TV Guide Grapevine, Week of February 24, 1990

Imperfect Friends

The relationship between Perfect Strangers' Mark Linn-Baker and Bronson Pinchot is in what Pinchot describes as "a great phase" as their ABC series heads into the final weeks of shooting for the season.

"During the first six episodes this season, things were just medium. then worse than that, then it got good. It's just that we've got such a closely tied relationship that when one is down or a little out of sorts or tired, it's like a 150-pound weight on the other." The man who gives us so many laughs as transplanted sheepherder Balki Bartokomous stresses that things never get chillier between him and Linn-Baker than "our acting a bit formal to the other -- and no matter how bad things are, the audience never knows. We give 1000 percent when it's time to do a show."

He recalls the terrible time three years ago "when Mark's father died and we had to tape a show, and he told me, 'I can hold it together, Bronson, but you're the emotional one.' Between takes, I kept breaking into tears; I felt so bad for him. He kept his emotions in a deep pit of his stomach, a territory he wouldn't get into -- but I could see it in his eyes. We finished the show and he rushed into a limo he had waiting outside to go to the airport and his father's funeral in Connecticutt and... you know something? For months people told me that was one of the funniest segments of the series we'd ever done."