Important Note from Ken, 10/8/96: At the time this episode was first shown, the Recaps were still a growing thing on the office database. So when I was out of the office for one day, I didn't do the recap of this episode, thinking no one would miss it. Ooops! I was wrong! Anyhow, I'll do a full recap of this one when it gets shown E!; until then, here are some comments I made about the ridiculous baby situation.]
Now that he's fled Las Vegas, is this the end of The Accent at last? I hope, I hope, I hope.
The baby storyline is really annoying me. The court decision was nonsense, and I don't see how they can plausibly resolve this without: a) the baby dying or being taken away; and b) Jo being written out of the show. That said, here's my implausible idea: Michael realizes that he really does love Jane as he said. He returns to the beach house and is totally frustrated with Kimberly's odd behavior and the mystery baby. He demands to know where the baby came from, Kimberly says "The stork," and Michael says "That's it -- I'm outta here, psycho!" Having just gotten his job back, he can't risk being linked to some black-market baby. Kimberly is incensed: There goes her idea of a Donna Reed-type family!
Jo gets Matt on her side (and maybe Michael too, but I doubt it -- she probably thinks he was in on the plot). Matt knows that Kimberly is nuts, so he gladly helps Jo after she explains what happened. Matt thinks to himself, "Geez, first Allison, now Jo -- what am I, some sort of social worker? Oh ... that's right -- I am a social worker!"
Kimberly, her dream family now a shattered image without Michael, decides to run away with the baby (or do something similarly drastic). Jo arrives just as Kimberly is about to Do The Drastic Thing. They struggle, Kimberly pulls out a Ginzu knife, and Matt-Jake-Michael-[your name here] shows up to help Jo. Kimberly flees into the night. (Kimberly won't die -- another self-defense death at Jo's hands is way too much, and Kimberly's too good a villain!)
Now here comes the really implausible part: Reid's parents hear about how strongly Jo fought for the baby, and they realize that she would be a good mother after all, so they drop all claims to the baby, and let Jo and her child live at Melrose Place with those crazy people. Dumb, right? Sure! But it's the only way that I can see Jo keeping the baby. The writers will conveniently ignore any legal charges against Jo for fraud, comtempt of court, etc. -- after all, they've been ignoring the law all season long, so why change the formula (no pun intended) now?
On another note, the sight of newly hired copywriter Billy Campbell (in flannel shirt and blue jeans) sitting in at a meeting to decide the future of D&D was pretty silly. Hey, Bruce -- of your top three people, one is an alcoholic, one is a slack-jawed nimrod, and the third is some older guy with no dialogue! No wonder you killed yourself!
--Ken Hart
