I watched this episode this morning and just made no sense to me. Kimberly and Arnold were HITCHHIKING in Manhattan???????-lol And since when do 45 Cabs just ride past you on a busy new york city street??? There were like 30 cabs that rode right past kimberly and Arnold so they decided to get in the car with this strange guy. But what happened to the SAME SUBWAY that Willis friends used to get to Park Ave in season 1? Why couldn't Kimberly and Arnold use the subway?-lol And then when they were riding with the hitchhiker, they were never in any danger until Arnold said-"CAN WE GO BACK TO YOUR APT SO I CAN WATCH YOUR SPACE VIDEOS?. So if Arnold never said that it looks like kimberly and arnold were going to be safe. It wasn't like the Hitchiker started taking them in a direction they didn't wanted to go in. It was Arnold who suggested they go back to his place. So it looks like the message was "Hitchhikers are only Dangerous if you ask to go back to their APT_LOL-LOL
Or maybe "If several Cabs ride past you on a busy Manhattan street, start hitchiking but just don't ask to go back to their place or you maybe in danger"

This was a very poorly written and produced episode and made absolutely no sense.

I hear you one time I wentto strange womans house and she triedto tuch me in orivatre areas and boy I was I ever scared

I hear you one time I wentto strange womans house and she triedto tuch me in orivatre areas and boy I was I ever scared


What the Hell????

I mean one time a strange woman invited me in to her hosuer then she tried tot o uch me Iwas very scared and I ran out as fsast as I could

I mean one time a strange woman invited me in to her hosuer then she tried tot o uch me Iwas very scared and I ran out as fsast as I could
What does that have to do with a hitchhiking scene that didn't make no sense in Diff'rent Strokes?

my point is Aronold and kimberly shoul;d not have hiched hiked notonly that butnver go to somebady.s house yo u do not know I learned alortt from that epaiode

I just watched this one over the weekend, and would have to agree that this was one of the most poorly written and implausible episodes (with the possible exception of the bullying episode) of the entire series.

Such as - obviously the objective is to give a strong warning not to hitchhike, but at the very least, could they not have come up with some relatively realistic scenario??

Almost everything in this episode would not have happened the way it did:
Why didn't Arnold & Kimberly take the limo?
Why did all those cabs pass them by, do cabs not stop when it's cold??
Knowing they had to get back for the party, why would they think they could stop off to watch videos? Why would someone ever ask that??

And then, i know they had to stretch it to a two-parter so I'm sure it was just filler, but the whole hypnosis thing???? By the time Arnold climbed down the fire escape, went to the police station, met the detective, went back to the penthouse, got hypnotized, everyone went to Bill's apt, they got the landlord engaged --- Bill could have raped and murdered Kimberly, disposed of the body and got out of the country....but somehow, whereas it seemed three hours had passed for Arnold, only 5-10 minutes went by for Kimberly & Bill?? What did they do the whole time between noticing that Arnold had escaped and going down to his basement darkroom???

Anyhow, I'm all for a good lesson-learning episode, but the writers needed to figure out in a better way how to get them into the situation without all that silliness. "Bicycle Man" I thought was relatively plausible, much more so than this one. The writers just needed to think it out a little more.

I watched this episode this morning and just made no sense to me. Kimberly and Arnold were HITCHHIKING in Manhattan???????-lol And since when do 45 Cabs just ride past you on a busy new york city street??? There were like 30 cabs that rode right past kimberly and Arnold so they decided to get in the car with this strange guy. But what happened to the SAME SUBWAY that Willis friends used to get to Park Ave in season 1? Why couldn't Kimberly and Arnold use the subway?-lol And then when they were riding with the hitchhiker, they were never in any danger until Arnold said-"CAN WE GO BACK TO YOUR APT SO I CAN WATCH YOUR SPACE VIDEOS?. So if Arnold never said that it looks like kimberly and arnold were going to be safe. It wasn't like the Hitchiker started taking them in a direction they didn't wanted to go in. It was Arnold who suggested they go back to his place. So it looks like the message was "Hitchhikers are only Dangerous if you ask to go back to their APT_LOL-LOL
Or maybe "If several Cabs ride past you on a busy Manhattan street, start hitchiking but just don't ask to go back to their place or you maybe in danger"

This was a very poorly written and produced episode and made absolutely no sense.

When you really think about it and point out all of the plot holes, you're head is going to be hurting. Like everybody else said, I understand that the whole point of the episode was to tell you not to hitchhike. But the whole ordeal w/ Kimberly, Arnold and Bill seems to hinge primarily on Kimberly and Arnold not being patient and the cab drivers not "doing their jobs".

So if Arnold never said that it looks like kimberly and arnold were going to be safe. It wasn't like the Hitchiker started taking them in a direction they didn't wanted to go in. It was Arnold who suggested they go back to his place. So it looks like the message was "Hitchhikers are only Dangerous if you ask to go back to their APT_LOL-LOL
.
Yeah I alwasy thought the same thing, here we have this nice guy Bill being a good samaritan doing Kimberly and Arnold a favor and wouldn't you know it Arnold has to open his big mouth because he wants to see some space videos, all this time it was Arnold's fault and Drummond should have given him a good spanking. :lol: :lol:

I remember watching some of this episode when I happened to turn on the TV and saw it while it was in progress. This was when the series was originally on the air between the early and mid 1980s.

I did not see all of it, but from your description, the scenario is too much like hokey movie that is not likely to really happen as depicted and in retrospect it was just an episode created to fill in broadcast time.
I remember the "bully" episode if you are referring to the same one I saw years back. I think Arnold and Dudley were being picked on by two older (teen looking) boys and strangely one was black and the other seemed to be either Hispanic or (strangely) Bengali and he had a bit of an accent from what I recall. I thought it was rather unrealistic because it was obvious that the writers did not want to make the bullies both black or both white since that would bring the issue to a different context that the show did not want to go into.
I think Willis fought both the bullies on behalf of Arnold and Dudley. I am not too sure what happened afterward. I recall that Willis had to recover from the beating he got.

But yes those were two rather unrealistic episodes. It seems to me that the kidnapping episode might have been thought up because sometime in 1979 a very high profile missing-child case occurred in New York City: The disappearance of Etan Patz which was the first time a missing child's photo was put on milk cartons.
It might have partially meant to warn both boys and girls not to hitchhike but it still seemed poorly thought out

I remember the "bully" episode if you are referring to the same one I saw years back. I think Arnold and Dudley were being picked on by two older (teen looking) boys and strangely one was black and the other seemed to be either Hispanic or (strangely) Bengali and he had a bit of an accent from what I recall. I thought it was rather unrealistic because it was obvious that the writers did not want to make the bullies both black or both white since that would bring the issue to a different context that the show did not want to go into.
I think Willis fought both the bullies on behalf of Arnold and Dudley. I am not too sure what happened afterward. I recall that Willis had to recover from the beating he got.


One bully was Hispanic and the other one was white.

I remember watching some of this episode when I happened to turn on the TV and saw it while it was in progress. This was when the series was originally on the air between the early and mid 1980s.

I did not see all of it, but from your description, the scenario is too much like hokey movie that is not likely to really happen as depicted and in retrospect it was just an episode created to fill in broadcast time.
I remember the "bully" episode if you are referring to the same one I saw years back. I think Arnold and Dudley were being picked on by two older (teen looking) boys and strangely one was black and the other seemed to be either Hispanic or (strangely) Bengali and he had a bit of an accent from what I recall. I thought it was rather unrealistic because it was obvious that the writers did not want to make the bullies both black or both white since that would bring the issue to a different context that the show did not want to go into.
I think Willis fought both the bullies on behalf of Arnold and Dudley. I am not too sure what happened afterward. I recall that Willis had to recover from the beating he got.

But yes those were two rather unrealistic episodes. It seems to me that the kidnapping episode might have been thought up because sometime in 1979 a very high profile missing-child case occurred in New York City: The disappearance of Etan Patz which was the first time a missing child's photo was put on milk cartons.
It might have partially meant to warn both boys and girls not to hitchhike but it still seemed poorly thought out


I doubt if the idea for that episode came from the 1979 kidnapping because this episode aired in 85. If it was then the episode would have aired in 1980

I doubt if the idea for that episode came from the 1979 kidnapping because this episode aired in 85. If it was then the episode would have aired in 1980

Actually, it might have been too controversial and "exploitative" for the network to air the episode so soon after the real incident. It might have been planned but not actually filmed until a few years had first passed. (A few weeks after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, I heard that there was a Broadway play in which one of the characters says to another (almost verbatim) "You are such an emotional terrorist" and the word "terrorist" was taken out and a word such as "Exploiter" or "Blackmailer" was put in. I could understand it and yet I was surprised that in 2001 with such a strong culture of anti-censorship, such a thing was done).

I doubt if the idea for that episode came from the 1979 kidnapping because this episode aired in 85. If it was then the episode would have aired in 1980

It aired in 1984.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0560067/

Oh come on I'm sure there's lots of other episodes that were unrealistic too. LOL.

Ed.