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Saturday, July 14, 2012

Cheers 1.15: Father Knows Last

Airdate: 1/20/83

Carla’s pregnant, and she announces the identity of the father: Marshall, the MIT professor (from the previous episode). Diane smells a rat, and sure enough, when she confronts Carla in the back room, she finds that Carla lied and is actually carrying her ex-husband’s child. Citing “The Tell Tale Heart,” she convinces Carla to heed her conscience and tell Marshall the truth, at which point, despite Sam’s exhortations to marry Carla anyway, he leaves. Carla laments her situation, until the entire bar offers to support the child, singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as she exits the bar grasping a money jar, head held high.

Again, a welcome encore appearance by character actor Mark King as Marshall. With only a few screen/TV credits to his name, he will always be remembered by Cheers fans for his disarmingly quirky performance as the funniest nerd since Eugene in Grease. (The baton would soon be passed to Robert Carradine in Revenge of the Nerds.)

Cold open: Sam’s date for the night cancels, so consults his venerable “little black book” and tries a new girl, only to find that she joined a convent.

Norm’s opener: Norm’s already at the bar.

2 comments:

  1. Whatever happened to Mark King, I wonder? I'm just watching this episode and discovering King for the first time (I skipped over the previous episode), and although his character is supposed to be nerdy, I'm finding him rather attractive behind those glasses. So I went to find more about him, but he seems to have ceased acting in '85. I hope he's doing well. I think it would've been fun to watch him in more properties.

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  2. Thanks for the comment. I agree it would've been great to see King in other works too. Curious about that TV movie he did - "America 2100" He had a big role and it starred Sid Caesar and Karen Valentine, two of my faves.

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