Can you guess what color the scarf is? If you said 'all of them,' you win! By the way, it's San Francisco in 1976 -- I think it was against the law to knit. Everyone was required to do macram� instead. Valerie grabs the scarf from her and tells her that they'll treasure it. And that's Theme Number Two: Valerie Is Jealous.
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Episode Report Card
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A title card tells us that we're in Golden Gate Park. Because the target demographic for an NBC Behind the Camera is fundamentally stupid (except, of course, for me and you), the card also tells us that we're in San Francisco. It's spring of 1976. I'm not too familiar with San Francisco geography, but there must be an insane asylum located in or near Golden Gate Park, because we hear the jabbering of an escaped inmate under the title card.
Eh, my mistake. It's not an inmate who escaped from the asylum. It's someone who should be in the asylum but has somehow managed to avoid it. More like a prescaped inmate. Whose name is Robin Williams. He's "performing" for an "audience" of "admiring fans." It's his usual high-speed, high-crap pastiche of this and that -- primarily some kind of "Elizabethan" dialogue with lots of "bawdy" references and little "Groucho Marx" asides. Oh, I'm sorry, I just had a little chat with my editor. Apparently, I'm being given a limited budget of sarcasm quotation marks. You'll just have to fill them in for yourselves. And I don't care how much high-speed transcription training I received from C.J. Cregg, I am not going to even attempt to transcribe Williams when he's "performing." (Sorry, I couldn't let that one go without comment.) In any case, while Williams is capering about in the park, there's this strange bullet-time zoom-in to him. Which I don't think the director should really be busting out, unless we're later going to get a scene of William and Pam Dawber dressed in black leather and tearing down the Machine. And I suspect that's not going to happen. And speaking of dress, Williams is wearing a long-sleeved red t-shirt, underneath some kind of combo Hawaiian/tie-dyed short-sleeved shirt, with rainbow suspenders, green khakis, and purple Converse high-tops. Of course, the audience isn't much better -- I haven't seen so many bell-bottoms and so much fringe since the all-Navy production of Annie Get Your Gun. Williams declares a ten-minute intermission, and the crowd disperses, but not before several people improbably put some money in his hat. One long-haired chick sticks around, and Williams starts calling her "Pookie" and chattering about the money he's made. She looks very happy until she sees a cop walking towards them and tries to pull Williams away. The cop demands to see his panhandling license, but lets him off the hook when it becomes clear that Robin is differently-abled. I just realized that the rainbow suspenders are covered with little pins. Robin's day-job must be as a greeter at TGIF's.
Robin and his lady friend walk through the park. She asks him if he's called the casting agent yet, and he indicates that he hasn't. Which is why she went behind his back and did it for him. He gives her several reasons why he doesn't want to leave San Francisco. The one he doesn't mention is that in any other place on the planet he'd get the crap beaten out of him for wearing clothes like that. Williams is still carrying his hat in front of him like he's begging for alms. I'm guessing that he can't put his money in his pants pockets because he's worn holes in the pockets playing with himself. And if you feel as sick after reading that sentence as I do after writing it, I'm genuinely sorry. The chick's name is Valerie, by the way. Valerie Valardi. And that name might go a long way towards explaining her obvious self-esteem issues. (I say "obvious" because low self-esteem is the only thing that I could imagine causing her to stay with Robin Williams.) Valerie clues us in to Theme Number One when she accuses Robin of being afraid of success. Robin describes himself as "a gonzo guy." And I'm not really sure how many gonzo guys would approve of his rainbow suspenders. Unless he means that he's as hairy as the muppet Gonzo. Because that would actually be an understatement. He doesn't think that what he does would work on television. If only that had been true -- not only would we have been spared his career, but we likely never would have had to suffer through Third Rock From The Sun. All of a sudden, there's a high-pitched squeal from off-screen. "Robiiiin." It's some other chick, running up to them. She tells him that she knit a scarf for him. She just happens to have it with her. Can you guess what color the scarf is? If you said "all of them," you win! By the way, it's San Francisco in 1976 -- I think it was against the law to knit. Everyone was required to do macram� instead. Valerie grabs the scarf from her and tells her that they'll treasure it. And that's Theme Number Two: Valerie Is Jealous.
