Word: ella
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...have botched his operation. His nurse, a sulky sadist named Maryanne (Christine Forrest), cares more for her parakeet than for her patient. And Allan's best friend (John Pankow) is a mad scientist of the cybernetic age, Cuisinarting the genes of capuchin monkeys. One of these -- she's called Ella -- is placed in the care of the comely Melanie (Kate McNeil), who trains simians to function as the hands of the disabled. As Allan's new housekeeper, Ella is a dream. She fetches; she spoon-feeds him; she even does windows. The clever little monkey has a mind...
ANYWAYS, th' family consists of Weston (Donal Logue), Wesley (Daniel O'Keefe), mother Ella (Holly Cate) n' daughter Emma (Ellen Bledsoe). Weston is the drunken, violent father whose debts n' poor judgment are th' reason th' family is up shit creek t' begin with. Wesley is an arrogant chip off th' ol' blockhead, another one of those Shepard man-children who wears flannel shirts n' still has strings of model airplanes hangin' from th' ceiling in his room...
Emma is th' only one in th' family who has more brains than God gave a chicken, but she doesn't realize that she, too, is doomed 'cause she carries Dad's "poison" in her veins. Ella, of course, doesn't carry it, but she makes up for it by bein' self-righteously angry at th' rest of her brood. This is th' archetypal Western family, says Shepard; th' Cleavers or th' Huxtables they...
...might guess, Weston n' Ella don't get along too well. Each is tryin't' sell th' ranch from under th' other's nose--Weston t' a tacky nightclub owner named Ellis (Caroline Bicks), Ella t' a slick lawyer who's th' head zombie (Ethan Mintz). This sounds like th' set-up for a farce, n' it would be if everyone wasn't so serious n' aware of th' future about t' crash down on 'em like a watermelon on an anthill...
Actu'lly, th' funniest part of the show is th' costumes. I liked Weston's hobo outfit that makes him look like Emmett Kelly Jr., Wesley's jeans that sit too low in th' seat and that zip instead of button, Ella's sensible shoes with heels th' size of hockey pucks, Emma's cute little shitkickers and Ellis' golden drugstorecowboy suit. I 'specially liked what th' two thugs (Laurence Thomsen n' Eric Oleson) wear: plaid bellbottoms n' white chaps, respectively (n' the yo-yo is a nice touch, Laurence). Not too accurate--no self-respectin' Westerner would be caught...