The President will be dining at Above the Top for a fundraising dinner, so the staff must be vetted by the FBI. Everyone's worried about skeletons in their closets coming to light.
Amy (to Cassie): "We've all got our dirty laundry to hide but yours has those tough, hard-to-get-out stains".
This is the first superior episode of the reboot. Having all the characters written into one coherent story instead of three or four scattered small subplots is always satisfying.
The interview sequence is the highlight of the show and is very reminiscent of a similar scene in Season 2's "Off the Top" in that we get to hear some of the characters' backstories, which is always interesting. Nancy hails from Philadelphia; Sonny was actually a child prodigy; Amy is a virgin; Howard served in Korea with the Marines.
Amy makes a reference to Jimmy Swaggart. This is the first time we hear about the religious aspect of Amy's character. It's a wise move from the writers and lets her be more than just a fish-out-of-water hick type.
The script has Nancy singling Cassie out as the best waitress. We certainly know it isn't Dot! There is a sweet twist regarding Cassie's secret, but Jan's is the funniest: she once mooned a cop at a protest march in the Sixties.
The Secret Service agent who grills Howard is played by a pre-THAT '70s SHOW Kurtwood Smith.
The title of this episode is a wink to a short-lived Witt-Thomas-Harris sitcom that aired in Spring 1985 on ABC and starred Patty Duke. She would make a cameo appearance on IT'S A LIVING in Season 4's "The Evictables".
I was going to rate this an 8 for the series as a whole, but have decided to start rating the syndicated era on its own merits, and stop comparing it to the ABC years, so ... a 9-star episode.
Amy (to Cassie): "We've all got our dirty laundry to hide but yours has those tough, hard-to-get-out stains".
This is the first superior episode of the reboot. Having all the characters written into one coherent story instead of three or four scattered small subplots is always satisfying.
The interview sequence is the highlight of the show and is very reminiscent of a similar scene in Season 2's "Off the Top" in that we get to hear some of the characters' backstories, which is always interesting. Nancy hails from Philadelphia; Sonny was actually a child prodigy; Amy is a virgin; Howard served in Korea with the Marines.
Amy makes a reference to Jimmy Swaggart. This is the first time we hear about the religious aspect of Amy's character. It's a wise move from the writers and lets her be more than just a fish-out-of-water hick type.
The script has Nancy singling Cassie out as the best waitress. We certainly know it isn't Dot! There is a sweet twist regarding Cassie's secret, but Jan's is the funniest: she once mooned a cop at a protest march in the Sixties.
The Secret Service agent who grills Howard is played by a pre-THAT '70s SHOW Kurtwood Smith.
The title of this episode is a wink to a short-lived Witt-Thomas-Harris sitcom that aired in Spring 1985 on ABC and starred Patty Duke. She would make a cameo appearance on IT'S A LIVING in Season 4's "The Evictables".
I was going to rate this an 8 for the series as a whole, but have decided to start rating the syndicated era on its own merits, and stop comparing it to the ABC years, so ... a 9-star episode.