| "Drive, She Said" | |
|---|---|
| Season 4, Episode #14 (#87) in series (95 episodes) | |
 Mindy finds herself frustrated in attempting to teach Mork how to drive, one of several obstacles on the way to his trying for his license in "Drive, She Said" in Season 4 (ep.#14). | |
| "Mork & Mindy" episode | |
| Guest Star(s): | Bill Kirchenbauer Max Maven |
| Network: | ABC-TV |
| Production code: | 414 (4x14) |
| Writer(s) | Lesa Kite & Cindy Begel |
| Director | Bob Claver |
| Original airdate | February 4, 1982 |
IMDB 
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Drive, She Said |
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| "Metamorphosis, the TV Show" | "I Don't Remember Mama" |
| List of Mork & Mindy seasons/episodes | |
"Drive, She Said" is the 14th episode of Season 4 of Mork & Mindy, as well as the 87th episode in the series overall. Co-written by Lesa Kite and Cindy Begel, the episode, which was directed by Bob Claver, originally aired on ABC-TV on February 4, 1982.
Synopsis[]
Mindy is tired of coming from work and then having to go out on errands in the evening because Mork still can't drive. Trying to teach him doesn't get very far, so he gets a driving Instructor. Old friend TNT, who ends up freaking Mork out about safety.
Plot[]
Mindy gets home after another one of those days at KTNS and is about ready to drop. Mork coming out to kiss her, stops her from taking off her coat, telling her if they really haul it they can hit the grocery and hardware store. Mindy complains about having to straight back out again, and wonders if there's nothing they can eat in the house, but Mork says all they have is cheese. While they disagree about whether they are going or staying, Mearth wrapped up like an overheated Humpty Dumpty demands that his parents make a decision. As they de-layer Mearth, Mindy tells Mork it'd be a lot better for everyone if Mork got his driving license. Mork thinks driving a car is beneath his abilities as a spaceman, but Mindy asks what would he do if there was an emergency and something happened to Mearth. She then tries the self interest tack, telling him it's his decision, but she thinks it's a shame, as if he had his license he could drive himself the 6 long miles to the arcade to play PacMan. It works, to a point.
Sitting in her jeep in the garage, with Mork in the drivers seat and Mearth in the back with his toy dashboard, Mindy tries to give Mork his first lesson, looking at the car controls. Unfortunately for Mindy, Mork and Mearth seem more interested in playing Jackie Stewart & Stirling Moss and even when she can get Mork's attention he seems more focused on the extraneous elements of driving then driving itself, stretching even her patience to breaking point. By the time Mearth complains of feeling car sick in a stationary car, Mindy agrees, clambers out and tells Mork he needs to go to a driving school, and leaves father and son to their wild Formula 1 recreations.
Mork is waiting for his new driving instructor when to Mork's delight, Todd Norman Taylor, TNT, arrives replete with chains and silver Fastlane Driving School jacket. Mork shows him his bumper stickers 'Aliens make better Lovers' and 'Horn if you're a Honky' but TNT tells him he needs to get serious if he's going to get the most out of driving, like where to put his breath freshener for kissing girls, how to drive suave with his wrist, look cool when a lit cigarette falls betwen his legs. TNT says the first lesson he has to know is no matter how treacherous the road conditions, always always, stop for female hitchhikers, but doesn't get the reaction he expects from Mork, who tells him seriously he can't do that, he's married. TNT looks ill at the news, telling Mork that's the ultimate social disease. . He wants to know why, if Mork isn't out cruising for skirts he wants to learn how to drive, and then tells him if cars didn't turn on women he wouldn't be caught dead in one of the death traps. Mork queries his use of the word death traps, and wants to know if they're that bad why is he a driving instructor. TNT, as sleazy as ever, replies teenage girls with learners permits, and the free boss jacket. Mork laughs off TNT's attitude to the danger as a joke, but TNT tells him that it's 'slaughter alley' on the roads. Mork sugggest he'll drive real careful like a senior citizen out looking for an address, but TNT says that'll just make him a target, but to look on the bright side. He can only have one fatal accident.
Some time later, late at night, Mindy is woken by Mork thrashing around in bed beside her, yelling, in the midst of a vivid nightmare. On waking him, he tells her he had the worst dream he's ever had, and as a result has no intention of becoming the subject of a Maudlin Pop hit in which he is the one who dies. When Mindy asks him if he's 'subtlely' telling her he's *not* going to take his driving test, due the next day. He says, no, he's telling her he's never going to get into a car again, kisses her goodnight and nonplussed she watches as he gets out of their bed and climbs under it, until he calls up to her, wanting to know what a copy of Playgirl is doing under there, at which point she leans over and fires her slippers at him. Getting him out and back into bed, she gets him to relay the nightmare he actually had in the hopes she can help him analyze it so he won't worry about it so much.
He relays a creepy tale of foggy roads, and an ominous presence, that is revealed to be Satanic, fierce some eyes, and ominous voices telling him 'He's Next', before he's belted into a hearse and sent careening down a road towards a dark tunnel, that ends up in an electrolysis parlor. As he's rocking and moaning her name, Mindy tries to calm him (and herself) down, telling him that under the circumstances what he's experiencing is normal. That everyone is afraid of taking their drivers test, recalling that she certainly was. Mindy's recollection of the how she felt getting her license, and what she did after, relaxes Mork at first, but as she continues on with a lot of extraneous detail, he pauses her and promises he'll go for his test if she doesn't' finish that story. Miffed, Mindy agrees and turns the light back out, and lays back down. Sliding closer to her Mork asks her if she's mad at him, and she says kinda, that its like another time when they were grocery shopping...and as she embarks on the story of what he did there, he starts to snore in her ear.
Next day at the Department of Motor Vehicles, Mindy and Mearth are waiting, when a jubilant Mork comes out saying he's passed, celebrating with Mearth until Mindy points out that that was just the eye test. TNT enters, and after Mindy smilingly greets him, he tells her he has brought her a wedding present, before he grabs her and kisses her. Mearth, introduced as 'Sonny' after Mindy rapidly backtracks from calling him their Son, is not impressed with TNT's kissing his mother, and mimics using his name to blow him up. As Mork talks abou this choice of personalized number plate 'R..R..R...Ahrr, Ahhr Ahhr' a hand lands on his shoulder. Turning to look he finds himself looking into a Beelzebub like image, his tester, S. Devlin (real life magician Max Maven), who tells him ominously that he's next.
Freaked out, and being pushed towards the car for his test by TNT, Mork feels like he's living his nightmare through, and his test gets off to an almost immediately disastrous start when he reverses on start up, and then heading forward, hits an obstacle that flips the car up onto two wheels. The Tester seemingly oblivious to what's going on, as Mork tries to keep going, TNT in the back is freaked out, and as Mindy and Mearth watch on in alarm, tries to escape from the back seat by climbing out the the window onto the top of the car, while the Tester orders him to take the car out onto the highway. .
Back at the apartment, the family returns, Mork not only having failed his test but winding up with a neck brace. Mork is depressed and miffed at Mindy who he reckons tried to send him to 'his doom', so Mindy asks Mearth to go to his room so she can talk with Mork. Mindy tells him not to be so down and reminds him that he can always take the test again, Mork conjectures that Mearth will think he's a quitter, a coward and won't respect him if he doesn't, and Mindy imagines that could be true, but he feels he can live with that. She tells him it's not the end of the world, but what rankles with him, and what he feels she doesn't understand is that he has never failed at something like this before. That he is now 'an inferior superior being'..
Sitting him down she tells him that the simple truth is everybody fails sometimes, that nobody is perfect, sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail, that's what makes you human. Mork points out that of course he's not a human, having to accept that, she tells him what she's trying to say is, just because you fail it doesn't make you a failure. He tells her it still hurts, and she commiserates, but tells him the best way to get over that hurt is to go back in and try again. She tells him he can pass that test, she knows he can. Her faith in him fires him up and the more he thinks about it the more he thinks, then knows he can...but just in case he'll dress up as an old lady so they'll give him a break. Kissing him she says that's the Mork she knows, and he asks if they go some formal that night that she paint a tie on his brace.
Trivia[]
General[]
- The title may be a play on either the Agatha Christie based movie, Murder, She Said, about a death on a train, or a play on Drive, He Said, Jack Nicholson's 1971 directorial debut, or neither!
- This marks the 4th and final appearance of Bill Kirchenbauer's wonderfully cheesy/sleazy, chain shaking, Todd Norman Taylor - TNT in the show. During the course of which he achieves the distinction of being the only other man, apart from Mork, to kiss Mindy in two separate episodes. (after Mork, the Swinging Single)
- Mork's 'discovery' of a copy of Playgirl under Mindy's side of the bed, may be an in joke, as Robin Williams had himself appeared on the cover of the magazine.
- Mork's relating of his Nightmare to Mindy (and her reaction to it) is a callback to the famous Tevye's Dream from Fiddler in the Roof (albeit in Mork's case not a made up nightmare).
- Given Robin William's extensive body hair, the electrolysis Mork ends up having as the culmination of his dream is probably both a fitting nightmarish conclusion of the the dream, and gentle poke at the actor by the writers.
- Along with 'Burchi' (Linda Burchi) previously mentioned as a fellow cheerleader with Mindy in High School S1's In Mork We Trust, and a real friend of Pam Dawber's, we hear about 2 more friends from Mindy's High School years, Molette and Suzy.
- Mindy says they drove to get the New Herman's Hermits Album to celebrate her getting her drivers license. As the band's final album came out in 1968, it would appear the writers are sticking with the revised age for Mindy post her Prom in 1971 in Long Before We Met .Meaning she was 15 when she got her driving license. Her original age of 21 as given in the pilot (and through Season One) would have made her 11.
- Mindy is pre-empted by Mork from telling 'The Ribbon' story again, the one she used to pep him up towards taking on Xerko on There's a New Mork in Town
Pop Culture[]
- When Mindy asks if there's nothing to eat in the house, Mork tells her only the cheese that the President sent them, referring to Ronald Reagan's late 1981 decision to distribute surplus dubiously nutritious Government Cheese to needy families
- Mearth comments on overheating like Orson Welles chasing a frisbee, at this stage of his career Welles was almost as well known for being a bon vivant as a Director and had become quite large as a result.
- Mork compares himself learning to drive an Earth car to the Brazilian Soccer Legend Pelé playing football with a metallic BB.
- Mearth takes on the persona of 1950's English Formula 1 racing legend Stirling Moss, when he gets into Mindy's Car, and Mork that of Jackie Stewart the Scottish World Champion Formula 1 Racer who went on to head up his own racing team.
- Mork tries to 'depress the clutch' in Mindy's jeep by asking it if it saw the movie Brian's Song, the famous 'guy-cry' weepie starring James Caan & BIlly Dee Williams from 1970. He also talks about the last Ali fight, referring to Muhammad Ali's last fight in 1981 where it had become evident he wasn't well enough to keep fighting.
- TNT talks about Mork needing to know where to stash his Binaca, referring to the brand of breath freshener.
- TNT asks Mork doesn't ever watch CHiPs, the highly popular TV show about the California Highway Patrol staring Erik Estrada, Larry Wilcox and Robert Pine (Chris Pine's father)..
- Judging by Mindy's reaction it's doubtful there was a copy under the bed but Playgirl was, of course, the female equivalent of Playboy (with the first male centerfold in 1973 being the previous season's There's a New Mork in Town guest star Xerko. Lyle Waggoner), and by that point had full frontal male nudity.
- Mork preps to recount his nightmare to Mindy by humming the opening bars of The Twilight Zone.
- Mindy talks about going to pick up the new Herman's Hermits' album (given the time frame) likely Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter. The group being one of the British Invasion bands of the time.
- She also talks about going to the A&W to celebrate with her friends, A&W restaurants having more outlets by the 1970s than even MacDonalds, and famous for their root beer.
- Mork yells for 'Aunty Em!' as the Devilish Tester makes him head for the highway, in yet another The Wizard of Oz reference.
- Returning home in a neck brace Mork comments that he now knows how Ed Sullivan felt, referring to the legendary host of the Ed Sullivan Show, the TV launching pad in the U.S. of acts like Elvis, The Beatles and many others. Sullivan had been involved in a bad automobile accident that had actually precluded his being present for Presley's first appearance on the show. The 'Kiss me Goodnight, Eddie' imitation Mork does is of Topo Gigio an Italian puppet mouse, who became famous on the U.S., after appearing several times on the show (and uttering said phrase).
- Mork feels that as an inferior superior being "even Richard Dawson wouldn't kiss me now!" Richard Dawson being the host of the Match Game and most particularly Family Feud where he garnered a reputation of kissing the contestants good luck, even though the network had tried to stop him repeatedly.
- When Mindy asserts everyone fails sometimes, Mork asks 'Even Buddy Ebsen?', Buddy Ebsen best known as Jed Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies had been working consistently in show business for six decades by that this stage.
Quotes[]
- Mearth: C'mon you guys are you gonna go or aren't' you?
- *simultaneously* Mindy: No! Mork: Yes!
- Mearth: Are you or aren't' you? You know I tell you something both, I'm beginning to sweat as much as Orson Welles chasing a Frisbee!
____________________________
- Mindy: Mork, look at this way, what if something happened to Mearth during the day? LIke a real emergency, what would you do?
- Mork: Well...I'd do what I always do...I'd fall apart.
____________________________
- Mindy: Now! This is a standard transmission. That means you have to change the gears by using the gear shift.
- Mork: Oh so that's what that's for!
- Mindy: Yeah! What'd you think it was for, churning butter?
- Mork: *trying to pretend she wasn't right* Doesn't really matter what I thought.
- Mindy: Ohhh..*pats him consolingly* Okay...now, what you do to that is you take your foot off the gas, and depress the clutch.
- Mork: Oh depress the clutch *bends down* Clutch? Have you ever seen the movie, Brian's Song? How 'bout that last Ali fight huh?
____________________________
- Mindy: Mork! Mork! Wake up! You're just having a nightmare. And you're off key!
- Mork: Oh Mind it was a real nightmare! I mean it was worse than that dream I had when I was trapped in the elevator with the three seminary students and the animal therapist who kept saying 'let the hamster have his space'.
____________________________
- Mork: Min min Mind! I'm not taking that test tomorrow! No no no this dream was a sign! It was a warning from beyond, Mind! I mean I don't want to end up as the subject of some Pop Maudlin hit *sings* 'We knew him well but he's windscreen dust nowwww'
____________________________
- Mork: Okay...I remember now, Min. I was on this road and there's very very very thick fog. I try to run. But I can't! I try to scream. But I can't!! I try to Rhumba, I win 2nd Prize!!
- Mindy: What does this have to with driving?!
- Mork: What are you a dream critic, come on honey!! And then! Then it happened!
- Mindy: *leaning in* What?
- Mork: I felt this icy cold hand touch me here *touches his right shoulder* And it sent a chill down my spine. And I look back....and it was HIM!!!
- Mindy: *anxiously* Who?
- Mork: *swings to her* It was Satan! *Mindy flinches back inhaling* The Devil! *'posessed' voice* BEELZEBUB!!! *Mindy smacks him freaked out*
- Mindy: *sticks her fingers in her ears* Mork!!
- Mork: Oh Mind, it had to be him! I mean how many men do you know that have little hooves?!
- Mindy: *fingers still in ears thoroughly wigged* Oh god...
- Mork: Oh and his eyes, Mind! I remember his eyes!!! They were like a combination of Ming the Merciless and Nancy Reagan. And then...then...he looked at me. And a long bony finger *points* pointed at me and said....*ominous voice* You're next. *squeaks* I....and then the next thing I remember I was seat belted into a hearse! And there's no one driving! And the hearse is going down a long hill towards a tunnel! And I'm screaming going Noooo...!!!
- Mindy: Oh god...
- Mork: Nooooo!! And the next thing you know! I'm in a beauty party having electrolysis! *hides face in hands* Noooo *rocks back and forth, mumbling* Oh Min...Min...Min...Min...
____________________________
- TNT: Never fear! TNT is here! Guiding you from Gear to Gear!
____________________________
- Mindy: How you doin', TNT?
- TNT: Hey crazy lady! I brought you a wedding present?!
- Mindy: You did?! Aww, you didn't have to do tha....*he grabs her and kisses her*
- TNT: Try and buy that in a store!
- Mindy: Gee...thanks.
- TNT: *coaxes* It's returnable!!?!
Promo[]
Mork & Mindy - Drive She Said - Episode Promo
Promo for Drive, She Said 1982 - ABC Thursday (First up and followed by Bosom Buddies promo)
Image Gallery[]
Cast & Crew[]
Starring[]
- Robin Williams as Mork
- Pam Dawber as Mindy McConnell
- Conrad Janis as Fred McConnell
- Jonathan Winters as Mearth McConnell
