-Baker in a production, but note what he focussed on:

Pinchot: “But I saw him once in a performance of A Winter’s Tale, in which he wore brown tights baggier than old blue jeans, with folds in the seat that looked like a baby elephant’s behind.”

And back to Pinchot for a minute: we do get a bit about his backstory. Article writers liked to play up the fact that Pinchot came from Russian and Italian immigrants, and that his dad took the name Pinchot from a building in New York. Being named after Louisa May Alcott’s dad gives him that distant, fancy, not-as-far-removed-from-the-old-world air. Pinchot was poor, he worked as a  typist, his dad left when he was little, poor growing up. A breezy melting-pot rags-to-riches story. We yearn for narratives that we can remember; and in this case, the more that it resonates with the character an actor plays, the better.

So that’s what magazines thought about Bronson Pinchot, but what did he think about the show?

“It’s just pure comedy,” offered Pinchot.  “There’s no episodes about bed-wetting, or about rape.  It’s just funny.”

Okay! Moving on…

Many of the articles refer to the initial six episodes as “sample” episodes; so this was a practice to see if a show was something that advertisers would put money towards. Perfect Strangers took over the slot that had up to then been occupied by Growing Pains, but why there?

Maybe it’s because Pinchot dragged his feet, or maybe it was because ABC still wasn’t convinced after all of that TLMBLB “persistence”, but according to Miller, those six episodes ended up being made in a very short time, for their own “protection”:

“My partner, Bob Boyett, and I had pitched the series to Brandon Stoddard (president of ABC entertainment) for the 1986-87 season.  Brandon liked the idea but reminded us if we started in the fall, we’d be competing with a lot of new shows.  Then he said, ‘If you guys can make six shows real fast, I can put them on now’.”

More from Miller:

“ABC gave us an option,” Miller explained.  “We could either test it out in a run of six episodes in a protected time period, or we could do the standard 13, and take our chances at getting the full run.”

Let’s move on to the reviews, because good grief, I’ve written 2400 words and I haven’t even gotten to the season 2 reporting.

The articles reviewing the set of six sample ‘sodes (see? superior syllable-slinging) explicitly mention capitalism, the “frustrated” nature of Larry’s character, that Bronson gets all the good lines.  One review of the first episode assumed Susan was Larry’s girlfriend. One reviewer was even sure that the Pinchot/Linn-Baker dynamic was the key element that would get the show picked up for the fall, though he wonders whether the title will still make sense (bless you, sir).

And boy, that “America, home of the Whopper” line really resonated with a lot of reviewers, because it gets quoted–and misquoted–in abundance.

Believe it or not, there are a couple of articles that are dry runs at a review blog of this type.  First, from Robert Bianco of the Pittsburgh Press:

Balki has curious gaps in his American knowledge — he knows about Burger King, Dolly Parton and “Nine to Five,” but he’s never heard of Levi Strauss and never seen a pop-top can.  His reactions are often funny, but if the writers don’t control their tendency to go for the cheap, easy laugh at the expense of character development, the character will turn into a walking laugh track.

And the supporting characters are weak, the same flaw that helped destroy “Mork and Mindy.”  Twinkacetti (Ernia Sabella), the boys’ employer, is a heavy-handed humorless rip-off of “Louie” from “Taxi.”  And their best friend, Susan (Lise Cutter), has been given little to do but smile and say, “Isn’t he cute.”

And please, please look at this concise takedown of season 1 by none other than Tom Shales of the Washington Post.

Even if you don’t read Shales’s review, look at how the fansite puts a disclaimer on the article.

I see you, fanbase.

And how can I not give you this from 16 Magazine to end my unpacking of season 1 coverage?

Season 2

“It may never be looked back on as great TV”

Audiences took to the cousins, and Perfect Strangers became a real show in the fall of 1986. ABC re-aired the sample episodes in August before showing “Hello Baby”, in order to put to rest the rumors that Balki and Larry actually did kiss briefly in one scene. The 86/87 season of Perfect Strangers was also considered its first season by those working on it.

My very first library job, back in the summer of 2002, between my freshman and sophomore years, was at the Berry College Memorial Library.  This was the summer of Enron, the summer of Attack of the Clones, the summer of me shelving magazines and academic journals and getting dizzy from the smell of book glue.  Advertising Age is this floppy folio-sized magazine that they send to you folded and it never wants to stand up straight on the journal shelves and only people in the advertising business and people who work in library serials departments know about it. Here’s what they had to say about the ratings for the Perfect Strangers reairings: “Perfect Strangers” (ABC); 8/31 (minus 2); 8/24 (plus 6); 8/17 (minus 5).”

A few mentions are made here and there about the show going up against Highway to Heaven in the same timeslot, and that it wasn’t expected to beat it in the ratings. One article in particular indicates that the new timeslot Perfect Strangers went to on Wednesday nights was a courageous move.  Many of the articles do acknowledge the leg-up that the show got thanks to its “protected” time between Who’s the Boss and Moonlighting, but only to quickly brush it away, because of course it was the chemistry between the the two leads, how could anything else explain it? The reviewers do protest too much, methinks.

But kids loved the cousins!  Oh wait, it says they liked ALF too. Kids are stupid

But girls got wet over the cousins! “Is Bronson sexy?  Fans say ‘Yes!’”

But is Mark sexy? I beg you, please buy me a copy of the movie Bare Essentials, and after I’ve rehydrated, I’ll let you know.

A review published the day that “Hello Baby” aired, about the character of Larry:

“As scripted, though, there’s a lot of ‘ugly American; to the part, and the show might lose a bit of its appeal if the character doesn’t evolve a bit more into what Americans would like to think they are, rather that (sic) presenting a fairly unflattering, if realistic, picture of the true American character.”

And Linn-Baker on Larry in the full season:

Initially Larry was written as a very knowing guy, almost cynical, says Linn-Baker [himself born in Missouri and raised in Connecticut].  “The thought was to have Balki, this total innocent, paired with someone who was really jaded — the ‘Odd Couple’ idea.  But what we finally came to was that Larry — while immersed in the culture and a little more thoughtful — was finally just as much of an innocent in his own right.”

Well, that explains the shift from Larry actually knowing anything to Larry breaking down in tears in the final act because he was a bad little boy.

Larry was originally supposed to be wearing Balki’s clothes. But Pinchot got to the set that day first and took Larry’s clothes because he liked them better. When Linn-Baker got there he said he didn’t like those clothes anyway, they were garbage clothes for stupid babies.  Also, when Linn-Baker saw the apartment set for the very first time, he said he didn’t like the “fussy” way it was decorated, that it looked like his grandmother’s house, get it out of here, it’s stupid, where’s my antacid. Nah, j/k, Linn-Baker’s a pretty calm and collected guy:

“If Bronson is frustrated or unhappy, you hear it immediately, though he’s not always that capable of explaining his frustration.  But whatever, he lets it all out.  Mark keeps it all in,” Miller says…

And if Cousins Larry and Balki were, indeed, “halves of one person”, then Linn-Baker and Pinchot mirrored this internal/external divide. While Mark’s major purchases were a convertible and a co-op apartment, Bronson was buying up Scandinavian furniture.  Magazines loved taking photos of that one bed that cost $9,000.

Pinchot’s backstory is now told in shorthand, the details of the past wiped away in favor of tight narrative. Now, it’s a short story about the producers seeing Beverly Hills Cop, asking Bronson, Bronson taking a trip to Greece, and thus Balki is born.  Plus Pinchot took another trip to Greece in the summer of ‘86 to get more steeped in the culture of people who fuck sheep. So now that trip was talked about instead of the broke-on-his-ass trip the previous year.  Pinchot gripes about not having much luck in the girlfriend department anymore now that he’s famous. The familiar details show up again: growing up on welfare, the absent father. He boasts about his lack of pop culture knowledge: he didn’t know who the Beatles were, he never saw Laverne & Shirley or Mork & Mindy.  Gone were mentions of the film Hot Resort. Completely forgotten were the lack of roles coming in after Beverly Hills Cop.  But not all of the ill-fitting details of Bronson’s story got swept under the rug: the mythology of “Balki” had shifted from the personal to the character:

“Balki is short for balcony,” he explains, “which is where Balki’s father first saw his mother.”

Canon if you want it to be, just like Samuel L. Jackson saying Mace Windu is alive and then getting George Lucas to agree with him about it. Also I guess they all speak English on Mypos?

Here and there, Pinchot lets slip that he was adjusting his mindset: he previously assumed it would take him ages to get a leading role in a movie, and the sudden success surprised him. But in many cases, he just reads as total detached braggadocio. Take this interview from 1987, where Bronson boasts that “the show has got to be the pinnacle of physical comedy”.  That’s right, y’all, fuck the Marx Brothers! Fuck them lame-ass Stooges, too, however many of them there were!

The narrative of Bronson Pinchot actor (USA) was now one of success, and both the press and Pinchot himself were eager to tell it. I mentioned previously that Pinchot claims to have recorded a comedy album that never got produced, but there were other things, bigger things!   Bronson hoped to one day do a one-man show, and he was also writing a movie with Mark Kaufmann and, uh…

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3731811/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

yeah, that didn’t happen either

But Bronson did do commercials for both Maxwell House

and Pepsi

and he hosted Saturday Night Live on Valentine’s Day 1987. So he was getting work. And I’m sure he was doing tons of interviews on talk shows, but I’m *ahem* certainly never going to watch all of those…

I give you also this tiny article about Pinchot, because again we see the fanbase being fiercely protective against a “majority of the media”, which here is represented by Gaultier, Falwell, and Zappa.

I see you, fanbase.

Now that we’ve established that Pinchot was hot shit in 1986 & 1987, it’s worth noting that, just as I’ve been impressed with Linn-Baker’s acting, so were some of the critics. A “bystander” in this article says that Linn-Baker is the funnier of the two; director Joel Zwick also notes that Linn-Baker would work on jokes at the detail level to make them go smoothly.  Again, I like this because it mirrors the characters: Balki’s broad comedy of swinging a hammer at Larry vs. Larry doing the tiny shake of the head to convince Balki to stay up all night studying. Linn-Baker also says in that article that he turned down roles for a bunch of “dumb comedies” after My Favorite Year. Such high standards for what films he’d pick no doubt led to his roles in Going to the Chapel and Him & Me.  Men’s Look magazine published, right before the premiere of season 3, a longer piece on Linn-Baker, replete with plenty of steamy photos for girls to clip out and put above their headboards, or stick into the corners of the mirrors.  But the article is pretty breezy again, trying to build that narrative of being born into the acting life (both of his parents worked in theatre).  But really, come on. Probably the best-known play that Linn-Baker had done to that point was Doonesbury, which I didn’t realize until reading these articles had not fared well.*** The article also cites Mel Brooks as having said (out loud!) during the production of My Favorite Year that Linn-Baker was good. That explains why Brooks cast him in Spaceballs, Life Stinks, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.  Oh, and: Mark had a girlfriend named Jennifer back then.

And hey, let’s not forget Dmitri! Someone on the crew saved little Dmitri’s soul by refusing to let him be clothed in a wool vest. This article spells the name Dimitri, which is also how the fanbase spells it, but fuck that. Curly was spelled “Curley” on early Three Stooges shorts. It’s not my fault if those who write history aren’t well-read enough to know what the common ways of putting foreign names into English are.

And now we come back again to Rebeca Arthur, and how she and Jennifer were brought back after audiences loved how they left the room in “Hunks Like Us”. Arthur signed a five-year contract as well. Her success led her to boast that she would someday have a lead role on a show, because she “knows what the formula is now”. She also gives us some insight into why Mary Anne acts differently from the way she’s written sometimes:  “She’s a little dizzy, but then she’ll come out with something that makes perfect sense.  I’d say she’s naive.”

If you want to read more about Tom Miller, read this article, because it seems that he had much more to do with the show’s creation than anyone else. Here I’ve been picking on Dale McRaven all season; but that’s my fault for only reading a few articles last time. Tom prayed that the show would reach five seasons so it could go into syndication; if the math doesn’t sound right, just remember he’s not thinking of the first six episodes as a season.

And here’s one more fun fact about season 2’s production: ABC spent $20,000 on wood and white carpet for the skiing 2-parter. ABC also hired people to train the actors how to ski. And then they didn’t ski. How much did the footage of some other guy actually skiing cost? Cripes.

Okay, 4500 words now, and we’ve still got:

Season 3

*sigh*

It’s more articles about Bronson Pinchot.  When the narrative gets trotted out, it’s shortened further still.  But by this point, most people knew it anyway; and the article writers were coming up with new questions. There’s actually a really good article on Pinchot that I want to end this post with, so let’s get through these other tabs first.

This article, an interview with–

haha, whoops, wrong set of tabs

This article, an interview with Linn-Baker, reveals some new details, like how he co-wrote a play, and like how sometimes he has a mustache. He talks about this being the longest job he’s ever had, and there are faint hints of griping when he talks about ABC moving their timeslot a second time.  Said Mark: “Our numbers are going to drop, but I suppose the network knows what it’s doing”.  He was also teaching acting at Vassar, but that wasn’t the only place his skill was being affirmed. A couple of articles praise Linn-Baker’s acting ability in terms of the range of faces he can make; one published in 1987 went so far as to describe his nose as “prehensile”. (I realize that the fansite says “circa 1986” for this one, but look at the context clue of the final paragraph of the article, where it mentions the cousins’ new jobs.

And speaking of season 3 changes, “…we’ll also be moving into a larger apartment”, [Pinchot] said. “Balki will be able to have his own room.”

Again, this is Pinchot saying this. It was never stated on the show that they had a new apartment, and even the writers, later on, still referred to them being on Caldwell. This article (among others) talks about how the leads had a fair amount of leverage in adding to the scripts. Evidently, the episode with Fast Eddie was, according to Linn-Baker, “too sad”, so Bronson threw in Boochi tag. So why didn’t they play Boochi tag with Frank?

Despite how flawed that solution ended up being for the story that episode was trying to tell, note that it was tag-teamed (hee) by the actors. Linn-Baker identified the problem, Pinchot came up with a solution. They did seem to have a good rapport, and I find all of one mention of any discord between them.  They fought for a half-hour over a gag in “The Defiant Guys” that Linn-Baker thought didn’t work.  I agree–just read the article, you–that would have been taking the other hands bit slightly too far, and they were already making tiny breaks in the show’s reality by that point. Things were fragile. But then, yeah, if I had to be handcuffed to somebody I liked for a few hours, yeah, that would suck.  I try to keep myself hydrated, and I go by the rule of C²P² – “clear and copious pee-pee”, meaning over the course of two hours, someone would have had to see or touch my wiener.

Fun fact: Linn-Baker “performed a solo mime show” when he was in college. So that’s what they called it at Yale in the late 1970s! Speaking of…

Eddie Murphy calls Balki gay

A Florida newspaper calls Balki gay

Pinchot trained for trapeze stunts for CBS’s Circus of the Stars; an article makes reference to his “catcher”, so now I’m calling Pinchot gay.

But what does Bronson call himself?  A fat loser.  The RockLine! interview isn’t the first time Bronson has said he was overweight until his 20s.**** That interview probably has the shortest (and most misleading) history of the Balki character, but we do get more about his teenage years. Basically, Bronson was excluded from just about everything in high school for being fat; he says that it led him to focus more on his academics, and on drawing.  So now, in addition to wanting hear the spoken comedy album, I wish I could see his art. But I do now wonder how Pinchot felt about the (missing) lesson of “Weigh to Go, Buddy”.  He has lots of praise for his mother here–how she encouraged her children to be creative and original, and turned their focus away from pop culture, which Pinchot says he hates. Remember how he said he didn’t know who the Beatles were? He’s still talking in 1987 about how he had to tell his college classmates he didn’t know who Mork was.

Instead, he was spending his money on his favorite parts of real culture like Wizard of Oz memorabilia and 500-year-old French play manuscripts.  That’s probably the most consistent thing about him from what I’ve read so far. Moreover, from an “Unknown Publication”, we get a sense of an unknowable Bronson Pinchot.

“Like any butterfly with a brain that should someday be preserved in a jar of formaldehyde, Pinchot is both easy and hard to identify and pin down.  He can deliver the devastating quip, the generous compliment, the complex analysis, the introspective tidbit, the damaging revelation, the self-promoting remark, the loony look, the helpless giggle.  In a way, he is what he’s doing at the time.”

And how can I resist reading the isolated high school experience into this behavior? Does he flit and joke to distract interviewers from something else (criticism)? Or has he abandoned that, and this is just who he wants to be? Pinchot had, by that point, seen that some of his peers hit their peaks in their teens and early 20s, allowing him some perhaps long-overdue downward social comparison.  Anyway, there’s also this quote from him:  “I can’t watch two seconds of television.”

unless

wait for it

unless it’s Moonlighting!

Speaking of talking as a puppet for an unseen entity, Bronson’s favorite Muppet is Janice. And what the hey, go read his interview in Muppet Magazine. Who cares about Pinchot in it, but damn do I miss the writing style in those old kids’ magazines. Gonzo is more real to me than Bronson Pinchot ever will be, especially when fiction gets mingled with truth even further:

“…for years he toiled in obscurity with heavy dramatic roles for various theater companies.”

Oh? Do some fucking research, Deeb; it’s so obvious you’re just parroting what Bronson told you. My buddy Stu over here says Pinchot was just playing bit parts during that time.  At any rate, there were still big things in Pinchot’s future, because I begin to see mentions of the movie he’s going to–*gasp*–star in come Christmas 1989.  I’m sure it’ll be great!

And lastly, that Playgirl interview I’ve been alluding to. This is the one I’m strongly encouraging you to read in full before you read the rest of my post; this is probably the most revealing look at Pinchot we’ve gotten yet.

Sorry, I realize now you probably thought you were going to see his penis. Anyway, please don’t think I’m buying every bit of what Bronson says.  There’s a tiny bit of illogic that he’s unaware of–note that he’s probably been talking about how poor his family was that it’s just a spiel he gives at this point. He mentions it being a thrill just going to a restaurant, mere paragraphs after talking about how restaurants can really fuck up a meal if they don’t get the tiny details right on the mile-long list of specifications you give them for your giant vegetarian meal. Here’s what I think: that young Bronson, shunned by his peers, had a scattershot intellectual upbringing.  He knew quite a bit in a lot of different areas, certainly not enough to make him an expert, but more than enough for him to realize that he knew more than those around him.  Note how Bronson criticizes actresses who want to only talk about film, but not about other types of art. I’m sure Bronson could (at that point) hold his own (to a point) with experts on most topics; and I’m guessing he certainly beat most of those around him for breadth, and likely (slightly) depth on most of the intersect, too. I realize I might be saying more about me than about Bronson that this is my interpretation of him, but I feel that I can relate.  This jack-of-all-trades path of intellectual development means that at some point, in some area, you may all of a sudden reach a tipping point of skill, leading to some sort of success. You get rewarded, so you do more of that thing.  A few years later, you get a sense of your place compared to others around you, and you make assessments–about them and about yourself.  Bronson is telling us (through the discussion of hunks) that you have to figure out what your specialty within that field is and go with it.  But buried inside that is more criticism of the standard:

“I’m very close in age to most of these people,” he begins, “and about a million light years away from them in what I’m trying to do….My first and last responsibility is to completely fulfill a character.  That’s just a different approach.”

And again, this is me talking about me, but I feel that disappointments lie behind criticisms like this.  It’s a tension of knowing you have something special, but that it doesn’t fit with most of what’s going on.  Part bluster, part reality, part… idunno, part trying to call out in the darkness for others who think the same way.

Also, we find out that Bronson used to straight up grab women’s asses to try to get them to have sex with him; he claims that he met with success often enough. You can say that sometimes some women want that, and want to be pursued that way, and I’ll believe you more if you’re a woman. But not knowing whose asses he had access to, I think immediately of the aforementioned actresses whom he didn’t think highly of in the first place, and who likely weren’t as “big” of a star as he, or assistants or crew members on the Perfect Strangers set, or on Saturday Night Live: people who could risk losing a part, or a job, if they didn’t play along.

Of course, Pinchot was talking to Playgirl magazine, and he winkingly tells you he’s playing a part for you at the end of the article, so season with salt to taste.  Perhaps the message is simply “hey, I don’t lounge around topless showing off my hairy pecs like some idiots, but I’ll still grab your ass, and you’ll like it”; which is not too far off from messages endemic to such publications.

Lastly, Pinchot tells Playgirl that he doesn’t consume caffeine (or drugs, or alcohol, wotta saint). So, uh, Bronson, let me ask: why the percolating fuck were you selling Maxwell House and Pepsi?

I find no interviews with Melanie Wilson for this time period.

Melanie: —

_________________________________

Boner count: come on, did you see those photos of Bronson and Mark?

*I’m from Georgia; if you’re from a northern state, Mary Anne is so dumb she thinks that beaucoup is the sound male birds make.

**Not to be confused with lumpen, as in lumpenproletariat

***I mean, I read the play when I read through all 40 years of the Doonesbury comic. It wasn’t great, but then I don’t know what theatre audiences like. The best thing to come out of that play, though, was the Rap Master Ronnie video: https://youtu.be/-PETIr_4c1c

****He actually says that he was overweight until he was 20, but one article quotes him as saying that he couldn’t stand to look at how fat he was (at 24) when he watched Beverly Hills Cop.

P.S. The fact sheet that Pinchot would send out to fans spells the baked goods as “bibibabkas”. I’m going to assume he knows what he’s talking about since he read the script. The correct spelling is bibibabka, not bibbibabka. Fight me.

P.P.S. All images come from http://www.perfectstrangers.tv. My thanks to Linda Kay for letting me put them here amongst all my swears.

Season 3, Episode 8: Night School Confidential

FINALLY

Remember how, three weeks ago, I was bitching about how this season hadn’t really revealed the dimensions of its characters, and I made that nice bullshit tapestry* out of the opening shot of the Chigaco Chronicle? You either have to take the characters higher (move them along a story in the external world) or deeper (find out more about what’s going on inside them, or what’s happened before).  But finally, FINALLY, we’re going get to see Balki at night school.  This means a third location. This means new characters. It might even mean we get to see Gina for a few seconds before someone shoves her into a restroom.  Shit, I’ll take Balki and Larry chasing Balki’s teacher around a desk if it means a new peek into the daily lives of these days.

Also, remember how the season began with Balki complaining how he had nothing to do but go to work all day every day?  It’s episodes like these that make me think the writers might not have had good communication with each other, because the more I think about Schoolboy Balki, the more I wonder how he hasn’t let every single one of his classmates sleep in Larry’s bed by now. Let’s get going, I know this show will give me plenty of reasons to complain.

Balki: Cousin, hold onto your pants!

Larry was already doing that, but go on…

Balki bought a watch! It’s a Rolex! With “solid quartz crystals and genuine Swiss movements”! (don’t forget about that feather-touch control, Balki…)

Balki won’t let Larry touch his watch.  Balki bought Larry App-le-ton (dammit) a Rolex as well!  Balki launches into this Don Pardo-style announcing bit. Larry is annoyed by it and so am I.

And while everything turns to crap in Larry’s hands generally, for the first time in his life it’s not his fault.  Larry, evidently on a diet, had a completely clean, empty plate in front of him, allowing the watch parts to make loud noises as they fell one by one.

So, anyway, Balki bought the fake Rolex** from Leon, “the human discount department store”.  Okay, okay, okay, wait. It’s obvious this is our twice-per-season “Innocent Balki gets taken advantage of” plot, but the solution to “Your Cheatin’ Heart” is now the initial situation here.  Is it because Malcolm likely stole the typewriter, while Leon makes counterfeits?  Anyway, it looks like we have established our new price range for this season: Balki paid $38.95 for the watches.  Did he stop there, or did he leave some money in his Freddy the Frog Saver account?

He bought Mary Anne (Sagittarius) a “priceless pearl necklace” (don’tmakethejoke) that once “belonged to Elvis Presley”.   (don’tmakethejokedon’tmakethejoke)

The cousins state out loud their opening thesis for the next scene:

Larry: Going to the police department was a complete waste of time

Harriette, somehow invested in every detail of the lives of these two yobbos, asks for more exposition.  Larry badmouths the cops, and this is where we first find out that Harriette has a husband, and that he’s a cop, and that he works in the homicide department. Balki thinks she’s talking about a faraway city, so Harriette leaves in her elevator.  (note to self: have elevator installed next to computer)

Then Balki says “the Princess die is cast” and oh fuck you.  Sidebar here: I read and reviewed the ALF comic series once.  No, it’s fine, the doctors say I’m okay now, but here’s what I came out of that with.  Comics ALF was constantly–like, once per page–whipping out some dumb homophonic pun.  F’rinstance, is there a car also in the panel? ALF says something about putting the “Ellen Barkin brake” on.  Is he in a scene with Lynn? He calls her “Lynn-a-mint” or some stupid mess. So this is what we have now.  Whenever Balki gets a line, I’m guessing the writers just wrote it the way a normal character would say it, and then just free-associated off of all of the words in the line.  I guess I should be grateful we didn’t get the runner-up for this line, which was probably “the die is casting couch”. Okay, we’re discussing whether the cousins can do anything about their situation–

Balki: No use crying over spilt curds.

Fuck.

Larry: Do you know what I’m thinking?

Balki: Is it a number between 1 and 10?

Fuck!

Balki: Is it bigger than a head cheese?

Is this man even going to the classes at the school? Does he spend all his time in the bathroom because the door says “Boys” and that’s how schools were divided up on Mypos?

Larry finally gets out his idea: infiltrate the cheap knockoff crime ring (it’s a whole ring now? okay) and use his position as a guy who writes two-sentence articles for the city’s “most powerful newspaper” to expose them.  Balki isn’t buying into the plan until Larry tells him that it will be “just like Miami Vice”.

Balki: Can I be Don Johnson?

Complain though I will about everything else Balki does, at least Pop Culture Balki is consistent.

Larry: We’ll tell him we wanna make a big buy, but we only want to deal with the boss.

Balki: Bruce Springsteen is involved in this?

goddammit

Soon, at our third location, “Adult Evening Classes”…

Ladies…

…please…

…contain your orgasms.

Larry starts in with his Mexican accent (last seen in the episode where Larry was trying to flee for his life from ethnic crimeboss Vince Lucas, but this show’s not racist) and strolls up to a guy asking “where the action”.

(don’tmakethejokedon’tmakethejokedon’tmakethejoke)

There’s a nice little joke about Balki putting down Larry’s accent, and then Leon shows up. I didn’t watch Miami Vice, and I have no plans to.  The only Don Johnson movie I’ve seen is Dead Bang, you know, the one where he’s a troubled cop who pukes on suspects? So I’m just going to assume that these outfits hilariously miss the mark. I remember in Billy Superstar’s Full House reviews how there was some dress that one of the kids didn’t want to wear to school, and how Billy didn’t know what the joke was supposed to be.  I get that Larry is being ridiculous with his choice of clothing (probably because Balki wasn’t there to tell him not to be). But now we meet Leon, and Leon’s dressed similarly, if scuzzier? So… did Larry get it right?

(Also, hey, look, Leon’s played by Lee Arenberg, who was also the Human Flame in Freaked! ALF had Michu Meszaros; Michael Stoyanov was on Blossom.  Wait, did every actor from Freaked appear on an 80s sticom? William Sadler on Hard Time on Planet Earth; Alex Zuckerman on Family Ties; Megan Ward on Out of This World; Patti Tippo on The Nutt House; Jeff Kahn on Blossom; Derek McGrath on Who’s the Boss?; Mr. T on Diff’rent Strokes; okay, looks like Keanu, Quaid, Winter, Shields and Goldthwait all escaped that fate. I was worried for a moment.)

Sorry, while I was busy rabbit-holing, Balki was introducing Larry as a big player in the crime world and shaking his imaginary tits around.

Larry asks if they can set up a meeting with the big boss so he can drop some big money, which Leon agrees to.  Also, before we move on to whatever physical comedy is about to ensue, I’ve got to point out that Larry keeps rubbing his chest and his stomach when he pretends to be a crook.  Is this some sort of sublimated sexual gesture? I mean, I said I wanted some character depth, but this elevator took me too far down.

Anyway, back in the apartment, we find that Larry has decided to fight fire with fire. He’s been cutting up green paper for the past hour, and explains every detail of the plan. And because I’m SO SURE that every detail of the plan matters, and we won’t end up with Balki just turning Larry sideways, I’ll mention them here: The fat stacks of fake cash*** will all have $20 bills on top to fool the criminals. Larry will be wearing a wire, Balki will be wearing a bulky tape recorder, and Larry wants Balki to start recording (over a tape of “Motown’s Biggest Pop Hits”) after he says a certain phrase (“let’s make a deal”).  Can Balki remember one particular phrase?

They spend an inordinate amount of time on whether the criminals will be able to “grab the money” from the briefcase before Larry can close it.

Larry asks if Balki has a better plan.

But just like in “Snow Way to Treat a Lady”, he doesn’t.

Larry: If there were, the Miami Vice writers would have thought of it long ago!

HAHA NBC YA BURNT

In the well-lit foyer of the schoolhouse, Balki yells for Leon to come out and play.  Leon finally comes in and Larry demands to see the boss.  But then Balki opens his mouth

Balki: The boss… Mr. Big…

no

Balki: …the top banana man…

fffff

Balki: … the headless honcho…

FFFFFFF

Balki: …the kingpin…the Godfather…

FFFFUUUUUU

Balki: …the big Cheese Whiz

Fuck-a-lecha-hai-fuck-a-hai-ni-ho!

Larry shuts him up, then Leon goes off and comes back with–oh man, give me a few minutes, I just crapped my pants.

Wow, do you see these guys? They’re tall! One of them’s black! The main guy, Fat Jack, has such disdain for social norms that he has fucking removed the sleeves from his shirt. But I’m not worried about Balki and Larry–they know karate!

Larry keeps trying to give the cue to turn on the tape recorder with the agreed-upon phrase , but there’s only room in Balki’s head for one catchphrase, so Larry has to take him two feet away and whisper (scream) “trrnonetaperecrrdr” over and over again.

Then the cousins talk very explicitly and loudly about the counterfeit watches they’re going to pay $15,000 for, and, uh… everybody seems to have gotten into the school all right, even though it’s midnight.  Why aren’t Fat Jack, Black Jack, and Third Jack just breaking into the classrooms and stealing overhead projectors and desks or whatever? Plus, nobody mentions how Third Jack’s jaw appears to be broken, which is more troubling than any of the plot holes in this episode.  Fat Jack demands to see the money, and Larry successfully pulls off closing the briefcase in time. Fat Jack then just grabs the briefcase and busts it open.  Then he says that the cousins are “dead meat”; yeah, Miami Vice writers, let’s see you top THAT for bad-guy dialogue.  This is it, cousins, show these guys those karate moves!

Balki pretends that he has a gun and-

Balki: I’m packing a heater.

fuck

Balki: I’ve got a scratchy trigger finger.

Me too, I give up.

Then that Motown joke pays off big time when reason #9 the DVD releases stopped with season 2: The Supremes’s “Baby Love” starts playing.

But, even though we heard the part of the song with the title in it, the bad guys debate what song it was. Except for the black guy, who corrects them, because he’s black, and because the song was sung by black people, and they all know each other. The joke’s about as bad as that cop handcuffed to the criminal in “Happy Birthday Baby”.

Then we finally find out why there’s been this giant telephone booth in the middle of a school hallway–it’s so that Balki and Larry can spend their last moments calling up a phone sex line.

Fat Jack breaks the phone booth glass and rips out the receiver.  Leon and Third Jack hold the cousins still so that Fat Jack can strangle them with the receiver cord.  Man, two episodes in a row where Larry gets choked, what are the odds…

oh, no, wait, Black Jack is a cop! And then a bunch of cops appear out of thin air thanks to the magic of camera angles.  But then Balki repeats all the nasty things Larry said about cops at the beginning of the episode, so Larry gets arrested.

Later, back in the apartment, Larry reads aloud his one-sentence article in the Chronicle (I’m not even kidding). Then Balki says another couple of dumb Balki lines.  I’m not going to go back and count them, but damn if this episode doesn’t feel like it hit a record for Balki saying things wrong. I mean, to the point where they just relied on him rattling off lists of them. The Rolex fake and broken, time stopped, the world of Perfect Strangers condensed into one stretched moment of Balki lines, detritus from the past echoing endlessly, large men in vests, ethnic accents, discount merchandise, of course not, small men fooling Balki, Motown, imaginary tits, baby love, since i lost my baby, happy birthday baby, hello baby, don’t be ridiculous, baby you can drive my car, baby, Balki, baby, forever a baby, fallen into the basement, no longer growing, Balki Blechtrommelmous, baby

I’m sorry, but this week was wearying. I mean it really wore me down and out.  I’m dead on your feet.  I’m car exhausted. I’m sick and radial tired. I’m Ellen Barkin brake.

Join me next week when I’ll try to escape the past and review “Future Shock”!

________________________

Catchphrase count: Balki (3); Larry (0)

Boner count: Balki (0); Larry (0)

*crapestry

**Fauxlex

***foolah