Deconstructing Mork

The Sci-Fi Channel aired a Mork and Mindy marathon on Friday, and seeing as how I spent most of the day catching up on lost sleep and eating Thanksgiving leftovers, I left the television tuned to that and spent most of the day drifting in and out of a tryptophan-induced semi-coma. So, please take everything I'm about to write with a grain of salt.

I'd forgotten how much I liked the show as a kid. Since my memories are hazy, and since it aired around the time I was born, either I watched it as a babe, or viewed recently aired reruns. There was something that I probably couldn't understand back then, about how Mork was so manic, so crazy, and everyone else around him more or less took it in stride. Still, it was hilarious, and even though I probably didn't get most of the jokes, it was still worth watching.

Of course, this show could never happen today. One episode revolved around a kidnapper trying to sell Mork a baby. After seeing him go gaga over another woman's child, this kidnapper, smooth enough to cross interstate boundaries with a stolen child, proceeds to follow Mork all over the place, then try to traffic a human child for ten thousand dollars, to a man who appears to be at least mildly mentally incapacitated. The late seventies/early eighties were such an innocent time.

I think that's the key to when someone eventually remakes Mork and Mindy. You can leave Mork as almost exactly the same naive, ridiculous character, but everyone around him has to more reflect our darker, post-modern times. Thus, I've spent much of the past day pondering this.

We'd call it "Melinda", I'm thinking, to distinguish it from its forebear, yet leave enough of a connection to the original. Hire an up-and-coming improv comedian with a slight drug problem as Mork. For the female lead, I'd like to see a goth-type girl, early twenties, heroin-chic, with a haunted look in her eyes. The character, Melinda McConnell, would have already had a psychotic break or two in her life. She hates the name "Mindy", but everyone calls her that, especially the new guy in the halfway house, whom she only knows as "Mark" initially.

Mark, who prefers "Mork", has been in and out of halfway houses and mental asylums for the past few years, and now he's in the room above Melinda. At first, she's just trying to get through a day, when she notices abnormally strange behavior (even for the home) from Mark, including talking to eggs, resuscitating ants, and other behavior that doesn't track with normal human behavior. Everyone else sees a man with the mental capacity of a child, but only she sees someone with the curiosity of a child.

Over time, as she gets to know Mork, Melinda starts to question whether or not he really is of this world. At the same time, she starts to wonder if she's having another break. The bulk of the show would involve her trying not only to help Mork assimilate into society, to become accepted, but also herself trying to readjust and find her way again. Further complicating matters, everyone perceives Mork to be "off", and it wears on Melinda, having to deal with this child in a grown man's body.

(It is strange watching all those shows, especially with multiple references to Peter Pan. Keep in mind that Williams starred in "Hook", a deconstruction of the Peter Pan mythos, and "Jack", a movie about a boy with some derivative of progeria, a ten-year old in a forty-year old's body. Robin Williams either never grew up, or cocaine really is a hell of a drug.)

As a dark throwback, and this would have to be done carefully, or scrapped altogether, Mindy would be sitting in a metal chair, in an empty room, talking to the camera. Mork's voice, or that of an invisible psychiatrist, would be asking her questions about her latest memories, and she would be desperately trying to figure out whether or not it was real, or worthwhile. Hell, as long as we're dreaming, let's get Pam Dawber and Robin Williams to do these scenes, as a sort of "twenty years into the future" deal.

The first season would culminate with a visit from Mork to the sanitarium where Melinda's now kept. It would be either a finale or a segue into the next season, where the two of them start reminiscing about the good times, and where it all went wrong.