Ellen: Harold and Ellen

Ellen: Harold and Ellen
ABC
November 6, 1996
Sitcom
DVD
B

This uneven but sometimes very funny and touching story by Alex Herschlag has Ellen trying to take care of her father while her mother is away, despite Ellen's own injury and inability to bake a pie.  And I almost liked Spence in this one, where he and Joe may or may not be abducted by aliens.  (This isn't Soap or Roseanne, so I think it's just a tag gag.)  Note that Bristow does some more operatic singing.

Surprisingly, there are two Gidget connections here.  A heavily disguised Harvey Korman plays Ellen's therapist du jour, over thirty years after his Gidget appearance.  This is the only Ellen episode directed by Michael Lembeck, whom I mostly know as a an actor (including on One Day at a Time, which I do not own), and this is 27 years after he appeared in Gidget Grows Up.