What's Happening!!: If I'm Elected

What's Happening!!: If I'm Elected
ABC
October 27, 1977
Sitcom
DVD
B-

Rose Fonseca makes her last WH appearance, here as Dwayne's new girlfriend Connie.  The Eric Monte story focuses mostly on Dwayne and his relationship with his father Lawrence "Larry" Nelson (Mission Impossible's Greg Morris), but Connie does impact the plot.  Mr. Nelson is running for the city council, and Dwayne and Connie witness him firing family friend Ted Howard (Hank Rolike, who would return in another role) from the campaign.  She's sympathetic to Dwayne and urges him to talk to his father.  And yet the tag expects us to believe that she would leave him for another guy and write a "Dear John" letter that she has Shirley give him.  (Thus lowering the grade from a B to a B-.)

The episode feels almost like a back-door pilot, since Raj, Dee, and Rerun are absent, while Bryan O'Dell as Marvin and Debbi Morgan as Diane are in more than one scene.  Note that there's another Amy Carter reference, this time because Dwayne imagines his father going on to be the first black President.