Season 1, Episode 7, "Dad's Girlfriend"

So we’re in the second episode of our supporting character quadrilogy. Last time the spotlight was supposed to be on Six and she made no active decisions, so let’s see how Nick fairs in an episode titled “Dad’s Girlfriend,” which I guess is only named after him indirectly.

 

We open on Nick in the Russo family kitchen, as he makes time with some lady while she makes dinner. This is Elaine. With her frizzy hair, eye shadow and big lumpy sweater, she’s essentially every woman from the late 80s. Anthony even dated almost the exact same kind of girl in “Who’s In Charge Here?”

Nick and Elaine show enough intimacy to demonstrate they’ve been together for a while. Nick asks her if there’s anything he can do to help with dinner, and Elaine says he can do the dishes later. That’s supposed to be playful, and to the actress’ credit she’s adding a lot of dimensions to every line they give her. Which is a wise choice on her part, because this is the only scene she has where she’s not a dream avatar or a punching bag.

Nick is all “Do the dishes? That’s what I had kids for!”

 

Anthony comes in with his sorry excuse for a story for the week. He wants a motorcycle! He tells Nick this while he’s is hanging out with his new girlfriend, which could have been a clever tactic. Anthony could be working an angle, because maybe Nick would be more amenable with Elaine around, or maybe Anthony was trying to evaluate Elaine’s response to completely stupid idea so he’d have a better-educated opinion of her. But nope, none of that will happen, because this is Blossom.

Nick tells Anthony he’s on his own as far as getting a motorcycle. Anthony makes a dumb joke about how the motorcycle will pay for itself, once he starts doing show racing. I really hope Anthony’s spotlight episode “Tough Love” is not this terrible.

 

Anyway Blossom enters so the episode can officially begin. It’s sort of weird that this show doesn’t have cold opens, because in a case like this we the audience are already privy to two stories before Blossom knows anything about them, and the show’s ostensibly told from her perspective.

Brace yourselves. Blossom fucking finally has a trumpet case with her. Only five episodes after Blossom said the trumpet might be her “life,” this is the first visual evidence we see of her being a musician, in any way. Including the episode she said it in.

So Blossom says sorry she’s late, but she had to stay late in trumpet class and she’s ready to make dinner. Then she sees Elaine already cooking, and Nick apologizes for not getting the message to her.

 

Blossom tries to take the whole thing with a grain of salt but it’s clear she’s about to have an aneurysm. Elaine smartly tries to divert attention from herself and says she didn’t know Blossom played the trumpet, asking if she plays classical or jazz. Blossom tells her both, and Elaine says that’s interesting. Blossom’s face contorts to a look indicating clearly that this will be important later.

 

 

Seeing that the adults are going to continue their erotic cooking session, Blossom carries all her stuff out of the room. 

Pop Culture References: Caesar’s Palace

 

So they actually skip over the dinner. The episode is supposed to be about Blossom’s life being uprooted by a woman her dad is dating, yet they’re avoiding a scene to display the Russo family interacting with her. They even included what should have been a setup, since Blossom would have a chip on her shoulder, being displaced by Elaine cooking the meal. 

Considering how low-budget sitcoms are, you’d think they’d turn the dinner into the entire episode. A dinner scene isn’t exactly master playwright material, but I have a feeling the problem was having a scene with five major characters all at once. They haven’t even done a scene with the four Russos and Six yet. Let’s see if they do a scene with five characters by the end of the first season.

 

Anyway. The kids are doing the dishes after dinner, so I guess Nick wasn’t joking before. Joey asks Anthony how to undo a bra, and we learn Joey is about to start dating Helen, a senior at school. Helen’s a major sex maniac, given she’s been to France and she’s off her “anti-nympho medication,” in the first of several lines in the episode I wish I was making up. A lot of the material on this show seems to be tailored toward prepubescent children watching with their families, but then they say throw in stuff like this. It’s so weird.

Anthony asks if Blossom likes Elaine, and Blossom very obviously lies about being indifferent about her. Anthony sees right through it. 

 

When everything’s done Anthony asks Blossom if she wants to go to a movie with them, but she says she’s got to practice her trumpet, since the props department rented it for the week.

 

 

Blossom says she absolutely, positively, one hundred percent cannot go to the movies, so they can work in the vaudeville joke where Elaine comes in a second later asking if Blossom wants to hang out with her and Nick, to which Blossom says she can’t, she’s going to the movies. Oh, the hilarity. 

 

So after all these episodes we finally see an actual trumpet. And Blossom is playing it. And not very well, because she’s so upset! That’s a pretty easy cheat, so I’m guessing they wrote the trumpet thing into “School Daze” without asking Mayim Bialik if she actually played it.

 

Six enters saying maybe Blossom’s playing it on the wrong end. Blossom blames it on Elaine instead of the producers of her show, and Six asks what’s wrong with Elaine. Blossom comes up with a bunch of bullshit, turning into a full-on rant: Elaine is too nice, she thought the trumpet thing was interesting, and she was doing stuff in the kitchen wrong like putting the big wooden spoon in the silverware drawer, et al. Six makes fun of Blossom’s obvious invention of problems, and Blossom is too self-absorbed to notice.

 

Blossom says flat out that she wishes she had more control over her own life. Six says she wishes Richard Gere was fifteen, and believe it or not this is the appropriate thing to say. Blossom may as well wish for things to be different, because there’s a lot going on she can’t do a damned thing about. This also establishes this episode’s stupid dream sequence.

Pop Culture References: Kurt Waldheim, Adolf Hitler, Richard Gere 

 

The next morning, Joey and Anthony have a conversation about Joey’s upcoming date. Blossom enters the room so it has to stop. There is a God.

Anthony shows Blossom his new motorcycle brochure so his goofy, ‘Joey’ story has the illusion of progress. Once that’s over, Blossom asks if Nick is awake yet, but the boys tell her he spent the night at Elaine’s. Blossom freaks the fuck out.

Joey and Anthony don’t have any real problem with it, citing it’s been four years since Maddy split. We haven’t actually been told this until now, and I guess for teenagers four years is like a million, but this seems like too long for these wounds to still be so open. Blossom’s not really want for anything in life, considering Nick’s success, Six’ loyalty, and Anthony’s return. If Maddy’s been gone for four years already, maybe it’s time to get over some of this stuff?

 

Anthony warns Blossom that she should probably get used to Elaine, since for the purposes of this episode she might be “it,” as in Nick might marry her. Blossom’s freaking the fuck out escalates, but she gets no support from Anthony. Anthony just wants to see Nick happy, proving that compared to Blossom, the recovering drug addict is the emotionally stable one. Joey’s also happy about it, because he’ll be able to perv on his new stepmom. I wonder if I can work out a shorthand for “I wish I was making this up” since it’s happening so often lately. IWIWMTU?

 

Blossom says she can’t believe they’re reacting so calmly to all this, saying they have no idea what Elaine really might be like, and maybe they would feel different if they also were about to have a dream sequence about it involving a dated celebrity cameo from the early 90s.

 

Blossom storms out of the room, so Joey and Anthony can resume their sex talk.

 

The next scene has Blossom cleaning while Elaine sits on the couch, ordering her around. I should start timing how quickly I can guess when something is a dream sequence.

 

Nick comes downstairs with two poodles in hand, which is actually fucking hilarious, so he at least gets that, because remember this is sort of his spotlight episode? Elaine demonstrates that she has Nick wrapped around her little finger.

Since it will have no weight in the episode’s actual story, Blossom uses the opportunity to tell Nick that Elaine is a big ol’ jerk, but Nick says Blossom is just jealous because they gave her room to the dogs. Nick and Elaine snicker at Blossom as she wishes none of this ever happened.

 

So Nick and Elaine disappear, and are replaced with Rhea Perlman in a frilly white dress on the piano. Um, okay.

She’s Blossom’s fairy godmother, and I guess this story does have some similarities to all those fairy tales. Elaine has certainly been given about as many attributes as a Disney villain.

 

Rhea Perlman’s appearance is somehow not the most baffling thing about this scene. So when Rhea announces herself, she immediately begins pushing Blossom around, telling her she needs to make her remaining two wishes quick. Other than oh, ho, ho, Rhea Perlman, and she's in a frilly white dress, I don’t know what the joke is supposed to be, but in haste, Blossom just wishes none of this had ever happened.

 

 

So Rhea Perlman disappears and Nick and Elaine re-appear, in the middle of the same sentence.

Wait, what?

Why did they even bother inserting Rhea Perlman into this dream sequence if she wasn’t going to have any impact whatsoever? I guess thematically it matches up with what Six said, that wishing won’t do anything, but did they really need to drag Rhea Perlman into this? They didn’t even do any of the nineteen possible “be careful what you wish for” routines.

 

 

Only Blossom could make something seem like it was both killing time and skipping over story development.

Pop Culture References: Cheers, Marla Maples, Mel Gibson

 

Anyway. Blossom wakes up, so, great.

 

The next day Blossom goes to help out Mrs. Swanson. I actually had no idea she appeared in more than one episode, and I peeked at IMDB, which says she appears in one more after this. 

My initial reaction to seeing Mrs. Swanson—or Agnes, as Blossom calls her now—was that she seemed like a character created by a network executive. In “Blossom Blossoms” the conflict that there were no adult women in Blossom’s life was sort of cosmically unfair, not just situationally. That’s too depressing for a show that’s supposed to be a comedy, especially when the comedy part is almost never funny.

So when Blossom was going through her first period, it made sense that she’d find an adult woman to talk to. But outside of that one scenario, Mrs. Swanson just seems like a cheat. The conflict remains that Blossom is growing up alone in a house full of boys, but Mrs. Swanson provides too good of a safety net.

 

Even though she’s a kook, Agnes is technically a female who loves Blossom unconditionally, and there’s nothing stopping Blossom from confiding in her any time she has a problem. And if this is the role she’s going to play on the show, they’d need to commit to having her around a lot more often, which would trickle down through the rest of the show’s dynamics.  

Blossom brings Agnes her dry cleaning and thought she could use a quart of milk, to which Agnes quips, “I could use a quart of gin,” and the audience rolls in delight. So if she wants gin, fucking have it. Is there something stopping her, an adult, from having gin? I fucking hate this joke, no matter who uses it, though nine times out of ten it’s Shirley McClaine in the trailer for a movie I’ll never see.

 

I think they also got rid of Agnes because in building layer upon layer of this character’s costume—from the ratty hair to the old lady glasses to the house coat—they created a problem whereby it ‘s difficult for the actress to appear “correct” on camera. Her face is barely visible under the hair and the glasses, and staging her at a table in the foreground forces her to be constantly turning toward Blossom, so she’s acting at weird angles all the time.

Oh, and also, she’s kitschy and unfunny. Not that that makes her out of place on Blossom, but they’ve already got like three or four characters like that, and they already can’t even come up with a good Anthony story in about half these episodes. Good luck, lady.

Agnes asks if Blossom made first chair in the brass ensemble, which by the way was something Blossom mentioned earlier. Man, this episode is weirdly complicated. Blossom says she came in second, and blames it on Elaine. Blossom’s been preoccupied with the possibility of Nick asking Elaine to marry her, and Agnes has a legitimate response to this, asking with stars in her eyes if that magical moment has happened.

 

No, Blossom made it up. But it’s only a matter of time, Blossom says: Elaine has her claws in Nick and she won’t let go. I know a lot of this is in Blossom’s head, and we’re supposed to realize this, but it really would have helped to demonstrate Elaine acting questionably at least once, in, oh let’s say, a fucking dinner scene. It’s one thing that they have to economize things like sets, but why couldn’t they actually use the guest star they hired for the week? You might as well make Elaine an unseen character if you’re not going to give her any material.

Anyway Agnes asks Blossom if she’s got rocks in her head, which is which is fair because Blossom is being a one hundred percent jealous psycho bitch about the whole thing. Thankfully they don’t even shy away from this, and Agnes actually leads Blossom into exposing all her raw, crazy emotions about the situation: Blossom hates Elaine because of the attention she’s getting from all the Russo men; she has delusions of Elaine being manipulative; and at the end of the day, Blossom only wants to be told exactly what she wants to hear.

Agnes asks Blossom if she wants some actual advice, and when Blossom reluctantly accepts, Mrs. Swanson tells her to mind her own damn business.

And so this scene pretty much puts the nail in Mrs. Swanson’s coffin. At first she was just unnecessary, but now she’s demonstrated that she has the perspective to make educated decisions on life issues. There is no place on a three-camera sitcom for a character like that.

 

Blossom comes home to find Elaine cooking again. I’m starting to understand what Nick sees in her! They chit chat, and Blossom gives Elaine lip service. But when she realizes Elaine is wearing Maddy’s old apron, she goes ballistic.

 

Blossom gets out all her crazy psycho bitch issues, even though she just did that with Mrs. Swanson, and did the same thing with Anthony and Joey earlier, and with Six before that, and had a dream sequence demonstrating them. Does doing the same thing five times in succession actually count as a story?

Blossom says she knows Elaine is fooling Nick while he’s in a vulnerable state, she knows Elaine’s been putting the spoons wherever she damn well pleases, she knows about Elaine’s plan to marry Nick before anyone realizes it, and just because Elaine can make spaghetti sauce doesn’t mean she’s a good person.

 

Elaine tries to placate the situation the whole time, like any rational person would, but Blossom just keeps on going. She finishes her little speech by correcting Elaine on where the pots go in the cupboard. If they were gonna end on that, why did they have Blossom bring up the spoons just a few seconds earlier?

 

Blossom storms out, leaving Elaine to wonder what the fuck just happened.

 

 

Blossom talks to Joey while he’s getting ready for his date with Helen. They did a wardrobe change to indicate that this a day or more after Blossom’s bitching out on Elaine, but for the first time ever they’re not gonna pad the episode with a scene about Anthony buying a lottery ticket or a dream sequence involving Rue McClanahan.

 

 

Anyway after establishing that Blossom has been eating dinner at Six’ house lately, Joey tells her Nick and Elaine broke up. As this is news to her, Blossom now feels super guilty. She tells Joey about the showdown. 

Joey asks why Blossom did that. But then he admits he thought about doing the same thing, telling Elaine to buzz off. They bond over how Elaine was doing the kitchen stuff wrong, the point being that the technical details don’t matter if something doesn’t feel right. And I guess that isn’t bad, since Joey’s really the only person who’s in Blossom’s exact position. Had Nick and Elaine got married, neither Six, Agnes nor Anthony would have had to grow up in Elaine’s household. So Blossom was confiding in the wrong people, and should have gone to Joey individually sooner. Oh, and that’s not stated, I’m inferring it and assuming I got the right answer.

 

 

The scene goes on to descend into Blossom and Joey talking about Maddy’s whereabouts and her reasons for leaving, so who the fuck knows what the lesson is. 

 

Pop Culture References: Rod Stewart

 

 

That night, Blossom heads downstairs just as someone in a black leather costume and helmet barges through the front door. Blossom screams for her bloody life and naturally the studio audience laughs at this.

It’s actually Anthony! He bought his motorcycle gear, which for the moment is only good for doing bad Darth Vader impressions. It kind of bothers me when people try to fake James Earl Jones’ voice by adding British inflections. Anyway.

 

So he just got the outfit because it was on sale, and now he has a goal in life. I’m sure this is the last we ever hear about this motorcycle nonsense in the entire series. It originally seemed brave to me to have a character who’s a recovering drug addict and alcoholic on a sitcom like this, but having him abandon a new life’s goal every week is starting to do more harm than good.

 

Anyway he leaves the scene so Joey can come in, since this episode has devolved from not wanting to show five characters on screen together in the first act to not having more than two characters appear at the same time in the third. Joey struck out on his date, but Helen wants to go out with him again. Blossom says that’s a good thing, that he’s headed toward a relationship. Joey, using his randomly appearing and disappearing Travolta accent, complains that this is going to ruin his reputation! 

 

Joey leaves so Nick can enter.  Okay, this is definitely the Intentionally Absurd Element of the episode, which I’m going to start noting, as well as References to France.

Nick asks why she’s still up and Blossom says she wants to talk to Nick. Nick wants to talk to her, too: he heard she had a little trouble with Elaine. Blossom says she was sorry, she was wrong.

 

“No,” Nick says, “you were inconsiderate, rude, and completely out of line. And you were wrong.” I think that still counts as wrong, Nick.

 

Blossom tries to pawn the whole thing off on Elaine doing the kitchen stuff wrong, and Nick reiterates that it was none of Blossom’s business. Blossom says wah, wah, it was her business, he was going to marry her. Nick says if he was going to marry Elaine, he would have told Blossom.

Blossom actually shuts up for a second, and Nick pretty awesomely puts her in her place. He’s gonna date, young lady, and she’s not gonna love everyone he does. He won’t, either. And if Blossom has concerns about it, he doesn’t want to hear it from a third person. Except that in this instance the third person was someone actually in the mix, but whatever.

 

Blossom says she feels terrible, and she’ll call Elaine to apologize, and they’ll patch things up. Nick stops her, saying to mind her own business. Then Nick says the worst thing possible.

“You did not cause the break-up. … Really. Though your name was mentioned. … You see, Elaine’s not ready to take on three kids.” Obviously the issue is about the concept of three children, but, technically, Blossom is an actual child in this equation. Whether or not Blossom blew up at Elaine, she was part of Elaine’s decision not to continue dating Nick. It seems like a more mature point to make would be that Nick loves Blossom so much that he won’t get mad when she fucks up his relationships. Nick even said the hard thing can be the better thing one episode ago. But of course we’re only allowed the illusion of depth, hardship or sacrifice.

 

Someday, Nick tells Blossom, he’ll meet a woman ready to enter this idiot family. Probably toward the end of the fourth season when the network forces them to retool. Blossom and Nick shake hands on this. Uh, okay.

They close out the episode by watching the free, unlicensed version of The Dick Van Dyke Show theme song. Nick says the kitchen stuff bothered the hell out him, too. See, Blossom, you might not like Nick’s girlfriends, but at least you’ll be able to make fun of them after they break up, and isn’t that better? Making fun of people when they’re not around to defend themselves is the bestest. 

 

Well, that wasn’t a terrible fleshing out of Nick’s character, though come to think of it he actually only appears in the first and the last scenes of the episode, not counting the dream sequence.

Pop Culture References: Star Wars, The Dick Van Dyke Show

Intentionally Absurd Element: Increasing avoidance of showing multiple characters together

References to France: 1

Pop Culture Reference Tally: 10