"Kids are fun!" -Sam Malone
Oh boy! I have been waiting to review this episode for a very long time. This was perhaps the dirtiest "Cheers" episode ever, and what seemed at the time like irreverent humor has gone sour with age and the changing of the culture. Here we go...
Sam's old girlfriend Judy shows up with her teenage daughter Laurie. Back when Sam was dating Judy he was "Uncle Sammy" to young Laurie, her de facto father figure, taking her to the zoo and to the park, giving her piggy-back rides and holding her hand when she crossed the street. Now she's ripe and legal and Sam wants to bang both the Mother AND the Daughter. At the same time? Or does he want to keep each relationship a secret from the other? Wouldn't a mother and daughter involved in a threesome be considered incest? Doesn't the fact that Sammy is using his past relationship with Laurie as a fulcrum to get in her pants make him a sexual abuser, in spite of the fact that she's legally old enough to plow? What exactly kept Sam from making sexual advances on Laurie the first time around? Or did he?
Don't look for any answers to these questions here... this is comedy quicksand, and I can picture the writers doing furious re-writes all week to try and keep this from becoming a triple-X pornographic frightfest. Even in the final cut you can see there are sharp edits and bits of dialogue lifted out. Judy and Sam arrive back from their date and Sam says, "I especially enjoyed taking Laurie to that department store and watching her little face light up-"
The line is chopped off, but it's obvious that Sam's next words were "as she tried on those clothes..." See how weird this is getting? He's re-creating his innocent, youthful past with the child except this time it's making him hard. Don't blame me... I didn't write this one!
I saw this episode when it originally aired, and at the time it was a breath of fresh air, a raunchy romp that was a rarity on television. Today it seems much dirtier, what with society having crumbled since then. The whole thing would have been less scandalous if Sam had met Judy for the first time in the episode and THEN met her daughter, lusting after them both, because it's his past with Laurie as a trusted authority figure that really makes the show skeezy. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
In the sub-plot we get to witness the birth of Sideshow Bob. When Woody is called away at the last minute Frasier fills in as a clown, daring to don the jester's motley. His appearance at a children's birthday party is a classic, but the final gag of the episode is too labored and happens mostly off-screen, a shame since the set-up had been so exquisitely established.
In spite of Sam's raging incestuous pedophilia and Frasier's failure to live up to Krusty's standards this is still a great episode, with tons of laughs and great jokes. When you're in the groove you're in the groove, and this children's nightmare is no exception.
GRADE: A-
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