Word: ork
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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People are full of theories about my popularity. Some compare me to Rocky and Bullwinkle -- you remember, the plucky squirrel and the jug-eared moose -- or some klutz named Mork from Ork, because these bozos seemed to be entertaining children while really offering sophisticated satire of politics and pop culture. One notion is that because I am a shut-in, to stay hidden, and learn everything I know about the world from TV, I constitute some sort of commentary on what children learn from watching the box. Another idea is that I am sort of a metaphorical child myself...
Robin Williams' Garp is strictly from Ork; he appears to be visiting his role rather than inhabiting it. Even John Lithgow, who plays Roberta Muldoon, the transsexualized onetime tight end, fails to give his usual gifted portrayal of an eccentric. Only Glenn Close, as Carp's mother, a feminist heroine, escapes from the bland rhythms of the film to cut a few strongly individualized capers...
...last time for reminiscence and rue. As clusters of the faithful were doing in living rooms and the classier pubs across the country, the WJM team had assembled to lament the untimely passing of some fine old friends: Louie De Palma, Doctor Johnny Fever, Detective Harris, Mork from Ork. With a few swipes of TV executives' pens, four of the best comedy series of the late 1970s-Taxi, WKRP in Cincinnati, Barney Miller, Mork & Mindy-had been erased from the prime-time schedule. Their ghosts would haunt reruns, but the message seemed clear: the era of the sophisticated sitcom...
...just try being Popeye for a while, as Robin Williams did while making a Robert Altman film about the old gob, set for release in December. Not only did the actor have to master a vocabulary of malapropisms far more complex than the nano-nanos of Mork from Ork. He had to cavort under the fierce Malta sun, wearing thick rubber arm pads to simulate the cartoon sailor's anvil forearms. He had to squint perpetually out of his left eye, speak in what he describes as a Liquid Wrench voice and consume untold quantities of canned spinach. Shelley...
Will Mork return to Ork? Will Hawkeye Pierce ever be sued for malpractice? Who did shoot J.R.? With the actors unions' strike against the three major television networks grinding into its eighth week, viewers may have to wait another month for the answers...