User Reviews

TV producers are forever turning successful movies into series. Sometimes this works (Stargate and The Courtship of Eddie's Father, for instance). Sometimes they don't. This was one of those times.

The pilot picks up where the movie ends. Howard (Barry Van Dyke) and Judy (Harriet Hall) are on the plane on their way back from the conference in San Francisco where they met. They are optimistically looking forward to their future together. When they arrive at Howard's house, they meet Howard's fiancée, Claudia (uncredited on this website), who greets him wearing a slinky black lingerie. Quick on the uptake, Judy introduces herself as a new student of Howard's "Brahmsy Dardanella," and pretends to have just figured out that Howard's intentions towards her are less than honorable. She leaves in a huff, but arranges to meet with Howard later. When they meet, she expresses surprise that Claudia isn't the frumpy woman Howard described. Howard is equally surprised since after Judy left, Claudia told Howard that she was going to try to be less frumpy and more attractive. Judy and Howard concoct a plan to break the news of their relationship to Claudia. The plan involves Judy dressing up as a delivery boy from a Chinese restaurant, who insistently (and over Claudia's objections) explains that she and Howard are in love. Believing Judy to actually be a Chinese male, Claudia exclaims, "Oh my God! A gay Chinese!" and then faints. When she comes to, she recognizes Judy as "Brahmsy" and Judy and Howard explain the situation to her. Unfortunately, Claudia gets melodramatic and heads for the roof with the intention of jumping. Judy goes up to talk her down, and convinces Claudia that not only should she not give up on life, but she should fight for Howard. Claudia realizes that Judy got Howard by being cute, and that to get Howard back she, too, must be cute. Believing that cute people always do what they say they're going to, she refuses Judy's offer to come down from the roof, and jumps, landing safely, if somewhat messily in the bushes. After Claudia and the rest of the crowd assembled leave, Judy and Howard discuss how they're going to handle the "new" Claudia.

It's a plot that is just as wacky as the movie, and the writing was just as funny. The only glaring error is that in the movie, Howard had a fiancée named Eunice, who chose to stay in San Francisco at the end. The pilot was written as though Eunice never existed, which can be a little hard to ignore if you know the movie at all. Otherwise, the laughs were nonstop, and I still quote this pilot. However, I do have to admit that such hilarity would have been hard to maintain on a weekly basis. And perhaps the feeling was that the public wouldn't buy into an ongoing story, given that the movie had such a satisfying ending.

Van Dyke and Hall did great jobs with their parts. Hall's Judy was a little more bubbly than Streisand's, which could get a bit cloying. Van Dyke's Howard, however, was a little more intelligent than O'Neal's, making him much easier to buy as a college professor.

It's a shame this didn't get picked up. It's an even bigger shame they never show it any more. I haven't laughed so much in a half hour before or since.