Mork and Mindy: Season Three

One of the crazier television series of the late seventies was ‘Mork and Mindy’. It had a humble start as a spin off of an episode of the wildly popular ‘Happy Days’. The series followed the exploits of an alien trying to fit into earth culture and figure out what makes us humans tick. The premise was one with potential but by the third season, now on DVD care of Paramount, the too many changes to the format and fundamental premise had been made and the series started a premature decline. Initially the series had a solid concept of combining science fiction with the usual sit-com format. Previous attempts to do this before usually met with mixed results. In the sixties there were shows like ‘It’s About Time’ and ‘Living Doll’ but usually a Sci-Fi comedy had a life span barely more than a single season. The main reason ‘Mork and Mindy’ lasted four seasons was its star, Robin Williams. Television had never seen anything like him before. His wild improvisational comedy carried the series far longer than the simple premise could have. Apparently the executives at the network stepped in to tweak the series to appeal to a wider audience base and managed to derail it. Part of this may have been this series began just as the staple of the network, ‘Happy Days’ was beginning to struggle for ratings. The episode that introduced Mork was in the ill fated ‘jump the shark’ fifth season of ‘Happy Days’. Seeing ‘Mork and Mindy’ again after almost thirty years was nostalgic and the season did have its moments. It is a bit dated at this point but does manage to entertain.

As the third season opens with a one hour long episode that shows Mork (Robin Williams) has acclimated too well to earthly ways. Mindy (Pam Dawber) confides in her boss and friend Fred McConnell (Conrad Janis) that Mork has been not been acting like himself lately. Just then Mork enters the apartment dressed in a blue leisure suite carting a briefcase, his hair neatly combed. Mindy misses the almost childlike alien who entered her life a couple of years ago. Back on his home planet of Ork Mork’s boss, the unseen Orson decides that an intervention of sorts is required and sends a trusted planetary elder (Vidal Peterson) to set Mork straight. This was somewhat of an attempt for the studio to reboot the series and help the audience accept some of the changes in the format. They by the end of the hour the old Mork was back to some degree but the season was off on a bad footing.

One of the major changes in the third season was the relationship between Mork and Mindy. At the start of the series it was strictly a roommate/friend relationship. When the series started the producers were concerned with how the public would react to an unmarried couple living together. By season three the pair had started a more romantic relationship. There were little things like them sitting closer together to Mork resting his hand on Mindy’s knee. While these are small, insignificant things in today’s television it was a much bigger deal back then. This is classic for a show on the way out. If you go to the Jump the Shark website one of the main categories listed is letting a male and female lead get together romantically. Typically it is better to leave the possibility open than let the couple get together.

Another change is letting Mork get a job. In this season he starts working at a child day care center. While this allowed some adorable kids into the picture it further removed Mork from the native persona that endeared him to the audience in the first place. It also opened the way for far too many ‘special’ episodes where the point of the story was to teach some sort of lesson instead of just giving the viewers a few laughs. There was one where Mork dresses as a super hero for his day school group only to have one little boy dress like Billy the Kid. A lesson in violence follows. Another teaches Mork and the audience about charity. Now there were still some completely zany stories in this season. One of the better ones had Mindy upset that a repairman refusing to fix an old record player. Mork decides to put the repairman on trial before a jury of broken appliances. Even their romance hits a rough spot when Mindy feels that they should start to date other people. Mork goes overboard, as usually and almost ruins any chance of them getting back together. Of course, since this is a sit-com they do reconcile. It also seems that the writers had a little trouble getting a full season of stories. The last episode is not an original or the usual cliff ending season finale but a mundane clip show.

The series was based on the manic antics of Williams. He was starting to make a name for himself on the stand up comedy circuit when this gave him a shot at the big time. He was also undergoing a lot of personal problems at the time of this series. In more recent interviews Williams notes that he was addicted to cocaine in the late seventies and early eighties. The improvisational riffs that made the series in the first season where starting to get old feeling over done by the third. The originality of the first season was based on a completely alien viewpoint of our culture. By this season Mork still had a lot to learn but his growing relationship with Mindy began to bog down the stories. The writers try to return the series to its origins by bringing back characters like Fred but the damage was done by this time.

Paramount is committed to bringing classic television show to DVD. This means they tend to steer away from only giving compilation ‘best of sets’, they give us whole seasons and eventually the whole series. This means we get it all; both the great the good and the not so good. For some people they may have liked the changes made in this season and Paramount respects that and for that we should respect them. The full screen video has held up pretty good over the decades. The colors are not as bright as some other sets from this period but it is better than you will see in the rare syndicated reruns. The Dolby 2.0 mono is clear and few of defects. There are no extras provided in this release. Robin Williams has matured and grown into one of the greats in entertainment. He has won an Academy Award for a dramatic role, played psychopathic killers and still provides some of the funniest stand up around. This is a large part of where it began for this talented man and that alone makes it worth having.

Posted 11/17/07