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| The debut of the "our friend Amy" portion of the credits. |
ABC
February 19, 1981
Sitcom
DVD
B
This Ferber & Lerner story is another that verges on but doesn't quite make it to B+. (I'll discuss this more when I either award a B+ or at the end of the season, whichever comes first.) It's got an interesting premise and it's often funny and quotable. It also has Isabelle starting to dress with more unique style, and of course the addition of the iconic "When we first moved to New York..." opening narration.
It's Kip's birthday, we don't know which one, and we don't know what month it is, although Yankee Bucky Dent is a playing a game in Oakland. Henry's gift is that he's taken Kip's paintings (apparently unobserved by Kip) to a gallery and they'll be part of a showing with the works of two other artists. Kip feels unprepared for the public exposure and criticism. This is definitely an episode about the guys' friendship, where we can see that maybe Kip is being oversensitive (a trait shown in other episodes), but Henry may've been wrong to do this, especially without asking. There's also some gentle ribbing of the art world, from the "flag of Japan" painting that wows the critics to the performance artist* who's going to hang in a Jersey suburb for three years. (In a line that I believe got lost in syndication, Isabelle remarks on the historical irony that she could "buy" a white man for $1000.) Note that Kip has an Aunt Sara (Sarah?).
Alan Haufrect, who'd played a nameless Felon on The Bob Newhart Show, is Mr. Miller here. Sally Kemp, who plays Mrs. Landis, would be Joanna Latham on Three's Company that fall, while Henry Sutton, who's Mr. Graves here, would be the Minister at Janet Wood's wedding. Ruth is absent again, as is Lilly, but then the latter more often is.
*As far as I know, Jeff Doucette isn't in any other of my TV shows, but he did play a very queeny Jack to a horny Jill in the 1978 soft-core porn movie Fairy Tales.
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