Forgetting Your Purse

[Smartboy]

Throughout the run of "Gimme a Break!" there were several episodes that featured situations in which a female character forgot her purse. Two that I can think of off of the top of my head are from the third season. In the episode in which Katie was dating a 35 year old college professor, she came down stairs after getting dressed for her date. Upon arriving at the bottom of the staircase, she said "oops, I forgot my purse". She then had to go back up to get it. Wait a minute, the other one that I am thinking of is "Daddy's Little Girl" and it is from the fourth season. In this episode Nell met a man that she liked in a restaurant. After flirting with him, she purposely left her purse in the restaurant with the notion that the man would find and and track her down to see that she gets it back. This would give her a second chance to flirt with him. This strategy has been used on a bunch of other shows that I can think of. Two that I will mention right now are the "Golden Girls" and the short-lived "Fired Up. I guess that you could also make a case that the fifth-season episode called the "Purse Snatcher" also dealt with a woman forgetting her purse. Nell accidentally left her purse in the back of her car before entering the Greek restaurant. It took some trial and error for her to realize what had happened. The thing that made me think of all of this is the fact that I watched an episode of "Happy Days" tonight. This episode was from the tenth season and there was one line in it that let us know that a babe had forgotten her purse. This syndicated episode was on the same channel that features episodes of shows ranging from the "Brady Bunch" to "Mama's Family" to "Perry Mason" that I have written about in the recent past. If anyone here is interested in the content of this "Happy Days" episode and how forgetting your purse fit into the story, I will be happy to elaborate on it later on.