SUMMARY: RUNNING TIME: 25:00 Min.
First airing on ABC-TV on February 4, 1982, Bob Claver directed this episode. Fed up with being her family’s sole driver, Mindy wearily implores her husband, Mork, to obtain a driver’s license. With their son, Mearth, in the backseat, Mindy’s good-natured patience teaching Mork basic driving skills fails miserably.
Mork soon finds that his obnoxiously footloose pal, Todd “TNT” Taylor, will be his instructor at the Fastlane Driving School. Tormented by a creepy nightmare, Mork confides in his wife that he now fears driving.
With Mindy & Mearth helplessly watching on, Mork endures a wild driving test with “TNT “ (spectacularly failing to escape this predicament) and a sinister-looking State of Colorado DMV employee. In this episode, Mork doesn’t report his findings back to Orson.
Mork: Robin Williams
Mindy McConnell: Pam Dawber
Fred McConnell: Conrad Janis (credit only)
Mearth: Jonathan Winters
Todd Norman “TNT” Taylor: Bill Kirchenbauer
S. Devlin: Max Maven
REVIEW:
In their scenes alone together, Robin Williams and Pam Dawber still reliably exude some TV magic. More so, Dawber deserves sympathy for having to maintain her dignity in the dubious sequences where Williams shamelessly mugs with Jonathan Winters. Though their goofy ‘father and son’ antics are supposed to be hilarious, this desperate Season 4 ratings ploy is a channel-changer (or, in this case, a fast-forward button). Mearth’s inane humor, in this particular episode, is mostly confined to one sequence as the childish ‘backseat driver.’
For whatever reason, the episode skips past seeing Mork’s lessons with moronic “TNT,” which should have had solid comedic potential. Instead, viewers get a live-action cartoon/extended stunt showcase posing as Mork’s driving test. No matter how forgettable this episode is, it deserves some credit for a positive lesson balancing life’s successes with its failures. Specifically, the message of humbly learning from vs. overreacting to failure is nicely played for kids.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 4 Stars
