Episode
Caroline in the City: Caroline and the Reluctant Father
Overview
An unusual episode focussing on Del, who for once has an adult problem after he hears some shocking news from Laura, a former fling who's in town for the weekend - together with the daughter she had by Del but never told him about. Torn between a burning desire to meet his child and his terror of being a total disappointment to her, and Annie's brother quits his job to become a painter after he misinterprets Richard's evaluation of his work as an artist.
Details
- Series
- Caroline in the City
- Season
- Season 3
- Episode
- Episode 15
- Air date
- 1998-01-19
- Runtime
- 22 min
Episode context
Caroline and the Reluctant Father is Episode 15 in Season 3 of Caroline in the City. It aired on 1998-01-19. The runtime is 22 min.
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Episode 14: Caroline and the Quiz Show
Annie's been dating Seth Rudetski for six weeks now, and he's decided it's time for her to meet his parents, an intellectual couple who run ""Nothing Trivial,"" a quiz show broadcast to colleges on public radio. They turn out to be big fans of Caroline's strip, and persuade her to appear as a celebrity contestant - a decision that revives her childhood trauma (seen in a flashback) of freezing under the pressure of a state spelling bee. While Del and Charlie try to coach her through her anxiety, she appeals to Richard - and Julia steps in with a solution of her own. Meanwhile, Annie's feeling pressure of a different sort: from the excessively close relationship between Seth and his doting parents. (.)
Episode 16: Caroline and the Outer Limits
In a surreal take-off on both The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, Caroline insists that Richard work late once too often for Julia, who accuses Caroline of being an inconsiderate employer and says that she should ""walk a mile in my shoes."" Caroline instantly finds herself doing just that, since everyone now sees her as Julia and Julia as Caroline, while (in the best touch) Charlie narrates a la Rod Serling. Caroline discovers the advantages of being the gorgeous Julia - the customers at Remo's don't care that she's an incompetent bartender so long as they get to ogle her behind her back - but is frustrated in her attempts to take advantage of the ""special thing"" Richard wants Julia to do with him as soon as they get home.
More episodes from this season
Episode 13: Caroline and the Love That Dares Not Speak its Name
Caroline is aghast that Annie blabbed to Richard about her feelings for him, and tries to avoid his questions by inviting in a hyper-anxious knife salesman. When Richard discovers the truth about the answering machine message Caroline left for him (and which Julia erased), the two finally confess their mutual attraction, but quickly agree that they have both moved on. But a dinner double date at Caroline's turns into a competition for happiest couple between Caroline & Trevor and Richard & Julia - until they all wind up in an emergency ward with food poisoning from Caroline's fish chowder. Meanwhile, Annie tries a song and dance routine to help Del and Charlie defend their greeting card trade show turf against Del's evil brother Garner.
Episode 17: Caroline and the Toothbrush
An ecstatic Annie bursts in on Caroline and Trevor to announce that her mother is finally moving out to live with an aunt in the suburbs. When Caroline discovers that Trevor has left his toothbrush behind, she begins worrying about whether their relationship is moving too fast, then decides to get a key cut for Trevor, then takes Annie's advice not to give it to him yet - only to discover that a distracted Richard has already done so. Both Richard and Caroline pursue Trevor to his gym, where they have to fend off the attempts of an over-motivated employee to sign them up as members and where Caroline and a flustered Trevor finally reach an understanding of sorts in the steam room. Meanwhile, Del and Charlie pursue their daftest promotional scheme yet: kidnapping the Central Park groundhog so that when he emerges he will be wearing a little Caroline in the City cape. Naturally, this scheme backfires, along the way ensuring that Annie's mother doesn't move out after all. (So now that she
Episode 12: Caroline and the Decanter
When Caroline's parents are stranded in Wisconsin by a snowstorm, Caroline reluctantly accompanies Del to his dysfunctional family Christmas - especially after he tells her that his mother still resents her never having brought a hostess gift the first time they met - leaving Charlie to house-sit Salty and attempt to spend some quality holiday time with his father. Meanwhile, while Richard tries to be enthusiastic about a delayed honeymoon trip to Hawaii, Annie tries to help Julia overcome her fear of flying with some tranquilizers that work all too well - and while defending herself to a furious Richard, lets slip the little fact that Caroline is ""still"" in love with him....
Episode 18: Caroline and the Cabbie
Richard gets a chance to have a painting exhibited at the New York Public Library, but falls victim to on-line addiction at a cyber cafe. An outraged Caroline files a complaint against a rude cabbie, but Richard is her only witness (""A rude cab driver in New York? What's next, tall buildings?"") and fails to show up at the hearing. Meanwhile, after literal years on the waiting list, Annie finally gets an appointment with famous hair stylist Olaf, only to have Del and Charlie invade her session with a ridiculous scheme to market the hair sweepings of the famous - which Olaf loves.
Episode 11: Caroline and the Used Car Salesman
Caroline becomes convinced that Richard is having an affair - but he is really moonlighting as a used car salesman to earn extra Christmas cash. Enter Del and Charlie in search of a used Porsche.
Episode 19: Caroline and the Visit From Mom
When Caroline's mother visits, Annie becomes upset at the blandness of their relationship and encourages Caroline to have a healthy fight as she and Angie do. When Caroline timidly tries to open up to her mom, Margaret repostes with a real shocker: she hates Caroline's comic strip. Meanwhile, Del and Charlie go to Atlantic City at the request of a potential investor, and Richard tags along for the free ride, desperately trying to finish the new John Grisham thriller while resisting everyone's determination to tell him the surprise ending.
Episode 10: Caroline and the Councilman
Del gets excited over commercial possibilies when a civic politican mentions Caroline's cartoon strip in a speech, but Richard pours cold water on the idea: the man has a terrible record for opposing funding for the arts. His opinon changes slightly when Del drags the wily politico over for a meeting, whereupon Lake goes wild over Richard's recently completed painting and buys it. By the time Richard thinks better of selling his first work to a man he despises, Julia has already spent the money on a honeymoon trip to Hawaii; so Caroline steps in to prove she is not as politically naive as everyone assumes. Meanwhile, Annie, trying to cope with her cousin Jennifer who has dropped out of high school to find an acting career in Manhattan, goes ballistic when she discovers the girl has met a man claiming to be a movie producer who has promised her a role opposite Keanu Reeves - and sets out for the guy's hotel room to tell him off....
Episode 20: Caroline and the Little White Lies
For insurance purposes, Del and Charlie pretend to be gay, but then Del meets a beautiful woman at a party, and in trying to pursue her gets himself and Charlie invited to be the couple of honor at a gay pride rally. Meanwhle, Richard reluctantly agrees to change his appearance so that he'll be picked for jury duty, and Annie lies to her mom about her dad's fiancée.
Episode 9: Caroline and the Bitter Beast
When Annie discovers an old musical notebook among the possessions Richard wants to store in Caroline's locker, teasing leads to genuine surprise when one of Richard's compositions turns out to be the tune to ""The Way We Were,"" which won a Grammy award for Richard's summer camp instructor, Marvin Hamlisch. With Annie pretending to be his legal counsel, Richard braves Hamlisch's ferociously protective housekeeper Olga and steals the trophy, then begins hostage negotiations. Meanwhile, Caroline encounters her former blind date Trevor and they resume a relationship, complicated by Trevor's German Shepherd who remains stubbornly loyal to Trevor's former girlfriend.
Episode 21: Caroline and the Killer Dad
Annie goes on a blind date with a former priest, and to her own surprise hits it off with him - particularly when she learns he has never been with a woman but would really, really like to be. Richard attempts to reconcile with Julia's multi-millionaire dad, who is still convinced that Richard is only after Julia for the money, and Caroline becomes convinced by a serious of strange accidents that he is actually trying to kill Richard: a theory Richard poo-poos until he finds himself at the controls of a plummeting plane while Mazzone prepares to parachute to safety. Meanwhile, Del thinks he can improve on the punch line of Caroline's latest cartoon, then he and Charlie desperately try to retrieve it from the syndication editors before it goes to press, using measures that give new meaning to the phrase ""cartoon strip.""