Mork & Mindy

In one of the weirdest spin off from Happy Days, Mork (Robin Williams) is from the planet Ork. He is sent to Earth by Orson who is frustrated with his irreverent humor. At the end of each episode, Mork reports to Orson about the lesson he learned. Orkans drink with their fingers, sit on their heads, and age backwards. Mork lands outside of Boulder, Colorado and finds Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) abandoned by her date. He tells her about his extraterrestrial origins and becomes her flatmate. Her father Fred owns a music store in the first season which he ran with his sharp-tongued mother-in-law. Mr. Bickley (Tom Poston) is Mindy's grumpy downstairs neighbor. The second season has New York siblings Remo (Jay Thomas) and Jean DaVinci (Gina Hecht) as their restaurateur friends. Nelson Flavor (Jim Staahl) is Mindy's pompous cousin. Exidor is Mork's crazy friend with imaginary followers. The most insane and inspired choice is Mearth (Jonathan Winters), Mork's newborn in season 4, after his wacky performance in season 3 as uncle Dave.

This is simply a Robin Williams original. He makes this show. The show really only works with him on the screen. Pam Dawber is cute but she is overmatched. Of course, almost anybody would be overmatched. She has a tendency to laugh at Robin's jokes and do a lot of aww-schucks. The constant changes to the cast are not helpful. The DaVinci siblings didn't do the work that the show had hoped. Nelson Flavor and Exidor are my favorite characters. There is nobody like Jonathan Winters but by the fourth season, the show had no viewers and Robin Williams had better opportunities on the big screen.

Mork & Mindy was a hilarious series that unleashed the comic talents of Robin Williams. This series began as a hilarious episode of Happy Days and ended with Mork getting his new assignment to go to the seventies. Mork even went back in another episode of Happy Days (a clip show but still funny). The series had a pretty good cast behind it, but it could have failed without Williams and his unique humor. It remains as one of Williams' best works.

I'm re watching this, it is amazing to watch, Robin Williams it's totally and utterly bananas but it sort of gets too much. It was funny back then as no one had seen anything like it but with his rise to fame, Robins style just progressed so much that we are used to it. So sure it's good but at what cost? We now know he was seriously high on Cocaine, does that take from it? Maybe but the best thing I can say is its dated. God Bless Robin Williams.

MORK AND MINDY was hilarious during its first season, but the producers and the network got so full of themselves over it, they decided "let's improve on perfection!", and naturally, they destroyed the show doing so.

Season 2 was no longer the least bit funny, and season 3 with Jonathan Winters was so absurd (and actually tasteless if you think about it) that the series sank like a stone. None of the "new" supporting characters had any charisma, and the producers' "feel good" decision to start sermonizing to the viewers was as poor a decision as has ever been made in television.

Bottom line: Buy the first season on DVD and enjoy it. Pretend the rest of it didn't happen.

I remember the late summer of 1978, working to save enough money to go back to school. Many days were long and difficult. My friends and I left behind by those that had their finances lined up for classes, were always looking for something to do to take our minds off of what we thought were big issues at the time.

Along came this wacky television show with a guy on it that was absolutely nuts. A bunch of us would get together every Thursday night to see what he would do next. We would laugh our heads off at this crazy show and we wouldn't think of missing one. Mork and Mindy was a bright spot in our day in day out lives.