I have never seen this episode of the DVD show and am wondering what Laura and Rob's reaction was to Ritchie's advances in vocabulary. I read the other posts about this show and have gathered that no one knows what Ritchie said. Is this true? Just curious to see if anyone could give me a better summary than some of the episode guides. Thanks a bunch!!!

Originally posted by KrisPMM
I have never seen this episode of the DVD show and am wondering what Laura and Rob's reaction was to Ritchie's advances in vocabulary. I read the other posts about this show and have gathered that no one knows what Ritchie said. Is this true? Just curious to see if anyone could give me a better summary than some of the episode guides. Thanks a bunch!!!

No, it's never revealed exactly what Richie's "new word" was. Here's what I remember of the ep.: Richie was learning this "word" from a new playmate of his, an older boy. Rob and Laura confront the parents, all set to yell at them about setting a bad example for their son, etc. And it turns out the father's a minister!! LOL And the other boy's parents explain how it's just a normal part of growing up, it's best to just ignore it, and so on. I think that about covers it.

Kristen

The minister in this episode was played by William Schallert, a veteran character actor who was perhaps best known as Patty's father and Kathy's uncle on "The Patty Duke Show." Veteran fans may also remember the word that Ritchie says which makes Rob and Laura start suspecting other kids in the neighborhood is "jerky." Ritchie talks about making turtle soup with a turtle he just got from a neighborhood kid. Rob tells him he can't do it and Ritchie says, "Yeah, Tommy said it was a jerky idea too." And the light went off. How much you wanna bet the 'word' writers had in mind (and I think this was Carl Kleinschmidt/Dale McRaven episode) is soemthing said on TV sitcoms every week today -- which, I suppose, is a sign of how far we've fallen.