Airdate: 3/3/83
Diane’s mother,
Helen, could stand to lose the entire fortune due to a clause in her late
husband’s will that requires Diane to be married ten years after his death:
tomorrow. Helen begs her daughter to find someone when Carla squeals that Sam
has been the recent object of her affections. Diane sheepishly suggests the
idea to Sam, who objects first before relenting, warning that a wedding does
strange things to people. After a justice is procured, the ceremony is a mere
two minutes old before Diane catches Sam “leering” at a brunette – he retorts
defensively, and the sparks soon fly. After the disaster, now-impoverished
Helen apologizes for putting the two in such an awkward position, but her
chauffeur is the one to save the day. He proposes marriage to her on the
grounds that he’s really a very rich man, having embezzled from the family for
nearly 25 years.
A forced
marriage – between a couple with enough seething sexual chemistry to power a
nuclear plant – what could be funnier? As soon as the premise is introduced, we
all know it will collapse like a deck of cards, but with David Angell’s deft
dialogue and pitch perfect characterizations, it’s the “how” of it all that
makes the affair such a zippy comedy of errors. Veteran character actress Glynis
Johns is well cast as Diane’s well-heeled mom, but her scenes are more than a bit
stolen by Duncan Ross as her chauffeur, Boggs, in the funniest work by an elder
servant since John Gielgud dished out the acid in Arthur.
Cold open: Sam
berates Coach for not letting him in on a bar patron’s story of surviving the
sinking of the Titanic – so Coach shows him a guy who’s got a good one…. the
ability to sing the lyrics to the Bonanza
theme song.
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