The Terrible Catsafterme

SEASON 1 – NBC

Created by Fred Barron, Dottie Dartland, and Marco Pennette

Theme music by Jonathan Wolff

• 001. The Pilot – 9/21/1995
  • Caroline Duffy (Lea Thompson) is a cartoonist of the syndicated comic strip Caroline in the City living in Manhattan with her cat Salty. She lives in an apartment across the hall from her best friend Annie Spadaro (Amy Pietz). After a some unsuccessful attempts, she hires sardonic struggling artist Richard Karinsky (Malcolm Gets) as her colorist who only takes the job to make ends meet. Caroline has just broken up with Del Cassidy (Eric Lutes), the president of Cassidy Greeting Cards that handles the Caroline line of products. When she finds out that Del has a date that night, she pretends she also has a date and that they’re going to Remo’s… where Del happens to be taking his date. She tries to come up with a date and ends up meeting a man named Jeff (Jason Workman) by randomly throwing fruit out the window and seeing who it hits. It turns out that Jeff is married, so Caroline ends up by herself at Remo’s, running into Del and his perky blonde date Debby (Christine Taylor). Del find this out when Jeff calls and heads to Remo’s to deliver the note, and ends up kissing her and posing as her date. Del ends up jealous and Caroline admits the ruse. He wants to get back together, but she questions his commitment, so they agree to be friends. Andy Lauer is Charlie, Del’s delivery boy. Tom La Grua is Remo. John Mariano is Johnny the Maitre d’. Cathy Ladman is Caroline’s ultimate fan. Sean Sullivan is colorist applicant Monroe. 4/4/15

• 002. Caroline and the Mugger – 9/28/1995
  • Caroline and Del get back together and plan a trip to Atlantic City. When Richard gets mugged by an unarmed man and loses the portfolio containing Carolyn’s calendar artwork that is due on Monday, Carolyn has to stay home and redo it and sends Del ahead on the trip. Trying to make Richard feel better, Caroline takes him out to buy a new wallet. While on the subway Richard spots the mugger (Ref Mauro) and Caroline attacks him and has him arrested. Richard feels emasculated and depressed, but when he thinks a large man (Chuck Mavich) pickpocket him on the subway he threatens the man and takes the wallet… only to realize that he had his wallet all of the time and that he had mugged a man. Caroline has to bail him out of jail, after a quickie with Del, who has returned from Atlantic City after losing his $500 in ten minutes. Meanwhile Annie plans to have a party while Caroline is gone, but when she doesn’t go to Atlantic City, the party moves to her place although a few of the party-goers still show up at Caroline’s. 4/4/15
• 003. Caroline and the Gay Art Show – 10/5/1995
  • Annie fakes choking at Remo’s so that she can meet art gallery owner Kenneth Arabian (Dan Butler) and ask him to take a look at Richard’s artwork. Arabian likes the work and offers to have his work displayed in one of his art shows. Charlie informs Caroline that only gay artists are displayed at the Arabian Gallery. Initially Richard wants to back out until he finds out that his piece Nude Female Reclining could sell for $20,000. When it sells to couple Bob and Bob, Richard feels guilty for being dishonest and tells Arabian that he’s not gay, despite Del pretending he is Richard’s lover and trying to stop him. Arabian forgives him but notifies the Bobs and tears up the check. Meanwhile Caroline switches to a new hairdresser and tells her current stylist Allen (Neal Lerner) that she’s moved to Norway, but then awkwardly runs into him at the gallery. Del is disappointed that none of the gay men are hitting on him. Jack Kenny is fellow artist Howard Berman. 4/4/15
• 004. Caroline and the Bad Back – 10/12/1995
  • Caroline injures her back playing racquetball in competition with Del, and tries to complete a comic strip that is due later that day while in pain. She ends up taking Annie’s pain pills which make her drowsy and loopy… and unable to complete her strip, becoming more obsessed with finding ginger ale. When Richard and Del find out that the newspaper will double-run her competition strip Cathy if she misses the deadline, they put their heads together and come up with a strip about shoe shopping. When Caroline wakes up, she is visibly disappointed in their strip, but tells them otherwise to spare their feelings. Meanwhile in Seattle, Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves) doesn’t understand the strip, while Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) thinks it is funny. NOTE: The last scene is a crossover from the TV series Frasier.  4/3/15
• 005. Caroline and the ATM – 10/19/1995
  • Caroline is shorted $200 at an ATM, but when she visits Mrs. Banks (Ileen Getz) at the bank, she finds out that they will have to look at the video. Caroline doesn’t want to do that because she had used the ATM mirror to pick her nose. Eventually she goes back to the bank and she and the manager Mr. Green (Jason Graae) view the video. Caroline gets her money, but also is pretty confident that they’ll be showing her video at the Christmas party. Meanwhile Richard wants to break up with his chatterbox girlfriend Shelly (Lauren Graham), and uses the excuse that he is allergic to the dog Bonnie Belinda that she adores. It backfires when Shelly gets rid of the dog. Richard tries to retrieve it to say that it found its way back, but decides not to take it from the deaf boy who now owns it… and stays with Shelly. Caroline tries to get comfortable enough to floss around Del, and he tries to use the bathroom with the door open. They compromise and end up cleaning out their ears together. Bill Pugin is Mr. Fleming. 6/26/15
• 006. Caroline and the Folks – 11/2/1995
  • Del invites Caroline to have dinner with his parents, but he ends up getting stranded on a subway with Charlie. Caroline meets them at Remo’s but upon arrival sees that the mother (Constance Towers) is completely rude, while her husband (Lou Felder) sits by idly. Caroline tries to hide from them, and then pretends to be a hostess who can’t speak English, but just before Del arrives, she reads them the riot act about their rudeness. Del then informs her that his parents are actually at a different table. Meanwhile Richard turns 30 and tells everyone he will be partying with friends. Annie runs into him in the video store and they accidentally swap videos. Annie goes to his apartment to retrieve the video and finds him alone. To get him out of his depression, Annie accompanies him to the Museum of Modern Art, where Richard paints a picture on the wall outside, fulfilling his dream to have his work hang in a museum by the age of 30. NOTE: This is a crossover episode that contains cameos by Friends character Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) and The Single Guy character Jonathan Eliot (Jonathan Silverman). 6/26/15
• 007. Caroline and the Opera – 11/9/1995
  • When Caroline’s Aunt Mary Kosky (Jean Stapleton) comes into town from Wisconsin after separating from her husband, she notes that Caroline doesn’t have an engagement ring from Del yet and sets her up to meet with an old awkward schoolmate named Peter Welmerling (Peter Krause). Del wants to get out of going to the opera with Caroline so he suggests that Peter escort her. However when Del sees how attractive and successful Peter has become, he turns to Richard to tutor him on the opera The Marriage of Figaro, so that he can talk intelligently about it when they all meet up for drinks after the opera. Their conversation digresses into each of them showing off their juggling, chair balancing, and handstands in the restaurant. As the walk home after getting kicked out of Remo’s, Caroline confesses that she thought Del’s gesture was romantic. 8/30/15
• 008. Caroline and the Balloon – 11/16/1995
  • Caroline has always wanted to take part in the New York City Thanksgiving Day Parade, and her dream comes true when she gets to hold on the rope for the Caroline in the City balloon. She gets to Del to accompany her, while Richard only comes when he tries to get out of spending Thanksgiving with Shelly, and Annie decides that it will be worth getting up so early because their balloon will be near the float on which Florence Henderson (herself) will be singing My Favorite Things. Shelly ends up coming with Richard and ticks off a man wearing fur by throwing paint on it. During the parade he catches up with them, causing them to release the Caroline float, which drifts over the city. It ends up getting shot down by the National Guard, which greatly depresses Caroline. To cheer her up, Annie brings over Florence Henderson, who was injured by the balloon, and then coaxes her into talking about The Brady Bunch. 8/30/15
• 009. Caroline and the Convict – 12/7/1995
  • Caroline tells Richard that he should bring something of his own to decorate his work area in her apartment, so he brings the giant painting that he created called My Mother’s Womb. Meanwhile Annie has fallen for a new boyfriend named Stephen (Tom Conlon), and while they are having dinner with Caroline and Del, Stephen tells them that he is an ex-con who had been in prison for robbery. Caroline warns Annie about not getting too close with him, but Annie ignores her warnings. Later Caroline comes home to find her apartment robbed, and one of the items stolen was Richard’s paintings. Caroline doesn’t tell the policeman Officer Bloch (David Byrd) about Stephen, but privately tells Annie that she suspects him. Annie doesn’t want to hear it, but agrees to arrange a stakeout to see if Stephen shows up to steal the new TV that she tells Stephen that Caroline has gotten. Sure enough, he does show up… but says that he heard a noise and was going to investigate. Stephen is clearly hurt and disappointed that no one trusted him, so he walks out on Annie… and attempts to steal Del’s car. Richard locates his painting with a homeless man (Jimm Giannini), but when he tells Richard how much he appreciates the work, Richard lets him keep it. The homeless man tells his friend that they nearly lost their ‘roof’. 11/24/15
• 010. Caroline and the Christmas Break – 12/14/1995
  • Caroline and Del look to travel agent Mindi (Lorna Luft) to book a Paris trip for Christmas, but when Mindi tells them that the next opening is in April, Del alludes to not knowing if he and Caroline will still be together by then. Caroline decides to break up with Del, but before she can, he breaks up with her. She gets revenge by portraying Del in her newest comic strip as a cross dresser. Caroline feels bad when he gives her two tickets to Paris and tells her to take anyone he wants. Meanwhile Richard is still trying to get rid of Shelly, so Annie has the idea to get Charlie to ask her out. Charlie reports back that Shelly has accepted his date, which starts to bother Richard when Annie appears to be lying to him about the date with Charlie. When Richard shows up on their date, he finds that Charlie is there with a woman who isn’t Shelly, since Charlie has had the wrong woman the entire time. Richard ends up breaking up with Shelly like normal, but she finds this to be excellent news as she thinks that couple who have broken up and got back together have the best relationships. 11/24/25
• 011. Caroline and the Gift – 1/4/1996
  • Caroline takes back the ugly earrings that Del got her for Christmas and finds out from the proprietor Mr. Davies (Keene Curtis) at Frank & Sons that they cost $1243. She finds the gift inappropriate since she and Del broke up, but wants to trade them for a tennis bracelet. Also not wanting to hurt Del’s feelings, she buys the bracelet with her own money, plus buys Del an expensive watch. As Del is opening his gift – which he too finds inappropriate – she gets a call from Davies telling her that he made a mistake and the earrings actually only cost $75. Meanwhile Richard is commissioned to paint a nude of an attractive woman named Donna (Fabiana Udenio), but then finds out from Remo that she is mobster Pauly Brown’s (Robert Miano) girlfriend. Caroline poses as a jealous wife in order to get Donna out of Richard’s apartment. Richard is then approached by Detectives Sgt. Weld and Sgt. Kaufman about setting up Brown, so he resumes the painting. However when Brown shows up, he is so pleased with the painting, he gives Richard $4000. Unfortunately is confiscated as dirty money as Brown is arrested. Brown appreciates Richard however and makes him part of the ‘family.’ Annie has a date with Rob Rothman (Andy Buckley), a man from her New Years party whom she can’t remember during her three-day bender. When he shows up, he is attractive… but is married and only there to do her taxes. 1/24/16
• 012. Caroline and the Married Man – 1/11/1996
  • Richard is up for a commissioned mural for the new Riceman building for the Tribeca Arts Council, and he meets with the head of the council Tom Barna (Beau Gravitte) and finds out he is one of three final candidates. Caroline and Tom are mutually attracted to one another, and Tom asks Richard to get him Caroline’s number, joking that it will improve his chances to get the job. Caroline and Tom run into Del, who gets angry at Richard for setting up Caroline on a date, thinking that there is still a chance they may reconcile. Caroline finds out that Richard is going to get the job, and he is ecstatic… but now feels guilty since Caroline seems to really like Tom. When Richard goes to drop his sketches off to Tom, he finds out from the receptionist (Jessie Jones), he finds out that Tom is married. Richard tries to get Annie or Del to tell Caroline that Tom is married. Tom actually confesses his marriage to Caroline, just before Richard, then Del, then Annie, during her 18-minute break from being onstage in Cats, rush in to tell Caroline about Tom. Richard loses the commission for his disloyalty to Tom. 1/24/16
• 013 Caroline and the Twenty-Eight Pound Walleye – 1/25/1996
  • When Mayor Paisley (James Callahan) of Peshtigo, Wisconsin realizes that the actress Tyne Daly was actually born in the neighboring town of Madison, Councilman Hardy (Patrick T. O’Brien) mentions that Caroline was actually born there, and would be a great replacement to name their park after. Caroline is flattered, and happy that her brother Chris (Paul Castree), a hotshot surgeon, with whom she has had a lifelong sibling rivalry, won’t be there. She drags Richard with her with the promise he can stay in a hotel with room service, but when the pipes freeze at the hotel, the lack of heat forces him to stay with Caroline and her parents Fred (Earl Holliman) and Margaret (Mariette Hartley), who have stuffed her childhood dog Sparky. Chris ends up coming home via helicopeter and steals Caroline’s thunder once again when he announces he will be the youngest doctor to go up in the space shuttle. Caroline reconciles her feelings about Chris, especially as she tells Richard that it was drawing cartoons of Chris that got her started in her line of work. However during the park dedication, the audience ends up leaving quickly when they hear that Chris has caught a twenty-eight pound walleye while ice fishing. Meanwhile back home, Annie’s understudy Lindsay (Beth Wishnie) talks Annie into letting her perform so her parents can see her. Annie gets suspicious and when she finds out that Lindsay’s parents aren’t registered at their supposed hotel, Annie rushes back and reads her the riot act. The parents do in fact show up backstage and Annie apologizes profusely….but after she leaves Lindsay tells her mother Mrs. Baerwald (Patricia Gaul) that she’ll be rid of her soon. Charlie sets up Del with Charlie’s girlfriend Laura’s third grade teacher Mrs. Gunther, now an elderly woman. 4/6/16
• 014. Caroline and the Watch – 2/1/1996
  • After arguing with Richard over who gets to use the drafting table, Caroline visits an auction house and buys a partners desk, but it is too large to get into the apartment. After trying to sell it to potential buyer Mr. Dunn (Robert Cesario), Caroline discovers a pocket watch still wrapped up as a gift that is dated 1945. Caroline tracks the owner of the desk Stella Dawson (Rose Marie) and her husband Vic Stansky (Morey Amsterdam) and she and Richard visit them to return the watch. Caroline finds out that Stella had originally planned to give Vic the watch with the inscription indicating that she had accepted his marriage proposal. Instead she chickened out and wound up married to someone else. She and Vic had only recently renewed their romance and gotten married a year earlier. Stella thinks Richard and Caroline are a couple, and when she finds out that they are not, she advises them not to wait fifty years like she and Vic did. Meanwhile Del attends the funeral of a former employee named Phil Parsons. Charlie advises Richard that Phil had been embezzling from him for years, and the fancy clothes he and his widow are wearing seem to corroborate this. Charlie steals the Rolex off the corpse of Phil, and Richard had to return it. Annie practices different ‘cat moves’ by emulating Salty. Beans Morocco is the minister. 4/6/16
• 015. Caroline and the Bad Date – 2/15/1996
  • Annie talks Caroline into asking out a man named Scott (Dan Cortese) who they encounter in a department store. He ends up being utterly paranoid about everything, then comes down with uncontrollable hiccups at the movies. As a result Scott makes Caroline take him to the emergency room. She tries to sneak out, but he insists on getting her a cab in a dark alley, where they are accosted by a mugger (Fred Stoller) and Scott runs away. Meanwhile Del talks Richard into joining him on a date with a girl named Stacy and her Cosmopolitan model friend Sherry. The girls end up cancelling to be with each other. Del spots a girl at Remo’s named Barbara Uda Gernan (Colleen McDermott), whom he once had sex with on the Brooklyn Bridge and then never called. Barbara doesn’t remember Del but asks him to join her, and then hits on Richard and leaves with him, confessing that she actually does remember Del and is only trying to get back at him by hitting on Richard. Caroline makes her way back to Remo’s and she and Del compare notes on their horrible dates. They wind up sleeping together and Del asks Caroline to marry him. 7/7/16
• 016. Caroline and the Proposal – 2/22/1996
  • Del reiterates his marriage proposal, but Caroline is unsure. When she tells Richard about it, he is flippant as per usual, but Annie is excited for her. She mentions that Richard’s attitude is because he has always had a thing for Caroline, which takes her by surprise. Meanwhile Del plans to quit working for Caroline, and looks for a new with a high-strung, man-crazy employment counselor named Maddie (Sharon Lawrence). Richard ends up sleeping with her, but when Caroline shows up at Richard’s house, he frantically tries to hide Maddie. Caroline finds her smoking in the closet, and leaves feeling foolish. Richard chases her down in the rain, but doesn’t profess his true feelings. Caroline returns home and finds Del and room full of flowers and accepts his marriage proposal. Cathy Ladman is the woman in the elevator. Joe Ochman is the mailman. 7/7/16
• 017. Caroline and the Kid – 3/14/1996
  • Caroline agrees to paint a mural for charity, and the winner is Martin Lepner (Gregory Itzen) who has paid $5000 to have the mural painted in his son Martin Jr. (Sam Gifaldi). Young Martin is a spoiled bully who mercilessly picks on Richard while they are working in his room. Caroline has more of a soft spot for young Martin paralleling the difficulty people have getting along with Richard although he is one of her favorite people. Richard remembers being bullied as a child himself. Meanwhile Caroline invites Marco (Burke Moses), an ex-boyfriend she dated in Venice during a break with Del, to go out to dinner and meet Del. Caroline gets caught up babysitting Martin, when the Lepner’s maid Rosa (Lupe Ontiveros) quits due to Martin’s bad behavior, so Del is forced to spend time alone with Marco. Del takes Marco to play racquetball, knowing that Del can beat him, but then is surprised in the locker room to see that Marco is much more endowed than he is, which causes Del to worry. When Martin breaks an expensive vase, Richard takes the rap so that his father won’t take him to military school, but when Martin acts smug and unappreciative, Caroline breaks another vase and blames it on Martin. Del is scared to hit the bedroom with Caroline… until she tells Del that she never actually slept with Marco. Annie gets hooked on a Korean soap opera. Perry Anzilotti is the health club attendant. 9/29/16
• 018. Caroline and the Ex-Wife – 3/28/1996
  • Inspired by Annie taking a taxi to get a sandwich in Philadelphia, Caroline encourages Del to be more spontaneous so they decide to head out to the cabin that he received in his divorce settlement from his ex-wife Jill (Joely Fisher). When they arrive, they are surprised to find that Jill is staying at the cabin with her boyfriend Blair (Kenny Johnson), who is a rich doofus that has asked Jill to marry him. Del is excited because this means it could end his alimony payments. When Blair makes a pass at Annie, he tries to keep it under wraps so that the marriage will continue. When Blair does it again, they finally tell Jill, who doesn’t care because she is only interested in a future divorce settlement with Blair. Meanwhile Annie’s brother Pete Spadaro (Adam Ferrara) helps Richard fix his light switch. When Richard encourages Pete to follow his dreams of being an electrician instead of staying in the business of running a funeral parlor, it arouses the anger of Pete’s parents Lou (Joseph Bologna) and Angie (Candice Azzara). They eventually agree to give Pete a chance, but after they leave, Richard’s television blows up. 10/1/16
• 019. Caroline and the Movie – 4/4/1996
  • Director John Landis (himself) is filming a movie starring Brian Dennehy and Robby Benson (himself) outside Caroline’s apartment. She signs herself, Annie, and Richard up to be extras, while Del has to retrieve his car from the DMV when it gets towed for being parked near the filming area. Charlie accompanies Del to the DMV and hits on the agent (Kathy Griffin), while her only advice when Del realizes that there is a Gremlin in the spot where his Porsche should be is to try to locate the person driving his Porsche and trade the Gremlin back for his own car. Meanwhile Richard gets jealous when Caroline is assigned to share a screen kiss with another actor named Blade Cannon (Rick Pasqualone), so he douses the other actor with food and offers to step into his part. Richard and Caroline feel and act so awkward about the kiss that they are replaced with other actors… although their crushes seemingly advance on each other. As a teenager, Annie told her friend Maria Louise Fanego (Sandra Purpuro) that she was going on a date with Robbie Benson, so after getting fired for bothering him during the take, she has Robbie cover for her and make up an excuse why he didn’t take her out. She gets lost in the moment and slaps Robbie while he is apologizing in front of Maria. Meanwhile Del tracks down the guy, Howie Bloom (Jeff Altman), who took his car, but when he confronts him, Howie is so thrilled to have picked up a date (Wendee Cole) while driving the Porsche that Del agrees to let Howie drive the car home until he gets his date inside. Plans go awry when Del takes the car as planned and Howie’s date reports the car stolen. The police end up pulling over Del as he drives home. Steven Banks is the assistant director Steve. 12/29/16
• 020. Caroline and the Cereal – 4/18/1996
  • Caroline’s agent James (Meshach Taylor) presents her with an offer from Dartland Foods that wants to use her cartoon on their new cereal boxes. She meets with their hyperactive executive Merle Heller (Vicki Lewis) and her underlings Ted (Larry Raben), Elliot (Bert Bartram), and George (Laird Macintosh), who proposes that they call the cereal ‘Sweet Carolines.’ Caroline is concerned that the cereal isn’t healthy, and decides to think it over, but ends up even more concerned when Richard points out that the puffed oats look like the female anatomy. She takes her concern back to Merle who arranges a focus group on the subject, but the members (Gregg Daniels, Norman Large, Rozz Witt) don’t see it… until Caroline suggests it to them. Merle decides that Caroline is too high maintenance so she dumps the idea in favor of producing them as Goatios. Meanwhile Del wants to be sure he knows how to dance at his wedding to Caroline, so he enlists Annie’s help, but Charlie turns out to be an even more impressive dancer so he winds up practicing with him. Remo attempts to grow a goatee. Denice Kumagagi is Lucille, the focus group moderator. 12/30/16
• 021. Caroline and Richard’s Mom – 4/25/1996
  • Annie attempts to retaliate against Richard’s practical jokes by pretending to have him arrested by a fake copy named Joseph (Matt Battaglia), but he blows his lines and Richard catches on quickly. However Richard is indeed surprised when his estranged mother Natalie (Elizabeth Ashley) comes for a visit to tell him that she is moving to London. Richard has bad feelings toward her for her abrasiveness and for telling him that she knew various celebrities including his idol Salvador Dali, while Richard waited in vain for Dali to critique his artwork. Caroline tries to get them to reconcile, but Natalie distracts her by telling her that her comic strip should be an animated show and takes him to see her supposed friend Warren Littlefield (himself) at NBC, but he turns out to not remember her. Richard is even more angry that she has now humiliated Caroline and tells her he doesn’t want to see her again. Natalie sends a box with Richard’s baby book and letters from Dali in which he said that Richard’s artwork was no good. Richard attempts to catch her at the airport but she has already left. Meanwhile Caroline tries to convince Del to get a pedicure, and he finally caves in and then becomes addicted to them. Charlie gets suspicious of Del’s excuses for being late to work and tracks him down to the salon, where he too becomes addicted to their services. John Ratzenberger is Mr. Berman. Nada Despitovich is salon proprietor Elzbieta. Wendy Lawless is the NBC receptionist. Producer James Vallely is himself. 4/7/17
• 022. Caroline and the Bridesmaids – 5/9/1996
  • Caroline names Annie as her Maid of Honor, but Annie keeps letting her down by forgetting to do tasks for her. Her other bridesmaids are annoying too: the pregnant Vicki (Tia Riebling), Linda (Christine Romeo), and Beth (Melora Hardin), who can do nothing but talk about her boyfriend Steve (Pat Finn). Del is also juggling his ushers to use on his side, but after appointing Charlie, he has no luck changing Greg (Tony Carlin) from Best Man to usher after Caroline realizes that he had been Del’s Best Man twice before. While Greg wants to make it all about him, Steve declines because he wants to break up and avoid Beth, and Del’s employee Eddie (Kenneth Alan Williams), who confesses to stealing petty cash before Del can ask him. Annie nearly bobbles arranging the wedding room and has to bribe young Elliott Spellman (Jarrett Lennon) to give up the room for his Bar Mitzvah. Annie then fumbles getting Caroline out of the house, so her friends can throw her a surprise shower, and after she does, Caroline berates her for dropping the ball so many times…to which Annie responds by quitting. When Caroline gets back to her apartment and sees the surprise, she finds Annie and brings her back and they apologize to each other. Del asks Richard to be one of the ushers, to which he accepts, even though his crush on Caroline is very much still alive. Charlie thinks the surprise shower is for his birthday. Olivia Virgil White is Mrs. Simmons. 4/7/17
• 023. Caroline and the Wedding – 5/16/1996
  • As the wedding approaches, Caroline has a dream that Richard comes to see her on her wedding day and gives her a check and a huge passionate kiss. As she tells Annie and her mother Angie about the dream, Angie warns her that it is an omen, especially when Richard shows up to work and mentions a check. Meanwhile Del has an anxiety attack when he tries on the wedding ring that Charlie has picked up for him, and then overhears Caroline telling Father Damien (Michael McKean), a substitute priest who has never officiated the wedding, that she might be getting cold feet about the marriage. Richard writes a Caroline a note that he is in love with her, and tells her if she feels that they might have a future to meet him at Remo’s. When Caroline shows up, he gives her a passionate kiss as she had dreamed, but it turns out that she hadn’t read the note and was meeting Del there. Richard scrambles back to her apartment to find the note, but when Caroline and Del return, he hides on the ledge and gets locked out in the rain. Through the window, it looks as if Caroline and Del are in the midst of a romantic moment, but in reality, they are discussing the wedding and deciding to call it off. Brokenhearted, Caroline goes to see Richard the next day, but finds out from the janitor (John Apicella) that he has moved out of his apartment. 11/12/17
• 024. Caroline and the Condom – 8/5/1996
  • Caroline had writer’s block and she and Richard begin to reminisce about the time he was hired, the first time he met Del right after he and Caroline began their relationship. Thinking they should explore their relationship without sex for a while, they agree to abstain. Meanwhile Richard declares that there are no boundaries working for Caroline and he doesn’t want her personal life spilling into their professional life. When Caroline goes on a frantic search for a condom when she and Del fail at abstaining from sex, she is stymied by running into Sister Mary Louise (Cathy Lind Hayes), and a drugstore cashier (Tony Edwards) recognizes her, so ends up shoplifting the condoms. She is caught by security guard Kwan (Ping Wu) who extorts $100 not to turn her in. She is forced to call Richard for to bring the money, interrupting his date with Audrey (Judy Prescott). Finally they recall Richard’s contentious relationship with Salty. After Caroline gets to the point where she’s making Rice Krispies and dressing Salty in funny hats, she finally comes up with an idea for a strip when she sees Salty in a hat climb onto a sleeping Richard. Scott Fowler is Randy. Debra Casey is the pierced lady. Marcelo Tubert is the vendor. NOTE: The events of this episode are shown out of sequence from the storyline that is taking place between seasons 1 and 2. 11/12/17

SEASON 2

• 025. Caroline and the Younger Man – 9/17/1996
  • Three months after Richard quietly moved away to Paris, he is down on his luck trying to sell paintings. Although one man (Marius Mazmanian) plans to buy several of them, he is knocked into the river… so Richard is forced to return home and look for work. Meanwhile Charlie tries to convince Caroline to hire him, and while trying to impress her, knocks Salty at the window. When Caroline takes him to the vet to get checked, she meets a 23-year old veterinarian named Joe DeStefano (Mark Feuerstein), who asks her out. Despite him being seven years her junior, she agrees and they go on a date – which includes getting arrested when she aids Joe, his friend Harris (Jack Plotnick), and Richard’s old girlfriend Shelly in liberating animals caged in a research lab. They are ultimately arrested by a cop (Xavier Montalvo), but Caroline has never felt so alive. She tries to break it off with Joe, but he convinces her to go away with him, and they ultimately sleep together. Richard takes a job at an ice cream parlor called I Scream, You Scream, where he works next to a young stoner named Dougie (Jonathan Slavin). He and Caroline do a remarkable job accidentally missing each other, even when she visits the ice cream shop, but just as Caroline is about to meet Joe for their second date, she and Richard finally spot each other and lock eyes. NOTE: This is the first part of a two-part episode. John Del Regno is the Super. Amy Lloyd is a customer.  7/6/18
• 026. Caroline and the Letter – 9/24/1996
  • Caroline chastises Richard for leaving without saying goodbye, and she reveals that she never married Del, nor ever saw the letter he left her in the Thank You notes. Richard engages Charlie to retrieve the notes, and tells Richard that Caroline had given the unused notes to Vicki to use for her baby shower. Richard tells Charlie that the notes contain asbestos, so Charlie rents a radiation suit and ends up scaring Vicki’s mother Mrs. Larson (Angela Paton). Richard gets Charlie to fill in for him at the ice cream shop and heads over to Vicki’s apartment himself, delivering batteries as a gift to Mrs. Larson and asks for a Thank You note. Vicki, Caroline, Annie all return to the apartment and Richard attempts to hide as Vicki’s water breaks. Although he nearly makes a clean escape, he returns to assist in delivering the baby. While getting towels from the closet, he finds the Thank You notes and throws them out the window, where Annie is attempting to hail a cab… and she finds the letter. As Joe runs into Del at a bar and the two get drunk together, Caroline and Richard deliver the baby. He agrees to come back and work for her, and when he shows up the next day, Annie reveals that she read the letter, but agrees not to tell Caroline with the stipulation that one day Richard will owe her a favor like the Godfather. Phil Hartman (himself) narrates the introduction in Rod Serling-esque style. NOTE: This is the second part of a two-part episode. 7/7/18
• 027. Caroline and the Cat Dancer – 10/22/1996
  • Caroline and Joe are spending more time together, and Joe soon starts complaining that Caroline is seeing to much of Del. Caroline asks around to see if it’s strange how much time she’s spending with Del, and Richard – when asked to pretend that he was dating her – admits that it would bother him. Caroline then makes up a lie to get out of an engagement with Del, but feels bad because it was she who said they’d always be friends. She goes to Del’s apartment to apologize to him, but he already has a woman there… and asks Caroline as a friend to call in an hour so he doesn’t have to spend the night with her. Meanwhile despite a run of good luck, Annie gets called into be audited by IRS agent Jimmy Callahan (David Hyde Pierce), who wants to make an example out of her to show his boss that he can be tough. When he finds out that she is in the production of Cats, he asks her to go on a date with him. Annie agrees, assuming it will get her out of her IRS troubles. Jimmy seems weird and kinky, but it turns out he only wants an audition for Cats. Annie’s producer (Paxton Whitehead) vehemently denies the request, so Annie has Del pretend to be the producer. Charlie follows Del to the theater and pretends to be the director. Jimmy gives a heartfelt rendition of his original song I.R.S.P.E.C.T, which impresses everyone and causes Charlie to give him the job. He shows up when they go on stage in full costume and follows Annie onto stage. Richard struggles with the next-door neighbors in his new apartment keeping him up all night while making love. This escalates to a war of yelling and banging on the walls. The next morning Richard apologizes to the neighbor Wally (Larry Cedar), who tells Richard he’s been out of town all week. 1/14/19
• 028. Caroline and the Guy Who Gets There Too Soon – 10/22/1996
  • Joe tells Caroline that he loves her while they are apple picking, causing her to fall out of the tree and sprain her arm. Caroline doesn’t want to say it back, and tells him not to say it any longer. Joe goes one step further to prove that he is serious about her and buys Caroline a plot of land near the orchard, a spot on which to build a house. Annie doesn’t think that Caroline is ready for a relationship, but she just maintains that he is too young to believe. Annie sets her up with another date more her age with a guy named Garrett (Cameron Watson), who has been through scads of relationship therapy. Joe shows up during the date, and asks Caroline if these means she wants to see other people, and Caroline admits that it does. However after the horrible date, she seeks out Joe at the orchard and tells him that she made a mistake and only wants to date him… although she wants no more talk of land, houses, or love. Meanwhile Richard inherits a car from his aunt and plans to sell it. Annie finds out that this is because Richard never learned how to drive. Since Annie wants to borrow the car, she talks him into having Del teach him. Del gives up after Richard grinds the gears on his Porsche one time, so Annie has to take over teaching him. Despite accidentally picking up a drunk (Jason Graae) who thought the car was a taxi, Richard thanks Annie for being a good teacher. This is followed by Annie forcing Richard to run a red light in front of police car so that she can meet the officer. 1/14/19
• 029. Caroline and the Dreamers – 10/29/1996
  • The New York City Art and Space program commissions Richard to create a mural painting, but the building he gets is in the middle of a slum where he is constantly harassed by thugs, and at one point they cover him in blue paint. Meanwhile Del wants to get more into marketing product besides greeting cards for Cassidy, but even though Del is president of the company, his father is chairman of the board and always shuts him down. Caroline encourages him to stand up to his father, but this ends up causing his father to appoint Del’s sister as president who then fires Del. He is excited at the prospect of starting his own company Eagle Greeting Cards and asks Caroline to jump ship and come with him. He arranges a meeting with two other cartoonists as well, Audrey Gerson (Dawn Didawick) who draws Flower Friends, and the nebbish Trevor Bracknell (John Menick) who draws Sergeant Buck, and enlists Charlie to help steal furniture from Cassidy and aid in the presentation. However when they find out that they will be losing money, Audrey and Trevor bail. Caroline also wants to turn him down, but when he makes a speech about how good a friend she is, she doesn’t have the heart. Del starts with making Caroline cartoon mugs, but he gets them made so cheaply that the bottoms fall out of them… so he markets them as mug puzzles. Before being driven out from his mural, he asks the thugs if they’ll give him a chance and they agree if he’ll include Dennis Rodman and one of the thug’s girlfriends in the mural. At the time of the unveiling however, a construction foreman (Peter Spellos) informs them that they’re tearing down the building. Richard realizes he was painting at the wrong address. Norris Young and Jullian Dulce Vida are the hoods. Dom Irrera and Mario Mariani are the policemen. Donna Lynn Leavy is Mrs. Grey with the city. 1/13/20
• 030. Caroline and the Nice Jewish Boy – 11/12/1996
  • Caroline is receiving a cartoon award and plans to take Joe as her date, but when he finds out that one of the sponsors makes fur coats, he has to boycott it since he is a veterinarian. Caroline then has to look for another date, so she rings up an old boyfriend named Willard Stevens (Thomas Gibson) she dumped because he was fat, bald, and had a speech impediment. However when he shows up, she finds that he’s vastly improved in all areas and is now quite handsome. He attributes the change to Caroline dumping him… then tells her to go to hell and taunts her with the fact that he’s rich also. Without a date, Richard agrees to go with her with the stipulation that he doesn’t have to dance. However when Caroline clearly wants to dance, he hits the floor with her, even for the slow dance, which starts to take a romantic turn when Joe shows up, having agreed to put aside his boycott. Richard walks home alone. Meanwhile Charlie takes Del to a Jewish singles dance, and by the time Del realizes it, he’s fallen for a girl named Risa Glickman (Rena Sofer). However he tells her that she’s Jewish as her parents Arnie (Philip Sterling) and Ruth (Shirley Prestia) only want her with a Jewish boy. He’s even able to impress them when he attends diner at her house, although he gets the third degree from her sister Starr (Mandy Ingber). Caroline reminds him that if he plans to sleep with her, she’s going to find out that he isn’t Jewish. So he cancels their weekend getaway and checks himself into the hospital for a circumcision, telling Risa that he’s getting his tonsils out. Just as his sedatives are taking effect, Risa shows up and tells him that she’s eloping with an ex-boyfriend who is not Jewish. Half out of it, he is unable to make himself clear to the nurse (Lorna Shane) to tell her to stop the operation. 1/14/20
• 031. Caroline and Victor/Victoria – 11/19/1996
  • Caroline and and Annie see Julie Andrews (herself, in archive footage) in Victor/Victoria, and afterward Annie commandeers her limo in order to ask her to get an audition to be her understudy. Julie likes her moxie and helps her get the audition, so Annie begins walking, talking, and dressing like a man. She visits Cigar Night at Remo’s, and she and Del compete for the affection of a woman named Leslie (Andrea Bendewald), who shuns an embarrassed Del but eventually takes a liking to Annie. Meanwhile Caroline catches a cold and visits the doctor (Mark D. Espinoza). Richard accompanies her and has a large polyp in his nostril spotted by the doctor, who finds it so unusual that he shares it with a group of med students (Scott Tapp, Lyn Alicia Henderson, Mark Shockley). Richard winds up in the hospital to have it removed, but at one point is mistaken by a nurse (Carolyn Lawrence) for patient having his gallbladder removed. Scared for his life, Richard escapes the hospital and runs to Caroline’s house under the influence of sedatives. Meanwhile has set up a second date with Leslie, but then realizes that she plans to stand her up. Feeling guilty, she goes to see her to break it off, and then confesses that she is actually a woman. Leslie however already knew this and assumed she was a lesbian… and that Del was too.  She storms out and tells Annie that it is laughable that she was trying to pretend to be a man. Caroline gets Richard back to the hospital and tells her that he loves her. Caroline leaves in a cab, but then has the driver (Marcelo Tubert) return to be with Richard in light of this… but then hears him say the same thing to the nurse and a bowl of Jell-o. Annie auditions for the role and impresses the man (Harris Shore) watching her, but doesn’t impress the woman with the clout… Leslie. Sandra Philips is the audience member making noise. 4/28/20
• 032. Caroline and the Comic – 11/26/1996
  • Caroline gets a visit by a man named Leo Ladman (Danny Dayton), who used to be the manager of Richard’s father Ben (Judd Hirsch), a former stand-up coming who is now a shoe salesman in Paramus, New Jersey. When Richard arrives, he refuses to intervene to help recruit his father for a benefit comedy reunion in which they would like him to perform his Fat Man routine. Curious about meeting Richard’s father, Caroline and Annie go to see him. Caroline finds his jokes funny and tells him about the benefit. Leo first refuses to get back into the comedy world, but then has second thoughts. He comes to see Richard and ask him to be part of the performance like he used to when he was younger. Richard is furious that Caroline interfered, because Leo had tries to break into comedy for years and made everyone in the family miserable. Caroline agrees to be part of the act, but Richard flat out refuses, and tells his father that he was never funny. On the night of the performance, Caroline participates, and Leo uses his humorless boss Manny (Bruce Kirby), who gets stage fright and exits the stage, leaving Leo and Caroline to improvise. Richard, who has secretly come to see the show, sneaks onstage and resumes his old role, much to the delight of the audience. Richard also agrees to fill in for Manny at the shoe store, since his stage fright upset his ulcer. Comedians Jack Carter and John Byner appear as themselves. 4/28/20
• 033. Caroline and the Therapist – 12/3/1996
  • Caroline’s cat Salty has been acting strangely and peeing in the house, so Joe recommends a cat therapist named Alicia Crawford-Lane (Valerie Mahaffey). Caroline hires her so she comes to check out Salty and everything in the apartment. She deduces that the Salty is picking up negative energy from Richard, who can’t bond with her until he reconciles his own demons that spring from a childhood experience in third grade when the young Richard (Thomas Dekker) is accused by his cruel teacher Mrs. Fox (Renee Taylor) of being responsible when the class hamster Zippity dies on his watch. Meanwhile Annie lets her mother set her up on a blind date with a strange guy named Floyd Gerber (W. Earl Brown). Caroline decides to track down Richard’s old teacher so she takes Annie and Floyd with her. When they finally find her, she is oblivious to the fact that she has scarred Richard for life. Del and  Charlie spend the evening at Singles Night at the laundromat. While Del hits on women, Charlie thinks that one of the women (Rende Rae Norman) is his long-lost mother. When he finally confronts her and finds out she isn’t his mother, he goes on a date for coffee with her. Caroline brings a fish named Inky and Mrs. Fox to see Richard. She gets Richard to admit that he’s afraid to love animals, and she acknowledges that she made a mistake in making him guilty for Zippity’s death. When Richard spills Inky on the floor, Mrs. Fox screams at him once again and tells him that he’s an animal killer. Richard however saves the fish before it dies. Unfortunately in all of the excitement, Mrs. Fox dies. As Floyd heads home, he says it is the best date he’s ever been on and ask for a kiss. Annie gives him the okay, so he kisses Caroline. 8/10/20
• 034. Caroline and the Red Sauce – 12/10/1996
  • With Christmas coming up, Richard takes a job moonlight at Macy’s in the gift-wrapping section where he has to contend with an over zealous co-worker named Melody (Debra Jo Rupp). Annie is also suffering when her mother surprises her by coming to stay with her for the holidays. While she is assisting Caroline with making a homemade Italian meal instead of using red sauce out of the can, Caroline overhears her talking to her husband Lou (Louis Giambalvo) and realizes that he has left her. Meanwhile Richard gift wraps a Teddy bear with an engagement ring for a police officer (Bari K. Willerford), but when the cop has to respond to a call, Melody returns the gift-wrapped bear to another section of the store. In a panic, Richard goes looking forward to it, only to find out from the manager (Robert Barry) that Santa Claus (David Doty) is handing the Teddy bears out to underprivileged children. Richard goes ripping through the gifts, much to the dismay of Santa and the manager. Charlie has hired a new secretary for Del named Rachel St. Augustine (Suzanne Cryer) without checking her resources. Del is initially enraged, but when he sees how beautiful Rachel is, he is suddenly fine with hit. However Charlie does go looking for her references, he finds that they are all dead. They then begin to fear that Rachel will kill them, but eventually realize that she falsified the references with names fro the obituaries since she hasn’t worked for the last seven years. They are relieved until she tells them that she has been in jail for murder for the past seven years. When Annie talks about buying her parents a trip to Italy for Christmas, Caroline reveals that they have separated. Annie meets with her father, who tells her that he was never really in love with her mother, and now that he’s getting older, he really wants an opportunity to be in love with a new woman. When she returns home, she finds that her mother is getting ready to leave, knowing that she’s driving Annie crazy, but Annie insists that she stay with her for a couple of weeks. Annie is depressed, so Caroline takes her to Macy’s to cheer her up by showing her Richard’s new job. Since Melody, who is surprisingly falling for Richard, talked the manager out of firing him, Richard is reassigned to portray Santa’s elf, much to the delight of Annie. 8/11/20
• 035. Caroline and the Freight King – 12/17/1996
  • Caroline gets some drawings ready for Del to take to a trade show on behalf of Eagle Greeting Cards. Mixed in with them is a doodle of a porcupine that Richard accidentally left in them. Del likes the drawing and Richard to draw some Christmas cards using the character. Richard thinks that cartooning would be a sell-out for a true artist like him. Meanwhile Caroline gets locked inside the laundry room by the careless super (Carlos Sanchez) with a homeless man named Henry (Harry Groener), and after initially being afraid of each other, Caroline begins sharing her thoughts of having sold out by becoming a cartoonist to pay the bills when she really wanted to be a dancer. She even shows off her ballerina skills for Henry, before falling over some boxes. Although unsure if cartoons really make people happy, she is satisfied that they make her happy. When Del offers Richard $500 as a starter to make three cards, Richard finally agrees, but the cards are too sullen for Del’s liking. During the conversation, Richard admits that being a cartoonist is hard and is worthy of respect, which makes Caroline happy. Annie and her mother head to an uncle’s funeral, and Annie realizes that she is carrying a $5 bill that she had already spent. When it comes back to her a second time, she gets even more freaked and winds up putting it in the coffin with the corpse. Later it comes back yet again, this time sending her to flee to church. Annie’s mom then admits to Caroline that she has been planting them on Annie with that as the ultimate result. Del hires a stripper named Honey Potts (Karri Turner) to hang out in the office after she comes to perform at their office when she has meant to go to another office. As the new receptionist, Del allows her to sit at Charlie’s old desk, and then has to mediate when they continue to bicker like children. 11/24/20
• 036. Caroline and the Perfect Record – 1/7/1997
  • After a date, Caroline and Joe go back to his place, and Caroline discovers that Joe’s ex-girlfriend Lisa (Rebecca Cross) has returned from a Greenpeace expedition, and since the apartment is leased in her name, she is now staying there. Meanwhile Del and Charlie assist Richard in picking up a giant block of marble from his friend Howard Berman (Jack Kenny), whose lover just left him and left behind the slab. They struggle to get it over to Carolyn’s place, where she is fuming over Lisa moving in with Joe. Annie advises her to get even with him, but she choose to make her feelings known. Joe then suggests that he move in with Caroline because he loves her. Caroline takes the night to think about it, going back and forth, while Richard tries to decide what to carve from the marble. Richard gets irritated by her and tells her that she blathers on like a chihuahua. He eventually breaks down the entire slab and makes only one tiny chess piece. Caroline decides to let Richard move in, but on moving day he confesses to her that he slept with Lisa the night before… so Caroline breaks it off with him. Annie is planning to meet a bartender named Bob for a dinner date, but he stands her up, blemishing his perfect record of that never happening. She and Caroline go to see him at his bar, but the bartender Pete (Howard George) tells him that Bob died the night before. Annie feels terrible, until she finds out that he died at the Knicks game with his family, so he did in fact stand her up after all. Caroline gets drunk and goes over to Richard’s apartment to lament why no one stays with her. She wonders if she is truly a chihuahua, but Richard assures her that she is a wonderful person. She sits herself on his lap and embraces him… then promptly passes out in his bed. Richard goes to sleep on the hard floor while she snores away. 11/25/20
• 037. Caroline and the Singer – 1/14/1997
  • Annie’s sister Donna (Mackenzie Phillips) is a singer who had a hit in the 80’s called On Blacktop Road, and has come to the city to perform a show, and her mother Angie has come as well. Caroline has misplaced her black pumps that go with everything, and thinks they are at her ex-boyfriend Joe’s apartment. She and Annie go shopping but cannot find comparable shoes. Annie blackmails Richard to take her mother to her electrolysis appointment, threatening to tell Caroline about the love letter he wrote her. Donna finds the letter in Annie’s diary and tries to use it to write a song. Both Richard and Annie try to stop her, and Annie tells Richard that if he can write Donna a song, then she won’t use the letter, and she will never blackmail him with it again. He writes a song with Celtic overtones, which to the layman is nonsensical. Meanwhile Del and Charlie try to leave in Del’s car and a plow piles snow over it and they get locked inside. Charlie has locked the keys and his cell phone in the trunk. They spend the afternoon in there starving and trying to think of a way out. Caroline decides to try and get the shoes from Joe’s apartment when he’s not there, but Joe comes home and catches her thanks to Angie calling the apartment to give Caroline a message. Joe tells Caroline that he misses her and asks if they can get back together, and that he’s broken up with Lisa. Caroline almost agrees to go have a drink with him, but then Lisa calls and leaves a message that says she can come over to see him after all. That night, a sullen Caroline goes with Amy, Angie, and Richard to see Donna play. When no one seems interested in the ‘Celtic’ songs, she uses Caroline’s letter lyrics again. Richard freaks out trying to keep Caroline from hearing it, but she hears it anyway. She tells Richard that she’s put it all together after hearing the song… but all she’s realizes was that she left her pumps in Del’s car. Back in the car, Del is using the shoes to try and break out through the window, but only managing to break the heels off the shoes. 3/15/21
• 038. Caroline and the Kept Man – 1/21/1997
  • Annie does a commercial for Dr. Furman’s Foot Powder, and starts to get recognized in public. Meanwhile, Del arranges for Richard to display one of his pieces of art at his country club, which he does so he can impress a girl named Alicia (Alyson Kiperman aka Alyson Sullivan), because it will prove that he knows an artist. Richard winds up insulted when it is displayed in the ladies room, but when he is attempting to retrieve it, he meets famous socialite Gina Penetti Schmidt (Ann Magnuson), who loves Richard’s work and offers to become Richard’s benefactor. As she looks through his pieces, she can see his work change at the point where he became employed by Caroline, so she offers to give him a monthly check if he quits his job with her and focuses only on his painting. Everyone assumes that she merely wants to use him as a boy-toy, and although Caroline thinks he would never fall for that, Richard starts believing it himself. Del warns him that he’d better put out if he wants to keep the money she is giving him. During a moment in the limo, when Gina tells Richard she wants to get to know him deeply, Richard acquiesces and kisses her passionately. Unfortunately, she didn’t want this at all and throws him out. He is forced to return to Caroline with his tail between his legs and ask for his old job back. Caroline begins volunteer at a nursing home, reading to the residents. The one she is assigns turns out to be Stella Dawon, now widowed. Stella wants Caroline to read her a dirty book called A Tail of Two Cities, so Caroline gives in. Eventually Caroline talks her into spending time with one of the male residents, Mr. Douglas (Don Perry), and when she later returns, she finds that he is reading Stella the dirty book. When Annie shows up to dinner with her date Brent (Scott Haven) and there isn’t a table available, she tries to use her newfound fame to get a table. Unfortunately, John the maitre d’ (Larry Thomas) is holding the table for an advertising icon he hold in higher regard than her: Gordon Jump (himself), the Maytag Repairman. Virginia Hamilton is Nurse Hutton. NOTE: This episode is dedicated to the memory of Morey Amsterdam. 3/16/21
• 039. Caroline and the Long Shot – 2/11/1997
  • Richard goes to a Knicks vs. Heat game with Caroline, but only to see Lucia della Fontana sing the National Anthem. After the song, which is nearly ruined by the woman (Susanne Blakeslee) singing next to him, he gets ready to leave… when he is randomly selected to be in the $100,000 Hot Shot contest to return and make a 3-point shot. As they are all celebrating at a bar afterward, a reporter named Stu (French Stewart) for the New York Post, who has sponsored the contest, begins following Richard around everywhere and asking everyone questions about Richard. Having no idea how to play basketball, he asks Del to coach him on making the shot. Del and Charlie try as best as they can, but Richard simply cannot do it. When another man James (David Roberson) comes into the gym to play basketball with his friends, and after nearly getting into fight with Charlie, he too works with Richard for a while and finds him completely incapable of making the shot, Meanwhile, Annie brings her mother into Remo’s and they wind up arguing over who can make the best sauce. Later when she returns home with Caroline, she finds that Remo is there, and that he and her mother have slept together, a situation that Caroline finds hilarious. She later catches her mother sneaking out to see Remo, but lets her leave without revealing she knows… mostly because she wants to sneak Stu into her apartment. On the night of the Hot Shot competition, Richard remarkably makes the shot, falling into the arms of the cheerleaders celebrating. However, it is all for naught, as Stu finds out that Caroline draws the comic strip for Caroline in the City, which is printed in the New York Post. Since she works for the Post, and Richard works for her, this makes him ineligible to win the prize… driving him into bed for an undisclosed amount of time. 7/12/21
• 040. Caroline and the Dearly Departed – 2/18/1997
  • Richard is trying to get Kenneth Arabian to display his art at his gallery, when he notices John Chang’s work, which Kenneth explains is only because Chang just died. Art critic Hilton Traynor (John Glover) stops in, but refuses to review Richard’s work. Johnny at Remo’s agrees to display one of Richard’s paintings in the restaurant in order to cover up a water stain. It isn’t long before a customer and art lover Daniel Cohen (Brent Jasmer) expresses some interest in the painting. Caroline tries to get him to buy it, and goes so far to tell Cohen that the artist is dead. She gets so much money for the piece that Richard is quick to jump at the opportunity, so he tells everyone, including his creditors, that he has died. He then sends Caroline to speak to Traynor about reviewing Richard’s art. Caroline has trouble coming up with lies, and winds up telling Traynor that Richard died while they were making love. When Traynor becomes suspicious that Richard has faked his own death, he tells Caroline that he’ll come to Richard’s funeral. They enlist the aid of Annie’s brother and funeral director Peter (Adam Ferrara) to come up with a fake funeral. Traynor, Arabian, and Cohen all show up to pay their respects. The ceremony becomes a mockery when Caroline reads the eulogy that Richard wrote and can’t pronounce the words, Del tries to promote his scented greeting cards, and Annie tries to audition for Cohen, who is the casting director Days of Our Lives. Traynor tries to rouse the corpse of Richard by declaring his work crap, and yelling in his face. When Richard maintains his stillness, Traynor apologizes and recognizes that Richard was a hard working artist who died while making love to Caroline. This rouses Richard to sit up in the coffin, giving himself away. Brynn Harris appears as funeral guest Judy, whose speaking scenes appear to have been deleted. 7/12/21
• 041. Caroline and the Getaway – 3/11/1997
  • When Caroline accuses Annie of always standing her up to go out with some man or other, the two of them plan a ski resort getaway that will be girls only. Once they arrive, they realize that neither of them know how to ski, so they decide to spend the evening playing Scrabble. Meanwhile, Richard meets an intellectual girl named Michele (Jessica Stone) at the bookstore, and the two hit it off immediately. Richard plans a dinner that he will make as their first date, and they use Caroline’s place while she is out of town. Charlie buys a set of electronic band and starts an Afro-beat band. Back at the ski lodge, Carolyn runs into an old classmate from Wisconsin named Brett (Scott Atkinson) on whom she had a huge crush. She makes a date with him to meet in the hot tub, but Annie is sticking to the girls only plan and shows up for Scrabble in the lobby. Caroline keeps sneaking out to him, and then running back to Annie, under the guise of getting more and more wine. Annie also overhears the waiter (David Engel) talking to another man named Hayward (Robert Mailhouse) about his two private planes. Annie immediately becomes interested and accepts a dinner date with him, but every time Caroline returns, Annie pretends that Hayward is harassing her and that she had turned him down. Finally Annie admits that she wants to have dinner with Hayward, while Caroline simply tells her that she loves her anyway. Annie heads off to the restaurant, and Hayward quickly tips the waiter for lying about the private planes. Caroline is finally able to be alone with Brett, who immediately tells her that he thinks she has a drinking problem. Back at the apartment, just as Richard and Michele are about to get romantic, Del shows up with Remo and a group of friends to watch the fight at Caroline’s apartment. Although Michele seems to enjoy the party, Richard is utterly frustrated. He finally gets them all out after the fight, and then Charlie and his band show up. Richard finally decides to take Michele back to his apartment, but as soon as she sees they are playing Afro music, she decides to join in with her maracas. When Caroline returns home, she finds her place completely trashed… and also Charlie and Michele in her bed. 1/8/22
• 042. Caroline and the Monkeys – 3/11/1997
  • Late one night, Charlie spots a monkey on 5th Avenue as he is skating by, and then spots it again the next morning, leading him to believe that the city is being overtaken by monkeys. Meanwhile, Caroline looks for someone to have dinner with. Richard plans to dine alone with a new magazine, and Annie has made plans with a former classmate named Cassandra Thompson (Helen Slater), who had recently been in a institution because she was a man-hating pyromaniac. Richard talks Caroline into enjoying the experience of dining alone, but she winds up going to Mange, the French restaurant where Richard is also dining. Caroline annoys both the waiter (Jeffrey Anderson-Gunter) and other patrons so badly, that the waiter winds up pushing her over to sit with Del. After the dinner, Caroline wants Richard to see A Man and a Woman with her at the theater, but he declines, which offends Caroline. She sees the movie alone, and winds up annoying other movie-goers like Dick (Willie Garson), Ernie (Andrew Craig), and Terri (Tracy Paladini). After the film, Richard is waiting for her to ask if she wants to go for coffee, then as the patrons stroll out of the theater, realizes that she has made friends with all of them. Cassandra comes to see Annie in Cats, but winds up in the security office when she has an altercation with another patron. After the show, Annie takes her to Remo’s, where Del tries to hit on her. Annie warns him that she is crazy, but he just insults Annie by telling her that she is jealous… so she lets Del have at it. When she realizes that they have left together, she and Charlie race to Del’s apartment, but catch Del outside. He has already realized that she is crazy, and has left her in the apartment to have a cigarette on the balcony. Within minutes, they hear the firetrucks arrive as the apartment building goes up in flames. Charlie winds up on the news, blaming the monkeys. In fact, a monkey is then seen picking up a box of matches. Anne von Herrmann is Annie’s co-worker Pam. Wendee Cole is another woman in the theater. 1/9/22
• 043. Caroline and the Buyer – 4/1/1997
  • Caroline goes to see Del because her Caroline in the City greeting cards are no longer being carried at Card Village. Del admits that the owner of Card Village is Bob Anderson (George Segal), a friend of his father’s , and when Del left his father’s company, Bob pulled his business from Del. He tells Caroline that he’ll go see if he can sway him to return. Meanwhile, Annie’s mother Angie is staying with her and is relentlessly cleaning and cooking and generally driving Annie crazy. When she is done with Annie, she then starts doing Richard’s laundry and cooking for him. Del goes to his father’s office and intercepts Bob before he meets with Bob’s father, and offers to take him to dinner to make his pitch. Caroline comes along to try and convince him, and Bob is very charmed by her and tells Del that things are looking good for him. However, he actually thinks that Caroline is a prostitute. Del tries to scramble and find another hooker for Bob, so he takes to the streets and starts making propositions. One of the hookers (Merrin Dungey) turns out to be an undercover cop and arrests him. Richard is grateful for all of Mrs. Spadaro’s hospitality, and agrees to go play bocce ball with her since Annie has refused. Annie then feels bad and meets her mother at the bocce ball court and is surprised and angered to find Richard playing with her. They get into a fight, and Mrs. Spadaro winds up getting hit by the ball. At the hospital, Richard confides that his mother never treated him the way her mother does, and Annie tells Richard that he can visit with her mother whenever she wants. While they are there, Mrs. Spadaro tires to hook Annie up with an ugly doctor (Kevin West), and Richard with a beautiful nurse named Gloria (Tonia L. Pearson). While waiting for Del, Caroline takes Bob back to her place to show her some of her drawings, but then realizes that Bob is expecting sex. Caroline finds the notion disgusting, and winds up beating on Bob with her drawings as he crawls toward the door. Unfortunately, Bob enjoys this just as much and tells her to tell Del he has a deal. Robert Laughlin is Theresa the trans-stripper. 5/19/22
• 044. Caroline and the New Neighbor – 4/8/1997
  • Caroline meet her new neighbor Miriam (Marilyn Cooper) and her dog Itsy Bitsy, and immediately Miriam cons Caroline into taking her dog for a walk in the rain. From there, it only goes downhill as Miriam has Caroline doing all of her tasks, including shopping and clipping her elderly husband Walter’s (Phil Leeds) toenails. Annie can’t stand the way that she is taking advantage of Caroline, so she lays it on the line for her… but it all falls on deaf ears, as Miriam is crying because Walter has died naked in the bedroom. Even Annie feels bad, so they rush over to help Miriam. She had turned down an ambulance coming to the house because of the cost, so she asks Caroline and Annie to help her get rid of the body. Meanwhile, Richard wants to sell his car and is asking $500. One prospective customer is a phony minister named Louis (Silas Weir Mitchell), who wants Richard to donate it to the ‘church’. Charlie has developed a major crush on the new waitress Sophia (Martha Romo) at Remo’s, and wants to give her an expensive gift to show his feelings. He would like give her Richard’s car, but doesn’t have enough money, so he proposes borrowing the car and using it as a taxi to the airport in order to raise the $500 asking price. Richard reluctantly allows it, and Charlie comes back a day later with the full amount. Richard sees the opportunity in this and decides not to sell it after all, but to steal Charlie’s idea and make his own money. His first customer is a blind man (Steve Paymer) who has Richard drive him all over town, and then steals the car. Charlie can’t think of an alternative gift for Sophia, so he just gives her the money. This completely thrills her because now she can use it to return to her boyfriend in Italy. Caroline and Annie help load Walter’s body into a taxi, which is actually Richard’s car driven by the blind man, to take the body to the river. Miriam admits that she actually murdered him and if the girls say anything, she promises to come after them. Robert Laughlin aka Robert Decrevel is Theresa the trans-stripper. 5/19/22
• 045. Caroline and the Critics – 4/15/1997
  • Richard makes fun of Caroline for caring so deeply what people think of her, including her dry cleaner, bank teller, and the folks at the Kulwaukee Lake Gazette, where her comic strip has been dropped. After getting a busy signal when she calls them, she decides to drive up to the city and talk to the people. She begs Richard to go along with her, and he reluctantly agrees. After Richard endures Caroline telling the story of become a cheerleader in high school, and listening to her do the cheers, their car breaks down and they set out on foot to find a phone. They wind up getting chased by a vicious dog named Fluffy 2 and come upon the dog’s owner in a cabin home. There they meet a couple named Earl (Gary Grubbs) and Wanda (Deborah Harmon), who are fighting and splitting up. Earl happens to be a mechanic, but is too wrapped up in saving his marriage to come out to help fix their car. Meanwhile at Remo’s, a newspaper critic named Danny Edison (Raye Birk) who is bullying Remo, is recognized by Annie as a critic who gave her a horrible review for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She wants to throw a drink in his face but another actress (Jennifer Prescott) beats her to it. She then decides to flirt with him, and then turn him down when he wants her to come back to his place. Unfortunately the plan goes awry when Edison gets drunk and passes out before she can turn him down. At Charlie’s suggestion, they decide to fill his pockets with peanuts and abandon him on monkey island at the Bronx Zoo. They get him into a taxi, where the cab driver Koothrappally (Iqbal Theba) also recognizes Edison as a critic who gave him a bad review for Oklahoma! Annie decides to show him mercy and take him home, but when they get there, and Edison wakes up and tells them that he was having a dream that he was stuck in a car with two terrible actors, she changes her mind again. The cab driver says he has a better idea though. Caroline uses her therapy techniques to get Earl and Wanda to talk about their problems with intimacy, and soon she has the couple heading up to their bedroom… for hours. Finally they are done, and Earl is ready to try and fix their car. When he finds out that they are heading to Kulwaukee Lake, he also tells them they likely canceled her cartoon because the town washed away when their dam broke. Once they get back to the city, the car breaks down again fifteen blocks away from home. Although Caroline tries to put a positive slant on the day, Richard forces her to concede that it is likely no one had a worse day than they did… as they walk by a naked Danny Edison dressed in a bridal veil in a shop window. 9/13/22
• 046. Caroline and the Ombudsman – 4/22/1997
  • Caroline is going on several days with her shower not working and she isn’t getting any response from her super Mr. Tedescu (Brian George). Meanwhile, Annie saves a man’s life at the beginning of a performance at Cats, when he has a heart attack, and she gives him CPR. Charlie is helping Del by taking pictures of Caroline for her promo photos, but she tries to dissuade him since she hasn’t had a shower. When Richard tries to help her fix the shower, he winds up doused with water. Annie’s agent Lionel Spencer (Ian Ogilvy) tells her that the man life she saved, Norman Booth (Alan Oppenheimer) won’t cooperate and pose for publicity photos, which could be a real boom to her career, so she goes to see him. It turns out he was supposed to be somewhere else, and his wife Flora (Jane Carr) calls him out for having an affair… and thinks it is with Annie. She can’t convince her otherwise, so Annie and he put on a performance for her benefit, with Booth saying he can’t live without his wife, and then pretending he is going to jump out the window. When Flora runs to him and says she can’t live without him either, Booth agrees to pose for publicity photos with Annie. Over at Remo’s, Caroline tells Johnny about her shower situation, and a delivery man overhears the situation and offers to get his brother-in-law Tony (Robert Costanzo) to intervene on her behalf. She assumes that Tony is an ombudsman, but when she tells Del and Richard about it, they both tell her that she has hired muscle. Caroline then becomes worried about Mr. Tedesco’s well-being, so she and Richard track him down to the elevator lady’s apartment. Caroline tells him she is working on a comic strip about a super and asks to follow him all day in order to keep him from getting hurt. Richard is left in the apartment to hold a pipe together while they run to the hardware store, leaving Richard to listen to the elevator rehearse a song for a wedding and try on dresses. Tony shows up at the apartment and thinks Richard is the super, making Richard scared that he is being threatened. Caroline and Mr. Tedesco return, and Caroline jumps on top of him to protect him from being shot… but it turns out that Tony is an actual ombudsman and criticizes Caroline for trying to solve her problem with violence. Del uses old photos of Caroline in her bikini from their trip to Aruba for the promo photos. Mr. Booth poses for pictures with Annie and the other cats, and is called out by Annie for flirting with the cat Pam. Steven Hack is the neighbor. Andrew Ducote is the little boy who scares, and is scared by, Caroline. 9/13/22
• 047. Caroline and the Bad Trip – 5/6/1997
  • Caroline and Annie are both ecstatic when they learn that Caroline is going to be a guest of Jay Leno (himself) on The Tonight Show, although they are both concerned that Caroline might not be able to come up with a good story to tell. Meanwhile, Richard’s mother Natalie stops by Caroline’s place to pass on a coat that belonged to singer Jerry Garcia since she contends that he is the actual father to Richard. When Richard finds out, he doesn’t believe it for a minute, as he’s been told this tale about other famous men multiple times. Nevertheless, Caroline believes that she now has a great story to tell on the show. Charlie laments the fact that Richard now has ‘two fathers’ while he can’t even find his actual one. When Del and Richard tell him about adoption agencies, he goes to see one and the clerk Ms. Spicer (Mindy Morgenstern) is immediately is able to locate his real father. Back at Reno’s, Del suggests that Richard should use the story about Jerry Garcia to pick up women since he hasn’t been in love for years since he had a girlfriend named Julia Mazzone (Sofia Milos) that he lost because her father threatened to take away her trust fund if she continued with Richard. Del begins coaching Richard on how to meet a girl when they spot a girl named Deanna (Anastasia Sakelaris) whom Richard tries to charm, but she winds up having to give him the Heimlich maneuver when he chokes on a nut. Before he can try again, Charlie calls them and tells them that he found his father working as a waiter in a restaurant and wants them to join him. It becomes obvious that a waiter (Bill Daily) has the same dimwitted characteristics as Charlie. Caroline and Annie arrive in L.A. and ask the cab driver (Terry Kiser) to take them around so that Annie can see the sites from I Love Lucy. The driver also notices that Caroline has found a sheet of LSD in the Jerry Garcia jacket and warns her that she could start hallucinating simply from holding it. When she arrives at the studio, Jay’s assistant Tanya (Ria Pavia) tries to help her get through the effects by giving her coffee, wine, poppy seed muffins, antihistamines, and orange juice, all while listening to cracks from Tanya’s mother, the world’s oldest burlesque dancer Loretta (Janis Paige), who claims to be one of Jay’s favorite guests. Caroline goes onto the show and immediately throws up on Jay’s stage. Charlie’s father tells him that they gave him up because they lost him at Sears when he roller skated away. He won’t tell Charlie who his mother is, causing Charlie to become unsure if it really his father. Charlie sings his father a lullaby Oh My Papa and gets yelled at by the restaurant manager (Dan Gerrity), causing his father to quit two weeks before retirement. His stupidity leads Charlie to recognize that the waiter is his father for sure, and he runs off with him.  Del wants Richard to make one last-ditch effort to meet a woman, so he approaches a girl across the room, who turns out to be his former girlfriend Julia. NOTE: This is the first of a three-part episode. 1/3/23
• 048. Caroline and Richard & Julia – 5/13/1997
  • Richard hopes to rekindle his relationship with Julia, so he invites her over to Caroline’s place and tells Julia that it is where he lives. They chat and agree to meet up again, but then Julia casually drops the information that she is getting married. Richard is then embarrassed, and when Caroline comes home, he tells Julia that he and Caroline are married themselves. Caroline goes along with the ruse, and they make plans to go out to eat with Julia and her fiancé Marcello (Luigi Amodeo). It is obvious that Marcello is an extremely jealous person when he yells at the waiter just for looking at her. Julia then insists on dancing with Richard, so the jealous Marcello and somewhat-jealous Caroline join them in dancing and make a spectacle of themselves. Marcello then gets too jealous and takes Julia back. Caroline briefly flashes on an image of herself in bed with Richard while they are dancing together. Meanwhile, the ineptness of Del’s secretary Candy (J.C. Wendel) make it painfully obvious that the company is losing money. Del realizes he must sell his Porsche to keep the business afloat, so he meets with his father King (Chad Everett) to see if he wants to buy it. He gives Del $15,000 for it, tells him he would have paid $25,000, and plans to sell it for $30,000. Annie gets offered a job in Los Angeles in the TV series D.O.A playing the character Molly, the assistant coroner. Despite her agent Lionel’s warning, she calls her producer (Ivan Brogger) and tells him to shove the job in Cats, but he has no idea who she is. Julia later comes to see Richard in tears and tells him that her marriage to Marcello is off, because their life together can never come as close to perfect as Caroline and Richard’s life. They try to convince Julia that they actually fight all of the time, but Julia wants to stay the night at Caroline’s house so she’s not alone. They put Julia on the couch, and then Richard and Caroline head up to Caroline’s bed. Michael Feinstein is the piano player at the restaurant. NOTE: This is the second of a three-part episode. 1/3/23
• 049. Caroline and the Wayward Husband – 5/13/1997
  • Richard and Caroline are stuck in her room to spend the night together while Julia sleeps nude downstairs. Richard offers to sleep in the bathtub, but Caroline downplays the awkwardness of it. However, she then offers to sleep in the bathtub herself, until she remembers that she doesn’t have one. Instead, Richard sleeps in his clothes, but they still keep winding up in each other’s arms. Richard then moves to the floor where he develops a sore neck. While going downstairs to get some aspirin, Julia hears him and winds up trying to seduce him. Richard says that he can’t bear to lose her to her father’s trust fund again, but when she shows him her naked body, Richard falls into her arms and the two of them start kissing. When Caroline comes downstairs, she instinctively slaps him for ‘cheating’. This causes Julia to realize she is being a homewrecker and she takes off. Caroline almost tells him that she was truly jealous, but then acts as if she was just playacting the role of the wife. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Annie attempts to shoot her scene with Shadoe Stevens (himself) as Dr. Martin for the TV show D.O.A. but can’t get the medical terminology correct, prompting the writer Reggie (Julius Carry) to continuously yell ‘cut’ and undermine the director Jerry (Boyd Gaines). When she isn’t misquoting the medical words, she’s accidentally poking the corpse John Doe (E.E. Bell). Eventually, they dumb down her dialogue so she just give ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers, but accidentally gives the wrong on. Fearing she is going to be fired, she walks off the set, but is called back to swap roles with a different actress (Karen Maruyama) as Officer. In this case, she nails the difficult dialogue, but part of the set collapses during the take. Caroline asks to meet Del for lunch, but since he is struggling financially, they eat at a hot dog stand. She tells Del about her feelings for Richard and asks for advice. Del tells her that their relationship began to suffer because he always felt like Caroline and Richard were speaking their own language. He admits that he and Caroline were nice, but the connection was really between Richard and Caroline. Later when Del is turned down for another loan, he tells Charlie that they are through with the business. However, Charlie tells him that his real father has been setting him up with a trust fund and that he now has 2500 shares of Microsoft available. Charlie agrees to get Del out of debt if he can be 50% owner of Eagle Greeting Cards. Carolines leaves a message for Richard that she has feelings for him and wonders if they might want to try to be more than friends. She tells him that she doesn’t want to face the awkwardness if he doesn’t have feelings for her. She asks that he tell her if he is interested, but if he isn’t, to please not mention it again. Back at Richard’s place, he comes out of the shower, where Julia is waiting for him. She tells him that the phone call was just some lady trying to sell him something… and then she erases the message. NOTE: This is the third part of the story arc, and this episode is continued in the next season. 6/23/23

SEASON 3

• 050. Caroline and the Reception – 9/22/1997
  • After waiting for hours for Richard to respond to her message, Caroline starts to panic and calls for Del to come over at 2:00 in the morning. He does indeed show up, dragging with him his date Kristin (Cindy Ambuehl)… to whom he is handcuffed. Annie also returns from California, having lost her job and her apartment in Los Angeles, and immediately tries to help Caroline get through the crisis. They all wait up together all night until Richard shows up for work. He then tells Carline that he and Julia had driven to Maryland the night before and got married. Caroline and her eavesdropping friends are all dumbfounded. Del asks Richard if he had gotten Caroline’s message, but he says that he hadn’t. Caroline tries to tell him that the message was merely for him to pick up liquid paper on the way over, and then she grabs Annie and tells everyone they are going to go get a wedding gift and some liquid paper. They head straight over to Richard’s place so that Caroline can delete the message that she left. They are caught in the act by Julia, who enters as they are leaving. She tells Caroline that she had erased the message to save her the embarrassment of being jealous. Caroline tells her that non only is she not jealous, but that she would like to throw them a wedding reception. Meanwhile, when Del tries to tell Annie that he was Caroline’s best friend when Annie was away, Annie tells him that she used to know Kritin from acting class and that Kristin used to be a man. Del spends the entire evening trying to spot the various masculine things that Kristin does at the party. Caroline gets drunk at the reception but manages to deliver a very touching toast to the couple. When Charlie reveals that he forgot to video tape the toast and asks her to repeat it, she says she couldn’t do it again in a million years. Julia’s father’s chauffer (Terry Rhoads) shows up at the reception and tells Julia that her father would like to talk to her. Richard puts his foot down and tells her that she can’t go talk to him. She tells him that he is her father and she’s just going to see what he wants but promises to return. Once she heads down the elevator, Richard announces that he has lost her forever to her father’s trust fund. Caroline comforts him and hugs him as Charlie records his limo driving off. However, this time Julia returns and tells Richard that she chose her husband over the money. Annie confides in Caroline that Kristin was never a man. Caroline realizes that Julia and Richard are really in love. 6/23/23
• 051. Caroline and the Kink – 9/29/1997
  • Annie is getting frustrated that she can’t get a job back on Broadway, so she decides to finish reading The Grapes of Wrath, which she started in the eighth grade. Richard shows up to work and he is wearing a shiny silver shirt that his wife Julia bought for him. It is clearly not his style, and Richard finally agrees that she is trying to make him into something he’s not. Caroline is adamant that he talk to her about that, as it is bound to ruin their marriage if it continues. Meanwhile, Del is trying to woo a store owner from Canada named Don Fogel (Michael Ensign) to carry their Caroline products at Fogel Paperworks. After he hears that the Garfield people are taking him to the Four Seasons, Del decides to find an exclusive club to take him to. Charlie complains that Del never makes him aware of client meetings, but Del explains that they each have their role and Charlie’s is to keep the coffee filters changed. The next morning, when Richard shows up to work at Caroline’s, he tells her that Julia moved out after their discussion. After giving him the silent treatment for four hours, he says he takes the blame for following her advice. Annie congratulates Caroline for breaking them up, but Caroline feels guilty and questions whether she did it on purpose. Charlie tracks down Del at the country club and tells Del that he doesn’t treat him as an equal. Mr. Fogel arrives before Charlie can leave, and it turns out that it is Charlie who manages to woo him when they realized that they’ve both been struck by lightning. Charlie ends up staying out with Fogel into the wee morning hours and is able to secure his contract. Del has a newfound respect for him, and lets him carry the company cell phone for the first tie. Caroline stakes out the hotel where Julia is staying. Julia guesses that Caroline has come to have an affair with a married man. Caroline uses some psychology by talking about her married lover Steve to make Julia realize that she shouldn’t let her disagreement with Richard destroy their loving relationship. The next morning, Richard shows up to work and tells Caroline that Julia came back to him on her own. He says the most important thing is that he was right and Richard was right. He also makes her vow not to interfere in his personal life. After he’s done toying her, he mentions her affair with ‘Steve’. A guy (Tadd Zarubica) shows up at the door claiming to be Steve and telling her that he just left his wife for her, as Richard laughs from his desk. Barry Thompson is the concierge. 10/17/23
• 052. Caroline and the Novelist – 10/6/1997
  • Charlie opens a fortune cookie indicating that his true love is closer than he thinks, and it includes Annie’s birthdate on it as his lucky numbers. Charlie then believes that Annie might be his one true love and begins pursuing her, much to her annoyance. Meanwhile, Caroline does a book signing and meets another author named James Clark (Tony Carreiro) who wrote a book called Quarter Moon. His book has been a slow seller, but Caroline lies and claims that she has read it. He asks her out to dinner and says he’s excited to talking to someone who has actually read his book. She finds it difficult to get into the book since it has no punctuation, so she offers Richard $75 to read it and tell her what it is about. When Julia goes shopping and buys expensive shoes and a purse, neglecting to buy groceries, Richard throws a fit about their budget. Richard doesn’t want to see her have to take it back, so he decides to get a second job. Julia instead offers to get a second job working at Remo’s. Unfortunately, complains start piling up on her for being neglectful of customers, and when Remo calls her out on it, she goes over and above to give them free drinks that start to cost the restaurant a lot of money. Richard begs Remo to give her another chance, and then realizes he needs to help her with the customers. Richard finishes James’ book and finds it wonderful, describing it as an intense journey through rationalism and absurdist despair. The only plot is that a horse kicks over a bucket. This is all he has time to tell her before he is called away to help Julia at Remo’s. Julia has given away Del’s table at Remo’s so she seats him with a newlywed couple. When the husband (Paul Hartel) gets angry at his new wife Christine (Christine Romeo), he storms out, leaving Del to spend time with her. Caroline has her date with James and keep running over to Richard to get more information about his book. Richard runs around in a panic from customer to customer, while Julia makes drinks for men at the bar. When Annie finds Charlie in her apartment visiting with her mother, she tries to get rid of him once and for all, but when Charlie shows her that he’s created a retirement plan for her, she agrees to have lunch with him. Richard sees Annie at Remo’s with Charlie, and can’t get Julia’s attention to help him wait on tails. When he drops a stack of dishes, he has a meltdown and refuses to help anyone else. In his anger, he loudly tells Caroline to admit to her date that she has no idea what his book was about. Richard then takes it upon himself to fire Julia, but Remo says that people have been buying drinks all night because of her, but Remo does in fact fire Richard. Charlie meets a girl at the bar named Melissa, so he tells Annie that he is leaving her, assuming that it was the fortune cookie that got him there to meet her. Richard apologizes to Caroline for ruining her date. He tells Caroline that he made $76 in tips, so she takes back her $75 that she paid him to read the book. As Del is buying more drinks for himself and Christine, he tells Julia that she can be the one… but as they look over, she is hitting on the busboy. David Bottrell, Debbie Laumand-Blanc, and Roger Keller are complaining customers. 10/21/23
• 053. Caroline and the Free Cable – 10/13/1997
  • It is Richard’s birthday, and after giving him a present and vowing to return it for him before he can utter a word, Caroline finds a cable box under her stairs that she never knew was there. When she unplugs it, everyone in the building loses their cable, so Annie has no choice to tell her that she is stealing cable and everyone in the building is plugged into it. Caroline wants to report it to the cable company, but Annie attempts to talk her out of it. Meanwhile, Del takes Richard out for karaoke at his birthday, and when they return back to Richard’s apartment, it is clear why: Julia has arranged a surprise party and invited everyone in his address book. Among the guests are Dwight Bumgarner (Brad Blaisdell), Richard’s student loan officer, Dr. Morris (Don Bovingloh), Richard’s allergist, a girl named Pammy (Lizzie Murray), who points out that Del has a hair growing out of his nose, and Dr. David Engel (Rex Smith), Richard’s former therapist. Richard panics that Dr. Engel is going to reveal his secrets to his friends and acquaintances. Caroline talks to Dr. Engel about her compulsion to pay the cable bill, and he tells her that it is completely natural to want to do the right thing. At the end of the party, Dr. Engel asks Richard to visit him in his office. When he gets there, he tells Richard that he’s like to ask out one of his friends. Richard assumes it will be Caroline, but it turns out to be Annie. Caroline goes to the Apple Cable company and reports the free cable she’s been getting to the technician Victor (Peter Siragusa). He thinks she’s crazy and laughs about it with his co-worker Ruby (Cherene Snow), and they are shocked when they realize she is serious. Meanwhile, Del obsesses about the hair growing on his nose. Richard is too busy to worry about that because Dr. Engel is going to date his old therapists. He pictures them bathing together and laughing over Richard’s problems, and then sharing it with his other friends in the bathroom. Richard rushes into Remo’s during Engel and Annie’s dates and causes a huge scene, calling the doctor a quack and admitting he can’t pee in public, not knowing that Annie and the doctor have agreed they have no chemistry. Dr. Engel suggests that Richard return to sessions with him, and Richard agrees. All of the neighbors, including a little girl (Rosemary La Grua), come to Caroline’s house to scream at her for reporting the cable. She swears that she didn’t mention the neighbors getting free cable, but when Victor shows up at her apartment to bring her a free tote bag, they assume they are losing their cable. Victor also says that the company wants to show their appreciation by giving her free premium channels for a year. He then finds all of the other tenants hooked up to the cable box and tells her how disappointed he is, just before pulling the plug on all of the neighbors. Stan Sellers is the angry neighbor. 2/22/24
• 054. Caroline and the Blind Date – 10/20/1997
  • Caroline and Richard have been working a lot of late hours creating the new Christmas card line. Julia is getting tired of never seeing her husband, so she decides that if she can keep Caroline busy with a man, she can see Richard more often. Meanwhile, Annie is planning to attend her ten-year high school reunion at Paramus High School, where she hopes to get revenge on three folks from her past: her mean gym teacher Coach Reynolds (Bonnie Hellman), who used to twist her ear, an actress named Donna Santarpia (Marci Brickhouse), who stole all of her parts in the school musicals, and Nick Rosso (Merrick Deamon), the cool guy who asked her to prom and then stood her up. When Annie’s date stands her up for the reunion date, she gets Del to go with her and pretend they’ve been together for three years. They immediately run into a geek named Phil Newman (Jeff Blumenkrantz), who claims that he was Annie’s ex-boyfriend ad that he is now rich. He points out Coach Reynolds, and Annie goes over and pulls on her ear, only to turn her around and find out that she is now a nun. Charlie has trouble finding a restroom in the city after a waiter (Mark Conley) tells him that the restrooms in the restaurants are for customers only. He winds up ducking into a funeral parlor to use the bathroom and winds up being dragged into a funeral by the funeral director (Bill Smillie). Although Caroline declined the blind date, Julia stops by her apartment to try and talk her into going. Although she isn’t dressed and is eating cookie dough out of the package, when she sees her blind date Trevor Huntley (Robert Gant), she finds him so attractive that she gets ready in less than a minute. Caroline and Trevor double-date with Richard and Julia at Fong’s Chinese restaurant, but Richard keeps reminding Caroline of all of the things she doesn’t like whenever Trevor brings them up. Furthermore, although he knows what Caroline would like to order at the restaurant, he has no idea what Julia might want. Charlie is identified at the funeral by Aunt Pat (Lynn Marie Stewart) as the deceased long-lost son Jimmy Jr. They drag him up to speak and then insists that he joins them for dinner afterward. Annie finds Donna the reunion and brags about her stint with Cats, but Donna tells her that she moved on from acting and has invented a Teflon-covered heart valve. Caroline finally calls out Richard for his constant interference with her date and tells him that she needs a chance to move on and be happy like Richard is in his marriage. Phil Newman agrees to invest in Del’s business, but then Del figures out that he is telling everyone that he is something different, including the President of Kenya. Annie spots Nick, who still thinks he is cool and is wearing sunglasses indoors. Annie tells him that now he’ll never get to experience her great body and twirls around in front of him, only to be told that he is now blind. Trevor and Caroline decide to walk home from the restaurant, as Richard watches longingly from the taxi. Caroline decides to end the date and tells Trevor that she’s just getting over someone, but she agrees that they can try again sometime. Charlie tries to leave the dinner with his new ‘family’, but Aunt Pat tells him to stick around to see Doris (J.J. Rodgers), Agnes, and Betty, who turn out to be three wildly attractive sisters who used to take baths with Jimmy Jr. Keone Young is Fong. 2/23/24

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