Well written show. Had a great cast Including Robin Williams and Pam Dawber. This show was really funny especially the floating egg.
Loved it as a kid but watching it now makes me want to go back in time and tell Robin to stop doing so much coke.
I enjoyed the first season–especially the episodes featuring Exidor the crazy cult leader. Robert Donner and Williams had great chemistry.
It kinda went downhill as it went on, though, and by the time they got to Nelson Flavor and the two diner owners and Morgan Fairchild (not to mention Jonathan Winters as a reverse-aging baby) it lost most of its steam.
The episode where Mork met Robin Williams was good–particularly poignant when watched after his death, because it’s about dealing with too much fame.
I thought a lot of that show was ad-libbed.
From what I’ve heard, there was very little writing involved. Whole pages of the script would say “Mork does his thing,” much to the chagrin of the other cast members. There was A LOT of Williams’ improvisation.
I suspect this grew by an order of magnitude after Jonathan Winters joined the show.
Most any scene that focused on Robin Williams and/or Jonathan Winters (especially AND) was largely ad-libbed. There were many pages of script that just said ‘Robin (and Jonathan) go(es) off here’. Just after RW’s death, I caught a show about Mork & Mindy, that talked to Pam Dawber, who recalled those ‘go off here’ scenes often ended up with far, far more footage than they could possibly use - including at least one case where they went on for 40-odd minutes, with the rest of the cast just sitting off to the side enjoying the show…or trying to avoid corpsing, if they were on-camera.
Well, from what I’ve read that particular script was a protest by the writers after Robin did too much bragging.
The question isn’t whether ad libbing went on - lots of it did - but how many of the ad libs made it to the end product. Since most of the shows were devoted to plot and other characters, the answer has to be, not that many.
I loved this show as a kid. I even had Mork suspenders and a bunch of buttons on them.
I thought it really tanked after Jonathan Winters joined. He did a great job of the character he’d been given, but it was just really squicky and unpleasant to watch after that.
I too liked the show as a kid (and had the Mork suspenders).
When I went back not too long ago and watched some episodes from the first season, my impression was that Williams’s shtick was what made it worth watching. Robin Williams was something special, but if you subtracted his contribution, you’d have a bland, conventional, dated sitcom.
I agree. Take Williams out of the equation, and the writing was really lame. I lost interest in the series right after the start of the second season.
Yes.
Still had Pam Dawber.
They had be at: “Fly! Be free!”
Depends on the circumstances and how much time they had to fill. AIUI, in “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, virtually all of the office scenes were ad-libbed. Seems to me this could be easily true for virtually all the scenes Mindy’s apartment with just the two of them; three when Winters was added.
I don’t remember ever reading this. It doesn’t seem likely, either.
I found this in a transcript of van Dyke on Larry King.
This is the way a lot of good comedies operate and it certainly applies to Mork and Mindy. That Morey Amsterdam made others laugh by throwing them a curve is no surprise, but it’s a huge step from saying that the whole office scenes were ad-libbed. They were obviously carefully worked out and thoroughly rehearsed.
it’s funny for a couple episodes but after that Robin William’s manic shtick really gets grating
Shazbot, my good sir! Bebo shazbot.
In 1978, in weekly doses, it was refreshingly original. By 1990 it started to get exhausting.
I’ve read that about The Three Stooges too. Much of the script consisted of “Stooges do their thing.”
The show did a lot of a-d libbing. That’s what made it funny.