Charles in Charge Season One
By David Mumpower
March 7, 2006
We get mailed schwag from studios so much that the Fed Ex guy considers us his home away from home. The thought is always appreciated, but some items are better than normal. As an example, we got a Longest Yard Paul Crewe #18 jersey that is still in my wife's lazy day clothing rotation. There were also some Eurotrip postcards I found inspired. Other stuff is, well, a bit too Miss Congeniality 2 to be noteworthy. Even so, I'm not jaded enough by the process that I don't occasionally get surprised by how happy some freebie makes me. This week is particularly true in this regard as Charles in Charge Season One arrived in the mail. I guess I should go ahead and say right off the bat that no, this is not sarcasm.
Charles in Charge of our days and nights. Charles in Charge of our wrongs and rights. I want Charles in Charge of me. If you are over the age of 18, you know these lyrics whether you choose to admit it or not. Admittedly, they come across as fascist on the surface level, but the overriding white slavery theme is misleading. Charles in Charge was a genteel family comedy that deserved a better fate, one inexplicably usurped by the thematically similar Who's the Boss. The moral of the story? Tony Danza ruins everything.
The time was 1984 (perhaps that's the rationale for the lyrical fascism) and CBS was ready to take another chance on teen beat dream Scott Baio despite the unmitigated disaster that was Joanie Loves Chachi. The idea was to allow Baio to play exactly the same role as his buddy, Henry Winkler, by being a youth mentor. Baio would portray Charles, an impossibly ambitious Everybody's All-American boy scout straight out of the J.J. Redick mold. (Sidenote: J.J. Redick was four months old when the show debuted.) Sure, the idea of an "aww shucks" sort of hero might seem ridiculous now, but these were simpler times back when a man like Peyton Manning would have been revered for his character rather than reviled for his perfection. Remember, these were the days when Hulk Hogan told kids to say their prayers and eat their vitamins, and an entire generation did so, not realizing it was code for steroid munching.
Charles was a 19-year-old college student who refused to accept money from others. Nay, he would work hard for a living rather than live off his parents and state pell grants. As such, he took on a job as the male equivalent of an au pair. The family in his care at the time were the Pembrokes. You might remember it as being the Powells, but there is an explanation for this which will be addressed in a moment. Like Charles himself, the Pembrokes were an innately decent bunch straight out of black and white television yore. There was Jill Pembroke, a mother who would make Donna Reed proud, and Stan Pembroke, a successful businessman who always seemed to conveniently abandon his family at the times when they most needed male guidance. If you suspect Mrs. Pembroke had ulterior motives for keeping the sexual peaking Italian-American hunk of muscles and dimples around, you will have to save your theories for Charles in Charge slash...of which I hope there is none. I choose to believe she thought only of the kids and not of her unmet needs as a frequently abandoned housewife. At least I did before I started typing this and recognized where the evidence lies. But I digress.
In the end, though, the real reason to buy this is the presence of Gwendolyn Pierce. Charles' object of affection and my object of obsession was portrayed by Jennifer Runyon. This was a woman whose performance in Up the Creek prematurely pushed me into manhood, and is at least partially responsible for my lost virginity. Needless to say, I am a fan. It is readily apparent that the producers of Charles in Charge were similarly ogle-y about her. Many of the story arcs in season one involved Charles desperately trying to get her to fall in love with him and for good reason. She was worth any amount of effort.
Why do you remember later Baywatch icon Nicole Eggert being on Charles in Charge? That's a strange situation. When CBS originally aired the show, it was a ratings bust that was cancelled after one season. Still needing the work, Baio successfully transferred the show to syndication. This type of television programming was much less demanding with regards to ratings. Since several of the prior cast memebers were no longer available, though, Charles was given a new job with the Powells, friends to the Pembrokes. The fact that three years had passed yet Charles still had made little progress in his academic career was never fully addressed. Instead, the show emphasized that it was now for teen boys as well as teen girls. It added Eggert and Josie Davis as the hot Powell daughters while Ellen Travolta (Scientology John's mom) was brought in to portray Charles' mother. This was not exactly a stretch for her since she played the identical role for Baio on Happy Days. Oddly, the even more toothless, vastly inferior syndicated version of Charles in Charge lasted four seasons.
The presence of Runyon is more than enough to make Charles in Charge Season One a must-buy box set. Sure, the comedy is a bit dated, but it is nothing any less original than would be found on current hit shows like The King of Queens and How I Met Your Mother. Now that I think of it, Willie Aames was the 1980s precursor to Doogie Howser's character on that show. Note that this review otherwise stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the unfortunate presence of Aames on the show.
Charles in Charge is as gentle as sitcoms get, and it has not lost a single iota of its charm in the 20 years since its original airing.
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