The one where Vanessa thinks she’s rich

Vanessa’s unending quest for popularity and layered sweaters reaches its height in this episode where she desperately wants to impress the captains of the pep squad so she invites them to her house to help them make up cheers and of course messes everything up because of her giant blabbermouth. Her largest gaffe is telling the girls that her mother bought a painting for $11,000 which comes back to haunt her the next day at school when two girls call her ‘rich girl’ and she tries to beat them up (as evidenced by her khaki romper which is inexplicably torn only over her left boob). Theo takes a break from getting beaten in checkers by Rudy (the only game ever shown in the Huxtable house besides a chess board and a deck of cards) to ask Vanessa what happened and explains that he would love it if someone called him rich at school because he feels it would get him in good with Maxine Kirkwood (which we all know is his codename for Cockroach). Vanessa decides she will place the blame on Cliff and Clair for being rich as the reason she got into the fight. Cliff explains to her that he and Clair are rich; she has nothing. And Vanessa decides that when she grows up she will be poor because it will make her children’s lives easier and Cliff makes her promise not to bring them over to his house someday to beg for money because if there’s anything he hates more than kids it’s poor kids.

The one where Vanessa wears makeup

Two things to address here:

1. Vanessa has a framed poster over her bed that says “Prevent Teen Pregnancy.”
2. Theo is a freshman in high school yet is inexplicably tasked with a 4th grade level school project about fire safety.

Cliff is making up stories again

The one with the contest to see who is smoother

Clair comes home from work and shopping for shoes to find Cliff on the couch watching TV, totally disinterested in what she has to say. Totally not a big deal because how often is Cliff ever interested in anything except high school track scores and making sandwiches anyway? Answer: never. So, Clair goes on to tell Cliff that she has made dinner reservations at the Golden Dove (golden=fancy) to celebrate the anniversary of their engagement. Cliff has no idea what she is talking about because apparently they have been dating since junior high and he has asked her to marry him about 19 times in the past 40 years like way back when Cliff was simultaneously trying to date lowdown, good-for-nothing tramps that Clair has given him a talking to about in the kitchen once before. Cliff continues to feign interest until Clair hides the remote control in her purse and decides they will have a contest to see who will be smoother on their date. Clair asserts that she will be the smoothest lady and that everyone will want to look at her and her lame pantsuit and enormous clip-on earrings. Cliff then maintains that he will be so smooth the restaurant will seat him by himself with a spotlight shining on his smoothness. They decide the children will determine who looks the smoothest for their date because of course this is always a good idea to have to join the children in any sort of a consensus, especially considering they will have to listen to Vanessa’s ridiculous opinions all night long. Clair dashes upstairs to try on her new shoes and probably cry about how she hates having to work at that tiny writing desk by the front door when she is a lawyer, dammit, and she has important work to do. Cliff busts in the room to look for his remote control when he catches Clair about to try on her new pair of shoes (her secret weapon of smoothness). Clair gets up all angry and immediately stubs her toe on some furniture. She continues to be a totally vain pain in the ass for the duration of the show, going on about not wanting to go to the emergency room to have it looked at and then, after she does eventually go, she doesn’t want to suffer the indignity of using a cane or wearing a cast. Cliff gets his father to tell her some elaborate lie about some cane from Africa that his father used and Clair falls for it even though he secretly bought it at some discount African cane store downtown. And so the evening finally comes and Cliff goes downstairs first to show off his smooth attire to his kids which includes a lot of showcasing of suspenders, also totally not a big deal because Cliff wears suspenders with a t-shirt tucked into sweatpants like everyday. Cliff thinks he will win the contest because Clair will have to use that stupid knock-off African cane and also she does not have suspenders. Then Clair descends the stairs and she is indeed dressed in a shiny (shiny=fancy) pantsuit with tapered legs that also inexplicably has a wrap-skirt attached to it. Her janky toe looks even worse now that she has come up with the intelligent solution of placing a giant brown paper bag over her entire foot and tying a purple ribbon around her ankle to hold it in place. But the kids applaud loudest for Clair anyway and tell her she is the smoothest and give her a wrist corsage as a prize because clearly they hate Cliff and were never going to give him the smoothest award in the first place. And Cliff dies a little inside, knowing he will have to continue to feign interest in Clair, Theo, Rudy and the other ones for at least a few seasons more.

The one where Clair’s sister gets engaged

Clair has a sister. Nobody cares.

The one about the first day of school

This is the one where Rudy wakes up Cliff and Clair by jumping on their bed, fully clad in a church dress and dripping in costume jewelry like pearls and a plastic charm belt. Cliff and Clair are upset because they are the only adults in America who do not have to wake up until 7am and it is only 6:55am and Rudy has again foiled their chances of doing it. Rudy is excited because it’s the first day of school and she has been up since 5am cooking with grease on the stove and draping herself in jewelry and she is ready to start first grade. Cliff tells Rudy to get out and go re-dress herself because she looks like a fortune teller and Claire spanks her for not making pancakes. Cliff and Claire share a brief moment getting excited about not having their children in the house all day so there will be more time for them to do it. Cliff decides to wake up the rest of the kids because the sooner they are out of the house the sooner he can do it with Clair. Denise predictably wants nothing to do with Cliff who immediately assumes she’s doing a boy in her room before school. Theo attempts to stay hidden beneath his comforter until Cliff forces him to fall off his bed. Nobody bothers to wake up Vanessa which is no suprise. The kids take off out the door and Cliff and Clair can’t wait to do it. At the end of the day, the kids come home from school and are yelling at each other which angers Clair who is trying to do major lawyer work at her miniature writing desk in the living room with the TV, which you would think should be a quiet space where nobody would be hanging out after school. Cliff and Clair learn that Vanessa has already secured a place in detention for the next 2 weeks for excessive gossiping in class, and Denise got pregnant sometime between algebra and world geography. Nobody has heard from Theo because he ran straight up to his room to make a new locker shrine depicting his love for Cockroach and Alfonso Ribeiro. Rudy is sad because a boy in her class called her “Rudy Huckleberry” and Cliff tells her to get over it and then calls her “Trophy Head.”

The Bill Cosby Fun Game

The Bill Cosby Fun Game – Click to load and play

This game takes 5 seconds to load and be sure to turn up your volume.  Basically, Bill has lost his rape trial and is broke and homeless so he has decided that mugging people is the best way to get cash.  He lures them in with pudding and then beats them over the head with his camera and steals their money.  He buries the bodies in his secret lair where he has stashed a yard gnome and Steve Urkel, both of which he can sell for cash to a fat naked man on Ebay if he’s really in a pinch.  Sometimes his camera breaks or he runs out of pudding so he has to go to the store and buy some from Rosie O’Donnell.  But when the cops are on his tail and he has run out of money and his camera is broken and he can’t mug anyone, it’s a good time to have him kill himself with the help of Knight Rider. 

Elvin, the non-provider

This  NY Times article from 1988 discusses the (then) status quo of The Cosby Show and Bill’s star ability.  In some sort of 80’s double trifecta, the article manages to name-check Ted Danson, Tom Selleck and Michael J. Fox and Head of the Class, Murder, She Wrote and Magnum P.I. (which, for the record, has advertisements on the back of every bus in Phoenix [ Tuesdays at 3p.m.]). 

My favorite part of the article validates that Elvin and Sondra do, in fact, reside in a tenement building.  Which is terrible because Sondra has to stay home and take care of the twins all day in that crappy old apartment while Elvin completes his residency at Barbizon Hair Design and Medical School or somesuch place that will be of no help to him in securing more lucrative doctor jobs in the future.   And you just know that Cliff and Claire are dying to gain custody of the babies while having the opportunity to cite Elvin’s total inability to provide for his family and Sondra’ poor choice in men at a public civil hearing (before they tell her she’s grounded which means no phone privileges).   

I’m not sure if they end up in the tenement building before they decide not to go to graduate school and choose to instead open up a wilderness supply store or after when Elvin is forced to go to med school because he has those twins AND that crappy tenement apartment to help pay for.  I bet that wilderness supply store is Elvin’s stupid idea.  He is always such a male chauvinist, especially when he secretly beats up Sondra for not cooking his steak long enough or folding his clothes. I bet he yells a lot about how as a man, he knows best, and that means opening a wilderness supply store and oh, by the way, her job is sweeping the floor but not working numbers at the register because finances are a man’s job.  If I were her, I’d be too pissed to find a real job either. 

*Supposedly, they meet up at Princeton as undergrads.  Which is clearly Sondra’s mistake in finding Elvin (the learning impaired math wing janitor) erasing blackboard business calculus equations and believing he has been working out homework problems.

The one with the anniversary

The one with Dance Mania and its ridiculous fire code

Claire realizes Theo’s desperate need to be popular will never go away and decides to be a cool mom and give him two tickets to appear on Dance Mania, a local dance show with neon and spandex.  Naturally, Theo takes Cockroach as his guest because he harbors a secret love for him and still hasn’t learned that Cockroach only uses him for free sandwiches and secret knee-rides from Cliff.  The boys show up at Dance Mania and Theo thinks this is the greatest thing that has ever happened to him becuase he clearly does not value the time spent in the recording studio jammin’ on the one with Stevie Wonder.  Security tells the boys that they are at capacity and fire code restrictions will only allow one of them to come inside and dance maniacally.  Theo is hit with a sudden flash of chivalry and tells Cockroach that he should be the one to go inside and dance.  Of course, Cockroach immediately dashes inside because he is a total a-hole and completely dismissive of Theo’s homosexual feelings toward him.  Theo is left outside, seemingly fuming at his missed chance to be popular and on TV and secretly fuming at his unrequited love for Cockroach.  The next day at school, Cockroach is super popular because he tells everyone that he got on Dance Mania and was doing some moves with Tina, the most popular dancer.  Adam Sandler tells Cockroach he would pay a million dollars to be Cockroach and continues to inexplicably be in Theo and Cockroach’s circle of friends, even though he is Jewish and everyone knows Cliff is a secret antisemite (the very special episode where Claire comes home to find Cliff lighting matzoh on fire in the neighbor’s yard).  Theo is seen glaring angrily into his locker and throwing his notebooks around while listening to his circle of friends kiss up to Cockroach, but he calms himself down enough to glance forlornly at the photo he has taped up of himself and Cockroach from junior prom and he covertly licks the side of Cockroach’s face before slamming his locker shut.  Theo arrives home from school so down in the dumps that he doesn’t even make a sandwich.  Claire finds him moping in his room and asks him what the matter is.  Theo tells Claire the whole story and Claire tells him it’s his own fault because the whole family knows Cockroach is an a-hole, sort of like how the whole family knows Elvin is embarassing to men as a gender, and why can’t he see this.  Theo yearns to tell Claire that he is probably blinded by his love for Cockroach but he doesn’t.  Claire, in a typical moment of exasperation that is the prelude to her making a point, purses her lips, widens her eyes, and starts some head/neck isolation movements before telling him to get over it.  Theo finally comes to the conclusion that Cockroach comes first and popularity comes second and surely that Dance Mania moment will buy him at least a few more months of friendship with Cockroach, enough time that maybe he can bring that daydream he has about the two of them stranded at a remote campsite with only one sleeping bag into fruition.

Knee Ride

The one with Angela Bassett’s bookclub

Claire graciously invites Cliff to join a meeting of her all female bookclub since Cliff has his Huxtable Men’s Club where they don’t read books but just talk a lot about high school track scores and sandwich condiments.  Obviously, Cliff never reads the book because it’s a woman’s novel with lots of imagery about pantyhose and maxipads so he grudgingly attends the bookclub meeting and just pretends that he read the novel.  The women act very serious about their bookclub and pat each other on the shoulder a lot and say, “Oh, girl, you know you liked that part the best!”  Cliff rolls his eyes every 20 seconds or so.  Angela Bassett is in the bookclub and asks Cliff how he felt when Roosevelt Washington cheated on Miss Sugarpie Jones while he pretended to support her women’s suffrage movement in rural Kentucky.  Cliff can’t answer the question so he tries to stall by making up some impromptu jazz vocals formed out of nonsense words but Angela is not distracted.  She points her finger at Cliff and accuses him of not reading the book and then all the ladies start throwing tea sandwiches and potato salad at him while Claire gives him the death stare that means “No more satin pajamas for you and also, I’m painting the dining room a terrible shade of greenish-blue.”  Cliff gladly leaves but not before pouring fruit punch all over the remainder of the tea sandwiches.  He goes upstairs to find Theo staring in the mirror and talking to himself about how good looking and popular he is.  Cliff asks Theo if he can hang out with him and Theo decides that now would be a good time to impress Cliff by asking if he wants to play chess with him on his computer.  Not that Theo knows how to play chess, but he thinks that saying the word chess will distract Cliff from asking him about how he did on his history test (obviously he got an F).  The computer game breaks within the first few moves because Cliff clearly knows how to play chess and Theo does not and is so frustrated that he keeps trying to ask the computer to play global thermonuclear war and there is a system overload.  Cliff just shakes his head disappointedly at Theo and leaves him alone to comb his hair and do self-affirmations in the mirror.

The one where Rudy is sick

Rudy gets sick and asks Cliff why she doesn’t feel good.  Cliff tells her it is because she is little and dumb cute and there is nothing she can do about it and he loves her so much and wishes she would stay this size forever because otherwise they will have to write in Denise’s Naval husband’s stage hog daughter into the show.  Rudy gets upset and walks around the house asking everyone if they think she is little and dumb.  They all agree.   Rudy asks her pet goldfish why it thinks she is sick and hears it confirm (through Cliff’s voiceover in her head) that she is, in fact, sick because she is little and dumb cute.  Then the camera does a close-up of Rudy’s surprised face with her eyes open wide and her mouth in a giant “O” shape.  Rudy finds Cliff sneaking a sandwich in the kitchen and starts crying because she really doesn’t feel good.  Cliff ignores her because he is too busy making nonsense words with his mouth to the tune of an unidentifiable jazz song while he finishes making a sandwich.  Cliff tells Rudy to talk to her germs and tell them to straighten up and start studying in school and drinking milk and he gives her an extra hug because he knows that after next season she will have have her adult front teeth and thus be not as cute.  Rudy lifts up her shirt and starts talking to her germs and telling them what’s what.  At this point, Cliff is devouring his sandwich and licking his fingers and doing head bops and making more weird mouth noises.  He doesn’t notice when Rudy grabs his tall glass of milk and chugs the entire thing, no doubt taking Cliff’s advice about making her germs drink milk.  Then Rudy abruptly vomits all over the floor and starts crying.  In the midst of all the kitchen activity, Claire has come home from work and hears the commotion in the kitchen.  She busts through the door to find Cliff mid-finger lick and Rudy sobbing uncontrollably.  Rudy is sobbing because she vomited and Cliff is sobbing because he can’t handle what the future brings for Rudy in the coming years.  Claire shoots Cliff a dirty look and tells Rudy to “Come here, baby and we’ll take you upstairs.”  The show closes with Cliff and Claire in bed and about to do it when Rudy busts in and vomits on their bedroom floor. Then everyone starts sobbing uncontrollably.

The one where Vanessa wants to be a drum major

This is the one where Vanessa wants be the first girl drum major at her school.  She practices all day, marching around the living room and down the stairs and she’s terrible.  Rudy follows her around pretending to play an air trumpet until Vanessa kicks her in the head and then tattles on her.  Claire tells Vanessa to her face that she’s real proud of her and then can be seen alone in the kitchen making a bunch of food she’ll later tell Cliff he can’t eat because the doctor told him not to and making big eye rolls about how bad Vanessa is doing because she can hear her crashing into the furniture.  Denise comes home from smoking weed and doing her boyfriend to find Vanessa still marching around the living room and gives her some advice: don’t audition for drum major or you’ll lose all your friends.  Theo comes home and ignores Vanessa and tries to kick her in the head while he’s running upstairs.  Cliff comes home and makes Vanessa sit down on the couch while he walks around with an unlit cigar in his mouth making jokes about women’s lib and Vanessa’s bad grades in school.  In the end, Vanessa goes to school and forgets to try out for drum major because she is too busy gossiping at her locker.  When she gets home, her mom waves her finger at her and gives her a stern lecture about following through with your goals but secretly everyone is happy because they know she would be an even bigger pain in the ass if she actually became the drum major.  In the final scene, Cliff and Claire are in their bedroom and ready to do it in their silk pajamas when Vanessa busts in and asks if she can sleep with her giant drum major baton in her bed.