from January 3, 2009
Perfect Strangers was a late 1980’s ABC sitcom. It was part of the Friday night TGIF lineup. TGIF stood for Thank God Its Florida. Every show in the lineup, every week, guest starred Esther Rolle as Florida Evans from Good Times. Bernadette Stanis would often appear as her daughter Thelma.
Perfect Strangers was a culture clash sitcom. An uptight Chicago guy named Larry, played by Mark Linn-Baker, suddenly found himself legal guardian of his semi-delusional cousin Balki, played by Bronson Pinochet, a distant relative of Augusto Pinochet, former Chilean dictator, 1973- 1990.
Mark Linn-Baker was best known for his role in Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan. Saw the film but don’t remember him? That’s because his part wound up almost entirely on the cutting room floor. In fact, 47 minutes into the film, his reflection can clearly be seen in a revolving door, but the scene cuts away a second before he was to come through the door.
Bronson Pinochet is best known for funny accents and mugging for the camera. In 1997 he was passed over for the role of Bozo the Clown in the biopic My Life in Size Sixteen Shoes. Danny Bonaduce would later garner an Emmy nomination for the part.
The pilot began with Larry very happy with his life. He lived in a run down apartment in a lousy neighborhood and worked in a junk shop. Somehow this made him happy. His boss was a squat, oblate spheroid of a man, named Boss Twinkacetti. He had the same proportions as the Earth- he was four feet tall and four feet two inches wide. He hated Larry and would often spend whole days breaking things around the shop just so he could make Larry clean them up. Larry was an obsessive compulsive cleaner. If even one hair was out of place, he would have to comb random stranger’s hair.
One day, right after Larry had his nightly cocoa and changed into his nightshirt (and cap), there was a knock at the door. Larry opened the door and stood there, flabbergasted, as a pimp and a prostitute burst in and forced Larry to let them turn tricks in their apartment. (Hey, I said it was a lousy neighborhood.) The next night, however, it was cousin Balki on his doorstep.
Balki had just arrived in Chicago, fresh from the sanitarium. In a cost cutting measure, Balki was declared “near-competent” in order to clear space and free up a bed. Although born in Newark, he was under the delusion that he was from some island called “Mypos” where he herded sheep and everyone was goofy. Balki was a perfect television stereotype of the silly foreigner in America. He even came with a catchphrase. Whenever someone told him something he didn’t believe, like water from the sink didn’t come from the toilet flush, he said “don’t be a dick you louse.” It was never quite clear how that got past the censors.
Over the seasons Larry moved from much put-upon cashier at a junk shop to much put-upon worker at a newspaper. Balki never stopped being a fish out of water, even after eight seasons when the act had clearly gone stale. Plots would often be recycled from I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners, or in one memorable season six show, from the Moonlighting episode where Maddy and David reprised The Taming of the Shrew.
Eventually, Larry and Balki got married. Not, as you’d expect, to each other, but to two actual women. Even so, they still lived in the same apartment. Season eight episodes often dealt with Balki’s total misunderstanding of contraception. It was at this time that the show was moved to 10pm.
Perfect Strangers remains notable to this day as the show that lifted Mark Linn-Baker from total obscurity and dropped him right back there. Bronson Pinochet went on to star in something listed on imdb.com as Slappy and the Stinkers (1998.)
If Liz did not say that she liked this show, I would have left it in the dusty corner of my brain, along with Silver Spoons. In fact, right now I have the theme song to Silver Spoons running through my head. Curse you Joel Higgins!
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