Series creator Dale McRaven also helped create Mork & Mindy back in 1978, so the idea of mixing two people with little in common was nothing new to him. In some ways, with his wacky Myposian customs and complete ignorance regarding American customs, Balki is just a more humanized version of Mork. Balki takes almost everything people tell him literally and America is the home of the Whopper!
Both Larry and Balki work as cashiers at Ritz Discount Store, located on the ground level of their apartment building. Their boss, Donald Twinkacetti (Ernie Sabella) is an ill tempered miser who delights in referring to Larry as "turnip" whenever possible. Sabella has a great sense of comic timing and his caustic one-liners are guaranteed to make you laugh. He also thinks he's too smart for his own good and is constantly outwitted by Larry and Balki.
Pinchot and Linn-Baker work very well together. Linn-Baker is usually the striaght man to Pinchot's comic. In one particularly funny moment, Larry is exasperated when Balki is up early in the morning doing exercises to a television show and utterly confused when Balki starts doing "butt" crunches. When I watched the show originally, I thought of them sort of like The Odd Couple; not for their sartorial ways but their personalities. They were so different, yet it is obvious they love each other.
While the traditional sitcom storylines of dating troubles, problems at work, or getting a driver's license can make a sitcom more stale than day old bread, Pinchot's ability to bring a child-like innocence to everything makes the material seem fresher. There is something fun about Balki's sense of wonder at discovering pop top soda cans, color television, and pink lemonade.
The first season of Perfect Strangers is very short, only six episodes. Larry and Balki pretty much stay in the confines of their apartment and the Ritz Discount Store. They are visited regularly by Larry's platonic friend and neighbor Susan Campbell (Lise Cutter) who was phased out early on.
The show fans came to know and love really got rolling during season in an episode where the guys are let out of the building and head to a log cabin where they are promptly besieged by an avalanche. In season two Larry and Balki are both given love interests, Jennifer Lyons (Melanie Wilson) and Mary Anne Spencer (Rebecca Arthur). Jennifer is the standard ditzy blonde (with a surprisingly sharp wit) while Mary Anne is the perfect female counterpart for Balki's wacky nature.
Perfect Strangers is a very funny show but it does occasionally rely on a little too much of the same joke. In some episodes it seems like Balki let's go with a "Don't be ridikalus!" once too often or erupted in a corny version of an '80's pop song. Of course, when the show first aired, I remember a lot of people were going around saying a "Don't be ridikalus!" I even had a professor in a film class remark a "Don't be ridikalus!" when a classmate said she hadn't finished an assignment.
Despite some of its dated cultural references, Perfect Strangers remains a funny show and is a reminder of just how well Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn-Baker worked together.
The 28 episodes that make up the first two seasons of Perfect Strangers are spread over four DVDs. The show is presented with static anamorphic widescreen menus with options to play all episodes, select shows, and adjust languages. Subtitles are available in French and English. There is no closed captioning and the audio is in Dolby Digital 2.0. The only extra is a "Dance of Joy" featurette which is a montage of clips of the first two seasons (and not even of the namesake jig). I'm not sure why it's there at all, but it is.
