Chemistry Keeps the Formula Working

Read Time:7 Minute, 44 Second

TV SERIES REVIEWS
Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series
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Genre: Comedy, Sitcom
Year Released: 1986–1993, 2026 Blu-ray
Runtime: 61h 15m
Director(s): Joel Zwick and various directors
Writer(s): Dale McRaven, William Bickley, Michael Warren, and others
Cast: Bronson Pinchot, Mark Linn-Baker, Melanie Wilson, Rebeca Arthur, Belita Moreno, Sam Anderson, Jo Marie Payton, Ernie Sabella
Where to Watch: available now; order your copy here: www.moviezyng.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: Back in the day, there was a time when TV didn't need to convince you that every comedy was redefining the format. Sometimes funny people were enough, and PERFECT STRANGERS understood the assignment. Eight seasons and 150 episodes later, the moving pieces behind the show become incredibly easy to recognize. Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn-Baker remain funny enough together that recognizing why doesn't necessarily stop it from working.

Larry Appleton has finally escaped his family in Wisconsin and moved to Chicago, where he expects to start building a life on his own. Then distant cousin Balki Bartokomous arrives in town from the fictional Mediterranean island of Mypos, assumes he's moving in, and turns Larry's carefully imagined independence into something far more complicated. Larry is anxious, ambitious, selfish when panic takes over, and convinced he understands how the world works. Balki approaches almost everything with optimism, curiosity, and enough literal interpretations of American life to create trouble wherever he goes.

It's a tried-and-true comedy style even by 1986 standards. Dale McRaven essentially takes the mismatched-roommate structure of THE ODD COUPLE, mixes in a fish-out-of-water premise, and builds episodes around Larry believing he knows better until circumstances inevitably prove otherwise. You can often see the lesson coming before Larry does, and it doesn't take long to understand how the stories will unfold.

That predictability matters less because Pinchot and Linn-Baker make the journey funnier than the destination. Pinchot gets the obvious role as Balki, complete with the accent, strange Myposian customs, catchphrases, misunderstandings, and physical comedy that made him the show's breakout character. He could've become exhausting pretty quickly, but Pinchot finds enough sweetness underneath the exaggeration that Balki feels more like a person than just a walking, talking punchline.

Linn-Baker deserves more credit than simply being described as the straight man beside him. Larry can be every bit as ridiculous as Balki, just for completely different reasons, and some of Linn-Baker's funniest moments come when Larry's confidence collapses into absolute panic. His facial reactions, increasingly desperate attempts to maintain control, and willingness to throw himself into elaborate physical comedy are essential to why their pairing works.

More importantly, neither character is “the stupid one” or “the smart one.” Balki doesn't understand much about American culture. He's often more perceptive about people than Larry, while Larry's supposed sophistication doesn't stop him from making terrible decisions whenever ambition or insecurity gets involved. That keeps PERFECT STRANGERS from reducing Balki to the naive immigrant who needs the American guy to explain everything.

Some of this stuff, understandably, has aged. Mypos deliberately exaggerates it into a grab bag of vaguely Mediterranean traditions, ridiculous words, folk customs, dances, sayings, and foods, with Balki's foreignness repeatedly setting up jokes. Watching nearly forty years later, the cultural caricature is much more noticeable than it would've been to an audience in the late 80s.

Pinchot's performance saves a lot of it because Balki is rarely ashamed of where he comes from. The joke may begin with Larry thinking one of his traditions is ridiculous, but Balki frequently ends up happier, kinder, or more sensible than everyone surrounding him. Mypos might be fictional; Balki's refusal to abandon it gives the character surprising dignity beneath all of the exaggeration.

The series gets stronger once it expands beyond the apartment and Ritz Discount Store. Early boss Donald Twinkacetti, played by Ernie Sabella, works as an appropriately miserable obstacle, but moving Larry and Balki into jobs at the Chicago Chronicle gives the show a better group of personalities to play against. Sam Anderson's permanently irritated Sam Gorpley is especially good whenever Balki's cheerfulness makes his life worse.

Belita Moreno is another welcome presence as advice columnist Lydia Markham. Jo Marie Payton, as the elevator operator Harriette Winslow, leaves a considerably larger mark on television history than anyone could've predicted from the role. Harriette eventually became the connection that produced FAMILY MATTERS, meaning the sitcom that gave the world Steve Urkel can trace its existence back through Balki and Larry.

Melanie Wilson's Jennifer and Rebeca Arthur's Mary Anne also become increasingly important as the series moves forward. Their introductions initially look like an obvious attempt to give the two leads matching girlfriends, and some of that is certainly true. Both characters eventually settle into the ensemble. Mary Anne's tendency to suddenly say something smarter than anyone expects is particularly funny because Arthur never oversells the joke.

Those relationships also allow the series to acknowledge that Larry and Balki can't just be two single guys sharing an apartment forever. Jobs change, relationships evolve, living arrangements shift, and adulthood keeps moving whether the comedy wants it to or not. PERFECT STRANGERS isn't exactly committed to complicated character development, but watching these people gradually build lives gives eight seasons more continuity than you might remember.

The longer PERFECT STRANGERS ran, the harder it was to find believable reasons for Larry and Balki to keep getting pulled into the same type of disaster, and later episodes increasingly relied on bigger situations rather than more focused ones. Physical comedy that once grew naturally from their personalities can start feeling like an obligation because somebody decided another room needed to be destroyed.

Pinchot and Linn-Baker throw themselves into increasingly elaborate disasters with timing that would fall apart if either performer were half a beat off, and the show is unusually willing to let a gag keep escalating once it finds something. Some episodes practically become live-action cartoons while never completely abandoning the personalities that got Larry and Balki into trouble.

Even the theme song understands the assignment. "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" is one of those aggressively optimistic television themes that immediately places you in that era. It's completely sincere, almost ridiculously so, which makes it an ideal introduction to PERFECT STRANGERS.

All eight seasons span 17 Blu-ray discs, and the high-definition restoration brings considerably more definition and color to a show many viewers remember through broadcast television, syndication, or older home-video releases. This isn't a series where anyone needs to count pores, but having television of this era properly preserved from film elements rather than left trapped in aging VHS or DVD absolutely matters.

The show has been given the treatment it deserves. PERFECT STRANGERS isn't some overlooked work of television genius, and watching every episode makes its formula and diminishing returns impossible to ignore. There are dated jokes, stories that repeat earlier ideas, supporting characters who disappear, and enough late-series aches to understand why eight seasons were plenty. What survives all of that is Larry and Balki. Pinchot may have created the character everyone remembers, but Linn-Baker gives him the perfect person to annoy, teach, frustrate, protect, and eventually grow alongside. Their chemistry turns an extremely conventional sitcom premise into something people are still happy to revisit forty years later.

PERFECT STRANGERS doesn't need to be perfect to deserve that affection. It only needs those moments when Larry's latest plan is collapsing, and Balki is staring at him because he knew this would happen. Both of them are seconds away from making the situation considerably worse. When that happens, doing the “Dance of Joy” still seems entirely reasonable.

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