"Mork & Mindy" was
a spin-off from an episode of "Happy Days" seen in February
1978, in which an alien from the planet Ork landed on Earth
and attempted to kidnap Richie. So popular was the nutty
character Robin created that he was given his own series in
the fall of 1978, and it became an instant hit.
Mork was a misfit on his own planet because of his sense of
humor (he was heard to call the Orkan leader, Orson, "cosmic
breath"). So the humorless Orkans sent him off to study
Earthlings, whose "crazy" customs they had never
been able to understand. Mork landed in a giant eggshell near
Boulder, Colorado. There he was befriended by pretty Mindy
McConnell, a clerk at the music store run by her father,
Frederick. Mork looked human, but his strange mixture of
Orkan and Earthling customs--such as wearing a suit, but
putting it on backwards, or sitting in a chair, but upside
down--led most people to think of him as just some kind of
nut. Mindy knew where he came from, and helped him adjust
to Earth's strange ways. She also let him stay in the attic
of her apartment house, which scandalized her conservative
father, but not her swinging grandmother, Cora.
After a season of simple slapstick and big ratings, both
the producers and the network unfortunately got a little
cocky and violated one of television's cardinal rules:
"Don't tamper with a hit." In the process, they
almost destroyed the program. The producers decided to shift
to more "meaningful" stories, opening the second
season with a strange, surrealistic episode in which Mork
shrank away to nothing and dropped into a never-never world
filled with caricatures of good and evil. At the same time,
practically the whole supporting cast was changed.
Simultaneously, ABC decided to move the series from its
established Thursday time slot to Sunday, to prop up their
sagging schedule on that night. Understandably confused,
viewers deserted the show in droves and it lost nearly half
its audience.
By December 1979 ABC and the producers were scrambling to
undo their mistakes. Mork went back to Thursday, and stories
got less complicated. Mindy's father, who had been dumped
(along with the grandmother), returned for the third season.
He was supposed to have sold the music store and gone on tour
as an orchestra conductor, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Now he,
but not Cora, was back full-time. Other changes in the second
and third seasons included the addition of brother and sister
Remo and Jean DaVinci, recently arrived from the Bronx. Remo
ran the New York Deli and was helping put Jean through
medical school. Nelson was Mindy's cousin, an uptight young
social climber with grandiose political ambitiions; Mr. Bickley
was the grouchy downstairs neighbor (he had been on before,
but his role was enlarged); and Mork's friend Exidor was a
crazed prophet and leader of an invisible cult, the Friends
of Venus. Mindy, a journalism student, got a job at local TV
station KTNS, where her boss was Mr. Sternhagen.
All of this brought back some of the lost viewers, but "Mork
& Mindy" never recaptured the enormous following it had
during its first season.
The fall of 1981 brought the most surprising developments
of all. Mork and Mindy were married, and honeymooned on Ork--
which proved to be full of bizarre creatures. Shortly
thereafter Mork gave birth by ejecting a small egg from his
navel. The egg grew and grew and finally cracked open to
reveal a full-grown Jonathan Winters! Mearth, as they named
their first child, weighed 225 pounds and looked middle-aged,
but babbled like a baby, calling Mork "Mommy" and
Mindy "Shoe." Since things were backwards on Ork,
he would gradually grow younger (instead of older) and never
want for affection in his waning years.
Despite some hilarious scenes between Robin and his idol
Jonathan Winters, the series was by this time losing audience
rapidly and left the air at the end of the season. It had
succeeded primarily because of the versatile talents of Robin,
who mugged, mimicked, and delivered torrents of one-liners
and Orkan gibberish. At the end of each episode he reported
back to his leader Orson, on Ork, twisting his ears and signing
off, "Nanu, nanu"--good-bye in Orkan. |
