User Reviews

It is Carla and Eddie's anniversary and he is away with the ice show. Carla awaits him to call or send her a gift but nothing is coming until guys send her flowers but she figures out its them. Then she sends herself flowers but the lie comes out. At the end of the day Eddie calls but Carla figures out Sam called him to remind him.

A pretty good episode. I felt pretty bad for Carla, especially when the laundry comes. But the way Sam tried to make her feel happy was a great gesture of a friend.

Besides that I would like to hear more about Norm decorating the room of the kid. I love how Cranes want to make it gender neutral.

It's actually rare to find a decent Carla episode, especially one in which it's possible to sympathize with her. Why? The character of Carla was always annoying but got worse and worse as the series went on. She became a hate-filled monster, spewing nastiness and cruelty, mostly on targets who never did anything to deserve such treatment. And what made that worse is that as an audience we were supposed to find her abusive behavior adorable.

See, Danny Devito could get away with this type of performance on "Taxi." His character, Louie DePalma, was rotten to the core, a sleazebucket who would sell his own mother for a buck, but Devito had a charm that transcended the character and made even Louie's lowest blows seem funny. Rhea Perlman doesn't have that. The Carla character is based on Louie, because the Charles Brothers wrote for that show before creating Cheers, and it's clear that Rhea Perlman is doing an impression of her husband Devito when she plays Carla. There's little doubt in my mind that she went over the script with him every week and took his advice about line readings and delivery. Once you see Danny as Louie you will notice the similarities when Rhea plays Carla. The only difference is it's impossible to love Carla, whereas it was impossible NOT to love Louie.

In this episode Carla waits for her absent husband to acknowledge their anniversary, and the series of gags that occur is well thought-out and very funny. Meanwhile, the gang gets gambling fever and places bets in a basketball pool. A very good episode all around... now repeat after me:

"I am a very stupid person"

GRADE: B+