Bosom Buddies: All You Need Is Love

Bosom Buddies: All You Need Is Love
ABC
December 18, 1981
Sitcom
DVD
B

Almost a decade after her Brady Bunch appearance, 25-year-old Rita Wilson plays Henry's seeming dream girl, and, yes, I think this is where she met Tom Hanks (who was then married with one child).  It's an entertaining episode anyway, one of the best of the season, although I do think it's a bit over the top in some scenes.

It begins with Kip trying to set up a time and place for him and Sonny to "move their relationship to the next level."  Then Henry comes into the hotel restaurant and dumps his girlfriend of three weeks.  He later tells Kip that he's tired of purely physical relationships, which of course makes Kip jealous.  Still, he helps Henry make a list of qualities, including (this has driven me crazy for almost 35 years) "flaxen hair," the color of flax.  The thing is he uses Snow White as an example, and then later falls for Rita's character, Cindy, who is obviously a brunette.  (I think he means "raven," which is a sloppy mistake for a character who's a writer to make.)  Kip says that this is the 1980s and we have better living through technology.

The next scene is set at a video dating studio.  Henry and Kip watch Henry's tape, where Kip makes a quick appearance and says that Henry is so sensitive he "makes Alan Alda look like Vlad the Impaler."  The guys watch some tapes of women, ending with Ruth's, prompting Kip's remark that Ruth is a simple hometown girl "if you live in the Bizarro World."  (Hanks gets a lot of good lines this episode.)

They're about to leave, when they see Cindy making her tape and Henry realizes they have a lot in common.  He wonders if she has web toes (another feature he's looking for).  The two of them leave together, to the disgust of the woman who runs the place, at people meeting people in person.  (This feels quaintly futuristic, as so much of the early '80s does.)

The video customers are assigned numbers rather than last names (Henry makes a joke about it), and yet no one reacts to Cindy's number being 666.  (It feels really obvious in retrospect, and all I can say is that we still weren't tuned in to that kind of humor at that point in the '80s.)  She turns out to be a devil-worshiper, which Henry says explains the web toes.

In the last scene, Isabelle is showing a reverend around the premises.  Why?  Just to have an outsider to react to the apparently lesbian relationships between Hildy and Amy, and Buffy and Sonny.  (When Amy says she loves Henry, he replies he loves her, too, but he wants children someday.  Amy says she's willing.)  Henry realizes that he's capable of loving and being loved and someday, somehow, someone will turn around and say, "Smile, you're in love."  (A Candid Camera reference, sorry if I didn't get the exact quote.)  And Buffy and Hildy tell the reverend it's all right because they're men.

Susan Elliot, who's Girl #2 (I think the one that Kip makes a "dimebag a dozen" joke about), had played hippie-ish Rainbow on Mork & Mindy.  James Saito, who's the nameless Man who gets Henry's girlfriend on the rebound, was Hiro on Soap and did four M*A*S*H episodes.  DeVera Marcus, who plays Violet, would be Willa on Who's the Boss?  This is the first of four Buddies episodes written by Terry Hart, who contributed to the pilot for The Brady Bunch Variety Hour.  And it's the 200th program from the '80s, with eight years to go.

These two stills have got to be from a rehearsal of this episode,
as no one is actually in costume (the guys especially).