Welcome back to the sophomore season of everyone’s favourite mis-matched morons as they navigate life in the big city of Chicago during the late 1980’s! The hair! The fashion! THE FUCKING DISCOUNT SHOP.

Yes, once again we open on the Discount Shop (totally called it!) and Balki is single-handedly hauling in a big-ass refrigerator into the store. Larry is basically treating him like a slave, ordering him where to move it, how to move it, what muscles to use – all without actually lending a hand. But uh oh, much like the uprising of the Luddites, Balki isn’t having any more of it and starts to question his master! Larry counters by saying that someone has to have the plan and someone has to carry out that plan – a very slave/master mentality, made especially apt considering Balki is pretty fresh off the boat.

All of a sudden, in walks Gina – an extremely pregnant young lady from Italy that knows Balki from their citizenship class. Balki is in a citizenship class? Good for him furthering his “citizenship” I guess. Gina’s husband is a truck driver and is in Texas for reasons unexplained, and she got kicked out of her apartment for reasons also unexplained. That’s right, they kicked a late-term pregnant woman out of her apartment by herself. Welcome to Chicago, where they’ll kick a pregnant woman out onto the street as quickly as they’ll kick a tourist trying to order a deep-dish!

So now she needs a place to stay, but Larry has reservations about helping the homeless pregnant friend of Balki:

He begrudgingly agrees and since she’s preggo she takes his bedroom. Our duo is now bunking on the couch together! Larry is still bitter about helping this stranger out, and I’m confused as to why would he be – I mean he basically supports Balki, what’s one extra immigrant? Now, even though they have spent many a night together (in separate bedrooms up till now), Larry is surprised to see Balki’s choice of jammies:

He gets upset at the spider-jammies for some reason, then admonishes Balki for wearing them. They argue about which side of the bed they’re going to sleep on. After the bedtime bickering, it’s finally all cuddles and rainbows and they tuck in.

But NOPE, no sleep yet, as they still can’t agree on which side, so they switch sides. Time-filler stuff here, what’s with this show and it’s time-filler moments? It’s like they have this loose idea of a storyline and then just say fuck it let’s not develop this any further and then the director yells ACTION and the actors just make shit up. Balki grabs Dimitri (his stuffed pet sheep) cause Balki is a toddler and needs those stuffed-animal cuddles, but that just pisses off Larry even more!

It’s seriously like Homer Simpson during Season 2 of The Simpsons – he’s so angry for little to no reason! He grabs the stuffed sheep Dimitri and hurls it to the floor like a monster. Balki then has to say his prayers, and starts to pray that Dimitri will sleep alright ON THE FLOOR, then he gets under the covers to pout about it. Larry feels a little bad so he picks up Dimitri and Balki forces him to apologize to it. TO the sheep:

In spite of Larry acting like a jack-ass, Balki thanks him for what he’s doing for Gina, considering the baby is two weeks overdue – OH SHIT! Why did nobody mention this earlier? It was pretty obvious that she was late-term, and as a result maybe Larry should’ve asked this before agreeing to let her stay at her place.

Later that same night, Larry is pacing around slowly wearing down the parquet, cause he’s just realized he needs to implement a plan for when Gina inevitably goes into labour later that same night. He concocts a plan and forces Balki to go over said plan over and over again. Balki’s confused as to why Larry is planning this thing, cause in his country they just stand around until the baby falls out and then the mother just keeps working in the field. I wish I was paraphrasing that, but that’s what he actually said. Larry says nah man she has to go to the hospital cause this America not some fucking backwater berg like Mypos. Balki says DBR.

Sidebar – I think Larry is in fact angrier this season, like it’s a specific character trait that’s been purposely added, as evidenced by his ‘you fucking little shit’ face he makes here:

The duo have a 5-minute argument about who’s going to do what for the birthing plan, after sending the woman involved in the actual birthing process to bed. After Gina is asleep Larry realizes that the plan is a lot smoother without her involvement slowing them down! This guy is teetering on the edge at this point.

Larry decides he needs to stay up the entire night for some stupid reason. Because it takes more than 5 seconds for someone to be woken up in an emergency? What is Larry, a 14-year-old boy that can’t be woken up to go to school?

Sometime during the night, Gina does in fact wake up (Larry fell asleep at the watch, the dumb idiot) – Balki wakes up first, then Larry who seems confused. OH, now it makes sense, one of Larry’s character traits (randomly) is that he’s a poor waker-upper. As in, he wakes up all confused as to his surroundings in a puddle of saliva not unlike a frat girl in Miami during her first spring break. Eventually he comically (fully) wakes up in an instant upon remembering the plan and makes this face:

After remembering where the hell he is, everything is go go go. Larry is freaking out and the actress playing Gina has her Italian accent accidentally slip in and out of Italian to that of a mid-westerner. Hold it together, actress playing Gina! Larry calls the hospital, yells at them through the phone that the baby is coming and hangs up on them. Also Larry can’t find his keys and starts losing his shit! At this point it’s hard to convey how much he’s acting like an escaped mental patient.

Balki eventually finds the keys, looks at Larry, and in an effort to slow his roll says “Hey, what did the five fingers say to the face?” – and whaps Larry to snap him out his crazy. It’s funny cause it looks like Balki actually hit Larry and they used that take. Best day ever for me!

They decide they’re finally ready to head to the hospital.

OMG THEY’RE INSIDE THE CAR AND IT’S THE BEST THING EVER. Look at Larry’s concentrating face. I think he could have doubled for Ryan Gosling in the movie Drive that came out 20 years later. He looks like he’s going to get revenge on his wife’s killer. He looks like Michael Douglas in the movie Falling Down. He looks like – well, you get the idea.

Gina is lying in the back seat of this car shot and Balki is assisting her from the front seat it seems. This shot makes me wonder though – why couldn’t they have had this damn green-screen car shot in the episode about the car last season?

This is like a terribly shot SNL skit with a moving video background. Or like when Conan used to do those running sketches on his show.

Balki asks if Larry can put his foot down on the gas and go faster, but because Balki distracts him Larry ends up missing the turn-off to the hospital then speeds over a speed bump. The speed bump makes the baby instantly come down the birth canal quicker, a medical impossibility but not too far-fetched for our writing staff to try to convince us of. Now Balki’s going to have to deliver this little Italian, MAMA MIA!

So after a couple more seconds of pushing, Balki instantly delivers the baby, and the audience says AWW but there’s no damn shot of the baby!! You only hear it! Why couldn’t they have a shot of a baby to insert in there? Are they saying ‘aww’ at Balki’s face looking at the baby? Ridiculous! Also, when Balki told Larry to stop the car he didn’t even pull the car over, he just stopped in the middle of an intersection and then almost gets t-boned:

Back at the apartment later on, Larry’s upset cause he passed out after seeing the new born. He’s also upset cause he panicked and acted like a fucking loon. He’s all back into the self-loathing diatribe that makes me want to vomit – calling himself worthless and generally feeling bad about himself. The audience laughs at this for some reason. I laugh cause it’s so bad it’s hilarious. This guy has three moods – super-angry, super-depressed, or super-crazy. Do they manufacture meds for trip-polar disorder? Is that even a thing?

Balki says Gina needs a new apartment for her, her new baby, and the absentee truck-driving husband. This is his way of baiting Larry into helping to find her one, thusly making Larry feel better about himself. Crafty Balki’s trickery is intended to give Larry some sense of self-worth. The soft music comes in and Larry (for the first time ever) says he appreciates that Balki is trying to make him feel better. The audience ‘awws’ (why, did they actually show the baby?), and the lesson apparently is that we all can’t be good at everything and that’s OK. I think the lesson should be that if you have an undiagnosed disorder like Larry you shouldn’t be allowed to take care of anyone let along a damn pregnant woman.

DBR COUNT: 15