Season 6 Episode 10: Kelly Does Hollywood (2)

Kelly’s public access show has attracted a network, so Al, Bud and Kelly fly to Hollywood to find out what the network wants to do with it. Marcy attempts to come along, and her plea at the front door is one of Amanda Bearse’s great moments: she is a pregnant banker jet-skiing towards forty, she was voted Most Likely to Succeed, she has a reunion coming up, and she would like at minimum to be able to claim she slept with Chuck Woolery. Al’s advice to the children is to ease past her carefully, because they say the mad have strength. In Hollywood the trio arrive at NBS Studios and are handed over to an executive producer named Jeff Littlehead, played by Jon Lovitz at the absolute height of his powers, who proceeds to do to Kelly’s show exactly what television executives do. Everything about it is changed. A co-host is added. The format is retooled. By the time it reaches air it is unrecognizable and it is cancelled almost immediately. Running underneath all of this is Al working the building for his own purposes, pitching show concepts to Littlehead between sentences of his daughter’s actual business. He has three. A western about a mystic wandering in search of his brother who fights with specialized footwear, called Kung Shoe. A shoe salesman in the twenty-third century, called Shoe Trek. And a third idea with no footwear content at all that he would like to be personally involved with, called Breasts. Littlehead does not feel it.

Episode Facts

• Original air date: November 17, 1991
• Season and episode: Season 6, Episode 10
• Overall episode number: 115
• Written by: Larry Jacobson
• Directed by: Gerry Cohen
• Taped: November 1, 1991
• Production note: Neither Peggy nor Jefferson appear in this episode.
• Production note: Garth Ancier, who plays the Tug Boat Danger star Gig Fontaine, was not an actor. He was the President of Programming at FOX, this show’s own network, at the time.
• Title note: Modeled on the title of the 1978 film Debbie Does Dallas.

Guest Cast

• Jon Lovitz as Jeff Littlehead
• Garth Ancier as Gig Fontaine
• Denise Richards as Girl #2 (credited as Denise Lee Richards)
• Kari Wuhrer as Joanie
• Peter Steinfeld as Rock Turboman (credited as Pete Steinfeld)
• Megan O’Hara as Girl #1
• Heather Grimes as Roberta
• Donna Eskra as Cyndy
• Georgi Irene as Samantha
• Lisa Fuhrman as Jeannie
• Victor Hugo Basso as the hairdresser
• Cleveland O’Neal III as the stage manager
• Edd Hall as the TV announcer (voice)

The NBS Fall Lineup

The best joke in the episode is wallpaper. When the Bundys walk into the NBS lobby, the posters on the wall advertising the network’s lineup are all gags at the expense of the show’s own staff. There is “Ellen and Her Dog,” for producer Ellen L. Fogle. “Black Cop, White Girl,” for co-creator Michael G. Moye. “Me and the Shiksa,” for writer Larry Jacobson and co-executive producer Stacie Lipp. “The Homeless Detective,” for Ron Leavitt. And “Amos N’ Andrew,” which is the only title Kelly declines to read aloud, reacting instead with a flat “Oh, come on!”

Jon Lovitz is the reason the Hollywood half works. Littlehead is a perfectly observed television executive, which is to say he agrees with everything, commits to nothing, and destroys the thing he claimed to love by improving it. His verdict on Al’s pitches, after standing through all three with his arms folded, is that he just does not feel it.

Denise Richards is in this episode, uncredited by her later screen name and billed as Denise Lee Richards, two years before her first real film work. Peter Steinfeld, here as Rock Turboman, had already appeared back in season 3’s “Life’s a Beach” as the lifeguard.

The two-parter has an obvious cousin in Wayne’s World, which was in production at the same time: an Illinois public access show gets national attention and network executives ruin it. The film also featured Ed O’Neill and Ted McGinley, along with several other actors who passed through this series.

Famous Quotes

• Marcy, blocking the front door: “Oh, please, take me with you! I’m a pregnant banker jet-skiing towards 40, for God’s sake! … At least let me be able to say that I slept with Chuck Woolery.”
• Al, to the children: “Ease by her carefully, kids. They say the mad have strength.”
• Marcy, revising her terms: “Hey, hey, at least let me be ‘Slut of the Week’. I’m already pregnant!”
• Al, pitching: “There’s this mystic guy, wandering across the west, in search of his long lost brother. Now, instead of gun, get this! He’s fitted with an assortment of fighting footwear! It’s called, Kung Shoe!”
• Al, undeterred: “There’s a shoe salesman in the 23rd century, called Shoe Trek!”

Notes

• The Hollywood arrival montage uses stock footage of the Hollywood sign, the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Walk of Fame and Mann’s Chinese Theater, where a Misery poster is visible. Columbia produced both that film and, through its television division, this series.
• Marcy mentions that she was voted Most Likely to Succeed and describes herself as jet-skiing towards forty, which would put her around thirty-eight or thirty-nine. Amanda Bearse was about thirty-three when it aired.
• Megan O’Hara, the woman in the purple dress who flirts with Bud, had played Lola in “God’s Shoes” a couple of episodes earlier.
• The Facts of Life theme returns at the very end, as Al gives up and shoots himself in the head with the television remote.
• A visible goof: the camera actually shooting the episode is reflected in the mirror behind Kelly during the hairdressing scene, following her across the set.