Mork & Mindy: Putting the Ork Back in Mork

Mork & Mindy: Putting the Ork Back in Mork
ABC
November 13, 1980
Sitcom
DVD
B

As the title suggests, this Scharlach & Tenowich season-opener has Mork, and the show, trying to find the way back to what was lost.  The result is in turns bittersweet, funny, moving, and meandering.  Although Janis was back for good, the second season additions weren't dumped, and in fact we also get Crissy Wilzak in her first of 22 appearances as Glenda Faye Comstock.  The Da Vincis now run a restaurant ("Eat your last supper here," Remo suggests as a slogan), while Nelson is changing his self image after losing the election.  These four young characters still don't have terribly much to do though, which is why the episode isn't a B+ or higher.

When the focus is on Mork and Mindy, with and without Fred and The Elder (Vidal I. Peterson in the first of two appearances), things really hum though.  Williams starts out doing a very bland, whitebread Earthling and then gradually returns to something more like (but not identical to) first-season Mork.  His jokes and his energy are stronger than they've been in a long while, and I laughed out loud a few times.  (There are a couple swipes at Republicans, including, yes, Nixon, but my favorite line was the throwaway about ABC shaking up the schedule the previous season.)  The sweetness of M & M's relationship also gets more attention than it usually did in Season Two.  Whether the show can sustain this quality for the rest of the season is unknown, but it certainly has more potential than Soap's season-opener indicates.

I remember this episode from the time, including that at twelve I got that the joke about "You should've seen the way we used to do this," in reference to Mindy putting her finger in Mork's ear so she can speak with Orson, was a sex joke.  I remember enjoying the episode then, especially Peterson's performance; I'd forgotten until watching it now that the Orkan backwards aging didn't come up before.  Note that most of Mindy's memories, set to a cover of "Memories," look like they're extended clips of scenes from the credits, such as flying the kite.

Amy Tenowich returns as Lola.  And this is the episode that introduces Mork's pet noggachump, Bebo.