Me, Despair, and Cousin Larry Appleton
How my favorite childhood sitcom helped me survive the darkest days of my husband’s first bipolar episode.
During the weeks my husband was in the hospital during his first manic episode, I was living in my own personal twilight zone. Everything I thought I knew about my life and my dearest, most lasting relationship had been yanked out from under me, and I had no idea what my life might look like moving forward.
For the first few days, I was staying at my sister’s house, because the crux of Justin’s episode happened to coincide with a huge March snowstorm that knocked out power in the area for days. My brave brother-in-law came to collect me and my dog in the midst of this blizzard/personal crisis and took me to their house (where they have a generator). I was incredibly grateful to be with family, who kept me warm and fed and supported during the initial and most disorienting stage of this crisis.
When I was able to return to our house a few days later, I’d had some space from the terror and turmoil that had occurred there as Justin’s episode escalated, and it felt more like coming back to a safe home base than it might have otherwise. It was good to sleep in my own bed and be in my own kitchen, but still, it was a whole different world.
My routines revolved around fielding phone calls from doctors and social workers, texting and e-mailing family and friends to keep them updated, reading articles online about bipolar and psychosis, and coordinating all the logistics of keeping our household going without my usual life partner and teammate by my side.
I did okay during the day, because I was busy. But in the evenings, it got harder.
I was completely exhausted and emotionally gutted, and at times I felt utterly alone. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t meditate, I couldn’t focus on anything. I never watch TV anyway because it stresses out my Highly Sensitive Person brain, and I couldn’t even get myself into ASMR relaxation videos, which are usually my go-to for calming my racing brain. (Because I have my own ASMR channel, which Justin has always been super supportive of, that content felt like another reminder of the “normal” life I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to count on again.)
All I could do was pray, in a rambling, seeking, incoherent kind of way and lay in bed, staring into space, cuddling with my pets and hoping that the numbness might recede, while also being afraid of what I might feel if it did.
A few nights in, I have no idea why, I searched for Perfect Strangers on YouTube.
Are you familiar with Perfect Strangers? If not, it was a very endearing and light-hearted odd-couple themed sitcom, part of ABC’s ubiquitous TGIF Friday night line-up (which served as the heralded bookend of every school week of my elementary and middle school life). The show revolved around two very different and very distantly related cousins, Larry Appleton and Balki Bartokomous, who lived a sweet and hijinks-filled bachelor’s life together in a small Chicago apartment.
Larry (played by Mark Linn-Baker) was uptight, anxious, always trying to prove himself and perpetually scheming to be bigger and better than he was, while Balki (played by Bronson Pinchot), who hailed from the fictitious and vaguely Greek island of Mypos and had lived as as simple sheepherder before coming to America, was completely self-assured, lacked any sense of self-repression or embarrassment, and expressed his simple joy for life through every word he said (and song he sang and elaborate gesture or dance move he busted out).
I cannot tell you why, other than divine intervention, that this show came into my mind during these dark days, but I’m very thankful it did.
The first video I found was a short clip of Balki entering the newsroom where they both worked (Larry as a reporter, Balki handling the mail) performing an impassioned version of “U Can’t Touch This” by M.C. Hammer. Larry tries to get Balki’s attention to tell him something, and after a couple of failed attempts, he simply gives up and joins in the performance without missing a beat, and the two sing a few more lines of the song, complete with perfectly coordinated dance choreography, and then calmly go back to their work.
This was common fodder for the show, with the duo often bursting into spontaneous song and dance, and their ability to do so without cracking a smile, while the audience howled, made these scenes all the more hilarious.
I watched that clip over 3 or 4 times when I first found it. It didn't make me laugh exactly. I’m not sure I even smiled at first. But it stirred something inside me. It reminded me that silliness existed, that it was possible to be lighthearted and to take joy in something completely random and pure.
It also tapped into the nostalgic childhood happiness of my sister and me sitting on the floor, cozied up with blankets and snacks, letting our childhood cares (which I did have, even back then, I was always a nervous child) melt away, because it was Friday night and somehow, even as kids, we knew that symbolized a precious little window of freedom and rest for the collective consciousness.
So I saved that Perfect Strangers clip and watched it again the next night. Of course, the YouTube algorithm started feeding me more, so I started a playlist (here it is, enjoy my friends) of all the best clips I found, many of which had obviously been captured by people holding up their phones to their TV screens while playing old VHS tapes of the show recorded from television. (God bless every person who took the time to do this, I love you all.)
The sometimes grainy quality and poor sound did not detract from the humor. I did smile, as I was reminded of the bibbi babka song, which Balki dedicatedly performs while baking a sacred traditional pastry from his homeland, and I outright laughed at Larry’s harried attempts to speed up Balki’s process so that they could produce these treats with assembly line precision for a quick profit.
I chuckled at all of Balki’s ridiculous malapropisms, Larry’s countless failed attempts to impress his girlfriend, and of course, clip after clip of song and dance routines that never, ever got old to me.
What also came home to me watching these clips as an adult, was the constant play between Larry’s relentless anxiety and Balki’s simple, open, self-assuredness. It was both funny and reassuring to see Mark Linn-Baker cringe and flip out in crippling mortification (I feel you, Larry, I truly do) and then be soothed by Balki’s childlike honesty and straightforward logic of the heart.
When we’re in crisis, joy is hard to come by. Dark humor often appears, which breaks the tension and releases some steam from our overburdened tanks, but true levity, let alone delight, can often feel impossible to tap into. We take the moments of relief where we can get them, even if they might seem trivial or ridiculous to someone else.
Humor becomes very personal, and a very potent kind of medicine in the midst of intense turmoil and loss.
Perfect Strangers didn’t cure me of my grief or take away my trauma. But it did, somehow, make me feel better. So every night, without shame, I would sit in my bed with my laptop and watch 10 minutes of Balki and Larry before I attempted to sleep.
So I could have something pleasant and silly in my mind, and somewhere deep in my heart, my inner gladness would know that I hadn’t completely abandoned it.
I’m thankful to Larry and Balki for showing up when I needed them and handing me a tiny little flashlight that I could wave around in the darkness and catch a few reflections of my own wavering and faltering joy.