| "Mork's Health Hints" | |
|---|---|
| Season 2, Episode #9 (#34) in series (95 episodes) | |
 Mindy goes to the hospital for a tonsillectomy, but due to a typographical error nearly ends up getting brain surgery, as its up to Mork to save the day in "Mork's Health Hints" in Season 2 (ep.#9). | |
| "Mork & Mindy" episode | |
| Guest Star(s): | Shirley Jo Finney Barbara Cason Anita Dangler Michelle Downey Kim Fields Wayne Morton Vernon Weddle |
| Network: | ABC-TV |
| Production code: | 209 / 2x9 |
| Writer(s) | David Misch |
| Director | Howard Storm |
| Original airdate | November 4, 1979 |
IMDB 
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Mork's Health Hints |
| Episode chronology | |
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| "A Morkville Horror" | "Dial 'N' for Nelson" |
| List of Mork & Mindy seasons/episodes | |
Mork's Health Hints is a Mork and Mindy episode from season 2, the ninth episode of the season, as well as the 34th series episode overall. Written by David Misch, the episode, directed by Howard Storm, was shot on September 14, 1979 and premiered on ABC-TV on November 4, 1979.
Synopsis[]
Mindy goes to the hospital for a Tonsillectomy but due to an administrative mix up with her name ends up being listed for brain surgery, too drugged up to know. Fortunately, her knight in shining suspenders is up to the job.
Plot[]
Mork arrives in the NY Deli sporting a pith helmet with a protective face net and spraying disinfectant over everybody and their food. When Remo & Jeanie rush to stop him driving off their customers, and find out what he's up to, Mork removes his helmet to reveal a spiffy new haircut. And the fact that he's the 'advance' guard for Mindy, who enters when it's safe, informing them she has to have her tonsils out and Mork is driving her crazy being overprotective.
Jeanie says there is nothing to worry about it's a very simple procedure, and Remo agrees, adding that 'most' of the doctors know what they're doing, before being less than comforting about there being losers in every profession. When Jeanie tries to quieten him, Remo encourages her to tell all the funny stories from Med School about people leaving instruments inside the patient. Neither Mindy nor Mork are overly thrilled by the tales, and Mindy declares she's off to check herself in to the hospital before Remo & Jeanie manage to change her mind.
Ad for Mork's Health Hints - TV Guide - Nov 3rd - 9th, 1979
In the hospital, Mindy is sharing a room with a young girl, Susie, who is counting how long it's taking the Nurse to arrive since she hit the call button for her and is up to 7,048. As she's trying her own call button, Mork arrives in to visit her, and presents her with the biggest flower he could find, a cauliflower. Asking if she's 'fixed' yet, Mindy tells him her operation isn't till the next day. Introducing Mork to Susie, Mindy explains the hospital is low on space so they've but her in the children's ward. As they're talking a Nurse arrives in with a wheelchair to take Mindy down for her tests. When Mindy mentions she thought she was due to have them over an hour ago, the Nurse apologizes and explains that she is the only nurse working three floors. That there's something going around and a lot of nurses are out sick.
As Mindy's led away for blood tests, Mork tells Susie, he's not really worried, Mindy told him she had the best doctor, but Susie tells him that's what her mother told her about *her* doctor. Which leaves Mork wondering if everyone has the best doctor where do all the dead people come from. He tells Susie that where he comes from they don't have hospitals just 'Doc in the Boxes' where you drive up to a clown face and tell them your ailment and out comes a pill. Susie is in because she accidentally swallowed a bubble pipe, and Mork is horrified when she tells him that in order to get it out they're going to have to cut her open, immediately starting to fret about Mindy's safety. His fretting ratchets up when Susie tells him Mindy will probably be knocked out by men wearing masks beforehand. When the Nurse returns and finds him still there despite visiting hours being over, he tells her that he is going to stay to protect Mindy. But while she tries to convince him that Mindy will get the best of attention, he leaves less than reassured.
The next day Mork is straight back in, and Susie is gone, replaced with an even younger girl. He speaks to what appears to be Mindy asleep under the covers, when he tries to wake her he finds it's another, sleepy slightly older girl. Susie's replacement, Pattie, is pretty amused by Mork's manic behavior, and tells him straight up she has never heard of Mindy. When a new nurse, with her arm in a sling comes in, she demands to know what Mork is doing in the children's room. When he asks her where Mindy is she's never heard of her either, and tells him he must be in the wrong room, but Mork points out that the cauliflower he brought her is still there. The Nurse admits she wasn't there yesterday, having gone elsewhere to get her arm seen to, showing no confidence in her own place of work to help her. When she asks for Mindy's details and Mork tells her she's 23, the Nurse tells him he's definitely in the wrong place, that this is the children's ward. She then tells him she hopes Mindy's not been mixed up with another patient, as there's a chance she could have the wrong surgery. But that's not likely. Again.
A deeply upset Mork tries to get some help in tracing Mindy from Hospital Administrator, Horace Burnett, who believes him, but is more concerned with covering the hospital's legal ass then helping find Mindy. That task he leaves to Mork. Who intends to do just that, and refuses to sign an exoneration form for the hospital in case anything happens to Mindy, and refuses to leave the hospital even though visiting hours are over.
Elsewhere the Nurse with the sling is attending to a blissfully drugged up Mindy, who is down as Mrs MacDonald. She is sharing a room with a post-operative brain surgery patient who is less than coherent, but who knows that Mindy too is scheduled for brain surgery. With the nurse gone, Mork enters in full surgical get up with a mask on, and on seeing Mindy pounces on her, hugging and kissing a giggling Mindy all over, and then having to explain it away to her room mate as the best kind of physical therapy, 'it gives the patient something to live for'. Mindy for her part is cheerfully sky high, but when he refers to her as Miss McConnell her roommate corrects him and tells him that's Mrs MacDonald and she's scheduled for brain surgery. On hearing that Mork flies into a panic, and tries to get Mindy out of bed. Finding her out of it he thinks he's too late.
Trying to get her into a wheelchair she ends upside down, pulling her out he ends up under her on the bed, as the Nurse walks in. Telling her he was checking Mindy for lumps he pulls her up again, the nurse tells him she's due for surgery in 2 hours. Relieved, he doubles his efforts to get her out of there, telling the nurse her name is McConnell not MacDonald. He's not helped by Mindy herself, who is quite enjoying her high, and being manhandled by Mork. The arrival of Doctor Roland as they reach the door sees Mork back on the bed with her. The nurse appeals to the doctor that Mork, who she still thinks is a doctor, but Mork refuses to relinquish Mindy to him. Trying to forcibly take her from him, they force him to the window with her. Alarmed they tell Mork they are up 6 storeys. Mindy happily says she loves stories, before falling out the window, thankfully landing the broad ledge just outside. Utterly unphased by the height, or the people telling her to jump, Mindy happily wanders off around the ledge, as Mork tries to fend off the doctor and nurse (including biting the nurse), until Horace Burnett arrives and confirms that Mork is in fact right, and Mork manages to drag Mindy in from the ledge before she attempts a complex dive off it.
Back at the Deli, Jeanie is feeding a post op Mindy up on ice cream, with Mork enjoying the byproduct. The whole thing was caused by a typographical error, and on behalf of her future profession Jeanie apologizes, but says of course Nurses and Doctors just really do want to help.
The episode ends with Mork reporting to Orson who is coughing and sick, all the medical clowns are broken, and Orson can't find a doctor who can afford him. Mork explains he had to rescue Mindy from a hospital, and explains hospitals as places humans are interred while they're are sick and aren't released until they've given the hospital all their money. Like a jail only the food is worse. But he also realizes that while its tough to be sick it's also tough to be a doctor. Most doctors are human, but most people won't allow doctors to be human.
Trivia[]
Orkan 'Facts'[]
- It's revealed that, on Ork, the doctors pay people to see them, as without sick people, doctors would have nothing to do.
General[]
- Apart from Mork signing into report to Orson, this episode along with Season 4's Gotta Run, Part 2, is one of the few episodes to have no scenes in Mindy's Apartment
- Mork again uses the Shiksa descriptive for Mindy "But soon will be back to her old uninfected self. And back being so cute and adorable and Shiksa like!"
- Mindy's age is confirmed as 23 at this point.
- The "Bruce Lee Lives!" line uttered by Mork as he's doing a martial arts pose, fending off the hospital staff from Mindy was made in complete ignorance by Robin Williams of who Bruce Lee was. Never having heard of the martial arts star, Williams did the joke on a bet with writer April Kelly, whose gag it was, and who bet him it would get a huge laugh/reaction from the live audience. She won. [1]
- Pam Dawber appears to get a little of her own back on Robin Williams trying to make her corpse, by licking up the side of his face as Mork is struggling to get Mindy to the door. .
- Anita Dangler who plays Virginia the brain surgery patient in the room with Mindy would return just 7 episodes later in Exidor's Wedding to play Exidor's mother Princess Lusitania.
Pop Culture[]
- Mork references the movie Alien when turning down Susie's offer to press her stomach so he can feel the bubbles from the bubble pipe she accidentally swallowed.
- And alarmed Mork says 'Woah, Kemo Sabe' to Susie when she explains they are going knock them out in order to cut her and Mindy open for surgery. Another Lone Ranger allusion.
- Mork says someone in the hospital kept paging Dr. Fine. This is a reference to the classic 3 Stooges short Men in Black (1934).
- Pattie, the girl who has replaced Virginia and has no idea who Mindy is when Mork returns the day of the operation is played by the young Kim Fields the same year she would go on to sitcom fame of her own playing 'Tootie' on The Facts of Life and Diff'rent Strokes and later as Regine in Living Single.
- Horace Burnett immediately contacts his secretary 'Miss Chayefsky' to tell her to contact the hospital's lawyers after discovering Mindy's disappearance. An in joke on the playwright Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote and directed the 1971 movie 'The Hospital' starring George C. Scott, about a doctor and Hospital in chaos.
- Burnett tells his secretary to tell their lawyers 'The Eagle Has Landed' in reference to having lost a patient, though the phrase was made famous by Neil Armstrong after Apollo 11's successful landing on the moon.
- Mork tries to throw off the Nurse, suspicious of him, by telling her she assisted him with a lip transplant for the wide mouthed front man of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger.
Quotes[]
- Mindy: I am going to have my tonsils out, and Mork has been running around....driving me crazy! He's...
- Mork: Mindy Mindy! Mindy! You shouldn't talk. You should rest your tonsils for the coming out party.
______________________
- Mork: Maybe I should stay here and protect Mindy. That might be good! Otherwise she might have her insides on the outside. She might get her liver caught on her pantyhose!
______________________
- Mork: Knives, masks! What's the name of this hospital? Our Lady of Central Park?
______________________
- Mork: Where's Mindy?
- Nurse2: There's no Mindy here. You must be in the wrong room.
- Mork: No she's gotta be here! I mean she was here yesterday!
- Nurse2: Oh! Well I wouldn't know. See I broke my wrist yesterday, and had to go out to get it fixed.
- Mork: Why didn't you get it fixed here?
- Nurse 2: Here? *starts to laugh* You gotta be kiddin'. *laughs more*
______________________
- Mork: My dear lady, I'm a doctor. I don't make mistakes unless it's a matter of life, death or a bill.
______________________
- Mork: There we go! *backing away with her* Lets go Mind!
- Mindy: You dance divinely, do you come here often?!
______________________
- Doctor: *to Mork* Doctor I think you should put that patient down.
- Mork: *pulls her to him* NO! SHE'S MINE!!!
______________________
- Doctor: *to Mork* Doctor please, give Mrs MacDonald back to us.
- Mork: Her name isn't MacDonald its McConnell!
- Nurse: MacDonald.
- Mindy: Over 30 Billion sold! Wanna see my arches? *lifts her foot and falls over*
______________________
- Mindy: Now for my first dive! A Four and a Half Gainer with a full twist Sommie!
- Mork: Mindy!! *drags her in through window*
- Mindy: *laughing* I'm so glad you did that, you know why?
- Mork: Why
- Mindy: *grinning* Cuz I can't swim!
______________________
Image Gallery[]
Episode Cast[]
Starring[]
- Robin Williams as Mork
- Pam Dawber as Mindy McConnell
- Jay Thomas as Remo DaVinci
- Gina Hecht as Jeannie DaVinci
- Tom Poston as Mr. Bickley
- Ralph James as Orson
Guest starring[]
- Shirley Jo Finney as Nurse #1
- Barbara Cason as Nurse #2
- Anita Dangler as Virginia
- Michelle Downey as Susie
- Kim Fields as Pattie
- Wayne Morton as Dr. Roland
- Vernon Weddle as Horace Burnett
External links[]
[1] - Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Making Of Mork & Mindy