Mork & Mindy

Mork & Mindy is an American sitcom broadcast from 1978 to 1982 on ABC. It stars Robin Williams as Mork, an extraterrestrial who comes to Earth from the planet Ork in a small, one-man egg-shaped spaceship. Pam Dawber co-stars as Mindy McConnell, his human friend and roommate.

Broadcast history

Premise and initial success

The series is a spin-off from the sitcom Happy Days. The character of Mork is played by a then-unknown Robin Williams, who impressed producer Garry Marshall with his quirky comedic ability as soon as they met. When Williams was asked to take a seat at the audition, Williams immediately sat on his head on the chair and Marshall cast him on the spot, and later wryly commented that Williams was the only alien who auditioned for the role.

Mork appears in the Happy Days Season 5 episode, "My Favorite Orkan", which first aired in February 1978 and is a take on the 1960s sitcom My Favorite Martian. Williams' character, Mork, attempts to take Richie Cunningham back to his planet of Ork as a human specimen, but his plan is foiled by Fonzie. In the initial broadcast of this episode, it all turned out to be a dream that Richie had, but when Mork proved so popular, the ending was re-edited to show Mork erasing the experience from everyone's minds, thus meaning the event had actually happened and wasn't a dream.