Charlotte and Mark are playing tennis — him in long pants and her in a knee-length skirt.  This struck me not so much because of the formality and oppressive transphobic  cis-gender conformity imposed by Big Tennis in the past, but by how great California weather must be.  Here in sweaty South Florida, such a stunt would be suicide.  It is also nice if you can play on a private court at a huge estate with rolling hills and an old geezer watching.  What?

Oh, that’s Charlotte’s boss, 65 year old Howard Rutherford.  He reminds Charlotte her lunch hour is about over and tells her fiancé Mark to beat it.

Rutherford reminds her he is worth $11 million, and this is back when that was a lot of money. ^[1]  His ex-wives have been taken care of, and not in the usual AHP way.  They have been paid off so a new Mrs. Rutherford would be his sole heir.  He puts his hand on her leg and says she is a lucky gal.  He estimates that because of his bad heart, he has only a few months to live.  With no heirs, she would get his entire estate rather than, say, leaving it to that depressing Children’s Hospital down the street. ^[2]

Charlotte protests that she is going to marry Mark.  Rutherford is very practical, saying there will be plenty of time to marry Mark after he croaks in a year or so.  She still declines, but he suggests she run it by Mark.

When Mark hears the arrangement would only be for about a year, it sounds like a good deal to him.  Especially since this is before Viagra was invented.

I love the economy of these 30 minute episodes.  There is a quick cut to soon after the the Rutherfords’ wedding.  Rutherford gives his wife a necklace with a single pearl on it:  “A token of an old man’s love and gratitude for sharing his last days.”  He says he regrets that he won’t be around to give her more.

Another quick cut to the couple having dinner at opposite ends of a long table like the Citizens Kane  Citizen Kanes.  Rutherford impressively rolls a single pearl down the long table to Charlotte.  As she catches it, we see she is wearing a necklace with five pearls on it — one for each anniversary.

Charlotte sneaks out to see Mark.  She wants to get a divorce so she and Mark can be together.  He is committed to waiting for the old man to die “so the money doesn’t go to some seedy charity.”  Mark says all the lonely nights are rough for him too, but his argument is somewhat undercut when a girlfriend walks in.  Charlotte slaps him and storms out.

Another quick-cut to Rutherford giving his wife another pearl — for their fifteenth anniversary!  He again voices his fear that this will be the last one.

Mark comes to the house after seeing in the paper that Rutherford is sick.  Charlotte sees that Mark has a 10 year old son, Billy, from a previous marriage, so I guess the mother is the one who walked in on them.  Charlotte invites the boy back to play tennis tomorrow.  Mark sees this as a sign that he can maybe get back together with Charlotte, but she is having none of that.

After spending time with the boy over the summer, Charlotte says she and Rutherford want to pay for the boy to go to prep school and then to a fancy college so he can learn to embrace communism and hate the country that gave his benefactor the opportunities to succeed so Billy could have every advantage.  If all goes well, he’ll be calling them racists by Christmas Break

Cut to their 25th anniversary.  Rutherford finally dies.

Suddenly, I couldn’t get a decent well-lit shot without the logo. Elon Musk had the right idea — fire half the coders before they destroy the product. I’m also looking at you Microsoft, Adobe, and WordPress!

Mark comes to visit.  Charlotte gloats about inheriting all the money.  Her glee at Mark’s being left with nothing is truly infuriating.  However, Mark is even more concerned about her impending marriage — to Billy!

An all-around great episode.  Just goes to show you (and by you, I mean me) that you can have a great AHP episode without a murder.  It was a surprising choice to have Charlotte grow to love the old man pretty quickly.  It could have been a very different story, but I trust the pros at AHP to make the right choice.

The other thing that is baffling is AHP again flirting with incest . . . and getting away with it!  In the same year that Rob and Laura Petrie were sleeping in separate beds, AHP has a woman whoring herself out for money, her cuckolded fiancée secretly banging another chick, and her marrying her ex-fiancée’s young son — a boy that she had de facto adopted when he was 10 years old.  OK, it’s only incest under the Pornhub definition, but it’s still pretty weird.

Other Stuff:

• [1]  This is a little like Indecent Proposal, but 32 years later the offer was only $1M.  True, that proposal was for just one night, but it was offered by 1993 Robert Redford, and not 2023 Robert Redford.
• [2]  To be fair, he did add a codicil giving them $2M if they did not ever play the 1-877-KARS4KIDS jingle again while he was alive.
• Ted Jack Cassidy (Mark) was Ted Baxter’s brother on MTM, starred in the first Columbo (directed by Stephen Spielberg), and was David Cassidy’s father.  He died in a fire at age 49.
• I was planning to post about the AHP version of Poison that I had somehow missed years ago in its proper rotation.  Turns out, though, that I actually liked the Tales of the Unexpected version better.  Where’s the fun in that?
• Kudos to Michael Burns for not ending up with the ignominious fate of many kid actors (i.e. dead, drug addict, adult actor).  He went on to be an author, a professor, and horse breeder.
• Inevitably: