Watch . . . and Learn!
Issue #1, Summer 1989

Thank heavens for VCRs!  Because of the advent of the home video industry, P.S. fans are able to tape their favorite episodes and watch them over and over.  Perfect Strangers is a great show for videotaping because they hold up so well!  Time after time they're still as fresh and funny as the first time we watched them.  But with all that viewing you may have noticed some odd inconsistencies that part-time viewers probably wouldn't notice.

That's what the "watch . . . and learn" section is all about!  We're going to point out some of the interesting things to look for when you rewatch your P.S. tapes.  After looking at some of these things a little closer, you may find yourself saying "Let me get this straight . . . "

And to start us off, we'll be taking a look at:

THE MYSTERY OF THE THIRD SEASON DOORS!

As if the hundreds of subtle clues in the theme song weren't enough, it should be apparent by now that Balki and Larry live in Chicago.  (Every week they dress up and then take the train to see The Odd Couple.  Is this a Rocky Horror kind of thing with them?  You big kidder!)

We'll be taking a closer look at some of the addresses and places they've lived in future issues.  But for now, let's focus our attention on the third season.

The third season started off with Balki and Larry getting jobs at the Chicago Chronicle.  In the first scene, Larry excitedly runs through the door to announce he's just had coffee (well, taken coffee to) the mayor of Chicago.  Looking closely you will see that he enters through a door on the left side of the fireplace.  He then proceeds to a door on the right side of the fireplace and opens it, revealing a closet.  That's all well and good in itself.  But in the very next show which aired, Weigh to Go, Buddy, in which Larry is trying to lose weight, the front door is very obviously on the right side of the fireplace.  What goes on here?

There are only three episodes the third season in which the front door was on the left side of the fireplace.  I'll save you the trouble of looking for them; they are the first episode of the season mentioned above titled All the News That Fits, Taking Stock in which Balki buys one share of stock in the UniCorn corporation, and The Break In, in which Balki and Larry end up on a ledge of the Chronicle building after trying to retrieve Larry's joke version of a dog show story.

These three episodes did not air very close to each other, so how did this change in sets happen?  We can only speculate, but if you'll notice in each of these episodes Balki's hair is about the same length and the shows have a similar "look."  At the end of the second season a director's strike was anticipated, and so it's very likely they filmed these three shows at the end of the second season instead of the beginning of the third.  (Number one: the shows are not necessarily shown in the order they are filmed.  Number two: the first show filmed for the third season was not the newspaper episode but the grocery store spree show, Better Shop Around.)

The number of the apartment on the door on the right is 207, while on the left door there is a letter C.  When they started the fourth season, they hadn't moved at all, right?  Yet the number on the front door changed to 209.  (Well, I'll be snookered!)

Oh well, we can always find their apartment Friday nights on ABC so it doesn't really matter much, does it?

Continue on to the next Watch . . . and Learn!