Episode 302--"love and sex"

Writer Liberty Godshall Director Marshall Herskovitz Air Date 10/3/89, 1/30/90 Guest Star

Brad Pitt as Bernard (I'm not making this up); Cheryl Pollack as Lauren; Richard Murphy as Danny; David Clennon as Miles Drentel

Hope gets bogged down in a quagmire of missing the old romantic excitement of being a teenager.

Hope and Michael are trying to conceive another child, even to the point of Michael coming home in the middle of the day. Their babysitter, Lauren, is a little perplexed, but not particularly clued in. Hope gets to know Lauren a little and Lauren confides about her boyfriend Bernard, with whom she is completely in love. It makes Hope a little wistful for what she and Michael once had.

Gary comes by the office and expounds on why he'll never get married, even though he's in love with Susannah and the baby is due soon. At home, things get a little tense between Hope and Michael for really no apparent reason (though I think it was supposed to be the stress of marriage and trying to conceive). Michael tries to initiate sex, but Hope backs off (for really no apparent reason).

The next day, Hope watches Lauren and Bernard smooching on the front lawn while Michael hems and haws, not wanting to walk out past them. At work on Saturday, Michael and Elliot rifle through Drew's desk, and try to come up with new ideas, and banter with Miles when he comes through and makes them feel inferior. Meanwhile, Hope, Ellyn, and Melissa go to a lingerie shop and are trying to figure out how some of the more bizarre items work and pondering who would wear it.

Returning home, they find Lauren having a picnic with Bernard on the front lawn, music blaring wildly, while Janey is alone in the house. Hope loses it (justifiably so) but calms down later when she finds out that Bernard is moving away for good which is why he came by. Hope tries to give good advice, but somehow is portrayed as being an old fogey in matters of the heart. Michael and Hope settle in that night in bed with books and, yes, looking like old fogeys. As she drifts off, Hope remembers making love with Michael on a pile of coats at a party.

The next day, Hope gets a message to call Lauren and returns home to find that she needs a ride to see Bernard over in Lansdale, 20 miles away. Nancy agrees to take Janey and Hope's off on the adventure. Bernard shows up in a red mustang along with a friend, Danny, who somehow manages to overlook the age difference and hits on Hope. When it's time to leave, Hope's car won't start and they have to hitch a ride back with Bernard and Danny. The ride in the convertible seems to do Hope some good and she's acting like a teenager again. At dinner, Michael manages to miss the point of the adventure and Hope's a little disappointed. He slips back to remembering how he met her on a fixup on New Year's Eve, picking her up at her door and they fell at first sight. They stared at each other all night and kissed at midnight.

Returning home, Lauren is still there, waiting for Bernard to come pick her up as he's spending the night at Danny's. Michael tries to initiate sex again, but Hope is off-putting, saying that he's never around anymore. Later that night, Hope gets out of bed and accidentally spies Bernard and Lauren making love downstairs. At work, Michael and Elliot get a wild hair and pitch a presentation in a way that Miles doesn't want them to, the first real intimation of the coming storm. Hope and Lauren have a big, long talk about why having sex was such a big risk, but somehow Hope again ends up looking like a big wet blanket. Hope recalls when she knew she was in love with Michael, as they were looking for their car outside of a movie.

That night, while the thunderstorm continues, Hope and Michael finally have it out, Michael sharing his insecurities about work, and how they feel they've drifted so far.

Janey is speaking a little, getting a few lines

Drew, the assistant, is mentioned

Opener clips of 1) Gary in bike gear at the office with Michael and Elliot, 2) Hope and Michael talking in stairwell, 3) Michael holding Hope in the window reflection, and 4) Hope touching Michael's hair.

Michael's mid-1960s Volkswagen coupe is featured

Michael was once horribly in love with Linda Cobain, and Gary with Susan Forrest.

Michelle Whaling notes that "while Hope is putting little stars on Janey's ceiling, you can see a beeper clipped to the back of her pants (her blouse goes up while reaching).

Hope's hair was very long in the flashback to New Year's Eve.

Michael and Hope have been married for five and a half years (which is inconsistent with other dates given)

"When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge is played.

"His motorcycle is bigger than my car." --Michael growling about Bernard

"I'm not really a Milk Duds kind of guy." --Miles

"Y'know, at Woolworth's--right across the street--they have white cotton bikini underpants. 3 for $5." --Melissa to Hope in the lingerie shop

• Yes, that really is the Brad Pitt playing the babysitter's boyfriend. I dug up this quote about it from a back issue of People in an article about Mr. Pitt


"Pitt landed that part [Legends of the Fall] in 1989, with a one-line guest spot on "thirtysomething" -- the TV series created by "Legends" director Ed Zwick and producer Marshall Herskovitz. "He caused such a stir on the set," says Herskovitz of Pitt's scene, in which he and a babysitter-girlfriend make love. "He was so good-looking and so charismatic and such a sweet guy, everybody knew he was going places."
 

• Janie Guyton has spotted the following parallel:


The scene in " love and sex" where Bernard stays with Lauren at Hope and Michael's, and Hope comes downstairs and catches them in the act is almost exactly like the one in Endless Love, starring Brooke Shields. It also stars Shirley Knight as Brooke's mother who is also Hope's mother in the series. Hmmm!
 

• Lauren chides Hope for buying a spaghetti sauce with pesticides and Hope blows her off a little, which seems completely removed from the Hope we all know and love who goes into fits over radon and incinerators. Consistency, people, please!

• If Bernard and Danny could take Hope and Lauren all the way back to Bedford Falls (or Philadelphia or whatever you want to call it) then why the heck couldn't they have just come there to begin with? And when Bernard stays over (in all senses of the word), Lauren says that he'll just stay with Danny, who must then live in the area. So why the heck were they even driving around and going far distances to begin with? This is a major plot loop.

• Bernard drops Hope off at her house after the breakdown, but we see her meeting Michael for dinner just moments later. If one car is back in Lansdale and Michael has the other, how did she get to the restaurant?

• In the New Year's Eve flashback, Ellyn brushes by while they're kissing and mutters "Told you" to Hope which intimates that she was behind the whole setup. However, in the premiere episode, Hope is shown telling Ellyn about this guy, Michael, whom Ellyn has never met.

Return to the Season Three index

Return to the Bedford Falls index