Season One
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Season One
Episode 3: I'll be Loving You, Sometimes
First aired September 23, 1974
The episode title is a parody of a song: "I'll be Loving You, Always."
Writers: Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore
Director: Alan Rafkin
Cast: Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern, David Groh as Joe Gerard,
Julie Kavner as Brenda Morgenstern, Todd Turquand as Donnie Gerard, Howard Hesseman as
Kirk Stevens, L. Music as Carlton the Doorman
Special Guest Star: Howard Hesseman is better known to TV fans as WKRP's Doctor Johnny Fever and Mister Moore from 'Head of the Class.'
Memorable Quotes:
Joe: "Damnit Rhoda-- I love you."
Rhoda [to Kirk, on her Pong winning streak]: "Oh, I'm sorry, I have this cute little girl thing that delights in killing you at that game."
Brenda: "The sound of whipped cream always wakes me up."
How we rate it:
Sarah: 10
Suzie: 10
The Short Version: Joe and Rhoda decide to date other people. After Rhoda's disastrous date with an unemployed actor, they get back together.
The Long Version: Rhoda meets Donnie and Joe at the Zoo. Joe says he has to drop Donnie in Tarrytown for his (Donnie's) mom's birthday and he'll be back later to go out with Rho. Later, Rhoda gets a call from Joe saying that he's staying overnight at his ex's. Rhoda gets jealous, and does her best femme fatale imitation of Marian-- who she's never met-- for Brenda. The next day, Rhoda goes to see Joe at work and hears him arguing on the phone with Marian. He hangs up and tells Rho that he never wants to get married again. He feels that he and Rho should 'back off' and see other people. Rhoda goes on a horrible date with an actor named Kirk Stevens who she met in the unemployment office. He believes he's irresistible and refuses to let her leave the arcade until she lets him win. Rhoda returns to Brenda's to find out that Joe's called twice while she was gone. Joe bursts in-- he's been waiting across the street for her to return. He tells her he loves her and he was going crazy without her, she tells him she loves him too. In the last scene, Joe calls her from the phone booth across the street.
Firsts: Joe first expresses his desire to remain single in this episode.
What We Noticed:
Valerie's voices: Rhoda does a sexy impersonation of Joe's ex-wife, Marian. This is the first episode to mention her directly. She appears in episode 28, "Rhoda Meets the ex Wife."
The voice over on the TV show Brenda watches ('Animal World') is provided by Lorenzo Music-- Carlton, your doorman *and* co-producer of the show.
The arcade game that Kirk and Rhoda are playing is a 'Tennis Tourney' machine, though they refer to it as 'Pong.'
Knock...knock...knock: The beat Rhoda's date bangs out on the door is "Shave and a haircut-- two bits."
Fashions of the Decade
Joe: Joe wears a work shirt, and jeans with a wide belt, representative of the style men wore.
Kirk Stevens: Rhoda's date wears a suit jacket, jeans encrusted with nail heads, and a shirt unbuttoned to the navel: trendy clothing for the young. Rho comments that Kirk is "sort of an old youth," meaning he is clearly too old to be wearing this type of clothing. In the seventies, there was an increase in the percentage of people under 25, the group generally asscociated with trendiness. Many of the increasing numbers of divorced adults started to follow youth culture fads as well. Heck, by 1976, even the president was wearing jeans.
Obscure References:
Shopping: Joe mentions to Rhoda that he won't be able to get Marian a gift, since it's Sunday. The majority of stores used to keep much shorter hours then than they do now. Getting shopping on a weekend or after five was difficult.
Perfect Marriages: In a classic scene, Rhoda lists the following marriages as 'perfect' to Joe: Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, Will and Ariel Durant, and Masters and Johnson. She later adds Ozzie and Harriet Nelson to her list.
Movie actress Grace Kelley ('High Noon,' 'To Catch a Thief') and Prince Rainier of Monaco were generally thought to have a storybook marriage. Recent biographers have pointed out that although the two stayed together until her death, it was a far from perfect marriage.
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were country singers in the 50's. They played themselves on the popular westerns 'The Roy Rogers Show' (1951-57) and 'The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show' (1962-63). Rogers died in 1998 of heart failure. They had a very strong marriage.
Sophia Loren is an Italian actress (Two Women, Man of La Mancha, Grumpier Old Men) and Carlo Ponti is/was a renowned producer (Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Blow Up, Doctor Zhivago). Both had affairs.
Will Durant was a Pulitzer prize winning historian, who was read by millions because of his focus on people instead of dry names and dates. He and his wife Ariel collaborated on the last five volumes of his eleven volume 'History of Civilization.' He died in the 1980s.
Ozzie and Harriet Nelson starred in 'Ozzie and Harriet'-- TV's longest running sitcom (1952-66). On the show, they lived in a house that was a replica of their real-life Hollywood home with their two real-life kids, David and Rick. Rick was also a well known singer.
Masters and Johnson were social scientists of the 60's and 70's whose books about sex were bestsellers. They divorced in the 80's.
"What kind of relationship did you have in mind, you know, casual, serious, the, uh, whole enchilada, or what?" The whole enchilada means everything combined (all rolled up).
Rhoda [to Kirk]: Is Walter Cronkite all the same person?
Cronkite was anchor of 'The CBS Evening News,' from 1962-81. He also appeared as a
guest star on episode 93 of TMTMS, 'Ted Baxter Meets Walter Cronkite.'
Johnny Carson:
Brenda: If you'll excuse me, I'll go take a bath...I'll take Johnny Carson with me.
For those of you who are very young: Carson was the third permanent host of 'The
Tonight Show'; he retired in 1992. (The other hosts: the multitalented Steve Allen,
the controversial Jack Paar, and the familiar Jay Leno.)
70's Trendy Topics:
The Arcade: Between the pinball craze of the seventies and the 'arcade' games of the mid-to-late seventies and early eighties, arcades used to be popular places to hang out. In another episode, Gary wants to put arcade machines in his jeans store so that he could attract more kids. Arcades were so popular by the early eighties that news programs ran stories on the quarter shortage.
We see Kirk and Rhoda playing a game of Pong in the arcade. The arcade version was introduced by Atari in 1973, and the home video game system was introduced in 1975. Pong was not, as many people think, the first home video game system; it was the first commercially viable home video game system. That first home system was Magnavox's 'Odyssey.'
Instead of cartridges, Pong had built-in games, all of which were variations on 'tennis' (jai alai, handball, tennis, hockey, ping pong, etc.) The lack of cartridges eventually doomed Pong sales, as there was nothing to sell once everyone had one.
Visit Digital Press for more information about old game systems like Pong and the Atari 2600.
Commercials: In the 60s, Canadian academian Marshall McCluhan proclaimed that TV was the 'global village' and fundamentally different from any other medium. By the 70s, people were trying to prove that scientifically: researchers discovered that brainwaves of people viewing television ads were slower than those of people looking at print ads. They discovered that TV advertising was a link to the viewer's subconscious. TV commercials became a science.
What's Going On
09/18/74 Five thousand die when Hurricane Fifi strikes Honduras.
09/21/74 US space probe Mariner 10 makes a second fly-by of Mercury.
09/21/74 Barry White’s "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe" is the
#1 pop single.
Help Us Out
We are still mystified by the following references: Brenda to Rhoda: "I'm still getting over the great what fun it is to be a woman hoax."; commercials of the 70's:"We're there when you need a helping hand" bank commercial, "Mr Grime." Contact us with info.