Kate & Allie is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from 1984–89, created by Sherry Coben and starring Susan Saint James and Jane Curtin as two childhood friends, both now divorced with children, who decide to live together in the same house in New York City's Greenwich Village. The show, whose first 100 episodes were all directed and produced by That Girl creator and The Dick Van Dyke Show writer Bill Persky, garnered two Emmy Awards for Curtin and three nominations for St. James.
Kate McArdle (Saint James) has recently divorced her unstable and somewhat flighty part-time actor husband, Max. She has one daughter, 14-year-old Emma (Ari Meyers). Her friend since childhood, Allie Lowell (Curtin), is also a recent divorcée from her successful but unfaithful doctor husband, Charles. She has a 14-year-old daughter, Jennie (Allison Smith), and a seven-year-old son, Chip (Frederick Koehler). Though neither Kate nor Allie have ruled out remarriage, both women view their new situation as a provisional reprieve, a time for them to come to better know and appreciate themselves.
Tropes:
- Big Applesauce: The show was shot in New York City (at the request of Susan Saint James, whose husband Dick Ebersol was producing Saturday Night Live in New York) and every episode started by taking the two title characters outside the studio and giving them a Seinfeldian Conversation in real New York City locations.
- Chained Heat: In one episode, Kate and Allie get in a fight. To get them to work it out, the kids handcuff them together in the kitchen through a counter, then leave them.
- Christmas Episode: "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (season 5)
- Clip Show: The 100th episode (the last made by the original production team) had the cast members break character and appear as themselves to introduce some of their favorite moments from the series.
- Doomed New Clothes: In one episode Kate buys an expensive white dress for her date at the ballet, with the intention that she'll return it the next day. After the ballet, Kate strives to avoid potential disasters (including a kid with a chocolate ice cream cone) but falls into one of the ballerinas, getting the ballerina's stage makeup all over the dress.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Spends an entire episode dealing with a mouse, complete with jumping on chairs and tables in fright, when Allie's son Chip is taking care of his classroom's pet mouse and it gets out of its cage. Subverted in that 1) they realize that they're behaving like 60s sitcom housewives, 2) Kate and Allie are running a catering business at the time and are justifiably concerned about mice on the premises, and 3) Allie's sportscaster boyfriend also turns out to be deathly afraid of mice.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Played With. Kate's daughter Emma receives an ugly Aztec statue from her dad for a birthday gift, only to have various people trying to buy the statue from her or threaten her if she doesn't give it up, without explaining why they wanted the statue. At one point, Allie finally shouts, "Just take the money, Emma! The way they're chasing after it you'd think it was The Maltese Falcon!" With that clue Emma realizes that the statue must contain something valuable and breaks it with a rolling pin, revealing that the statue contained a ruby pendant and a note from Emma's dad. It turns out that the "interested parties" were friends of Emma's dad, who staged a mystery for Emma to solve, and that Allie was in on it from the beginning.
- Fake Relationship:
- In an early episode, the title characters pretended to be a lesbian couple to avoid having their rent increased (as two divorced mothers with kids, they were considered to be two separate families).
- In a later episode, Kate was hired to portray the wife of a client to help him get promoted. She ended up falling for his co-worker.
- Gift of the Magi Plot: "The Gift of the Magi" (season 4) has Kate and Allie buying each other gifts for the anniversary of their moving in together. Kate sells her camera to buy Allie a lampshade, while Allie sells her lamp to buy Kate a camera lens.
- Halloween Episode: "Halloween II" (season 4)
- Hypno Fool: An episode has Allie visiting a hypnotist to handle stage fright, as she was to appear on television later. The hypnotist is interrupted by a phone call from his daughter. The hypnotist takes the call in the other room, but Allie can still hear him. His daughter is disappointed because she tried out for the cheerleading squad and got picked as the mascot: a chicken. The hypnotist's advice to his daughter, overheard by his client, is to "cluck like a chicken for all you're worth!" On stage later, she did exactly that.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Chip befriends Louis, a mentally handicapped and good-natured homeless man who appears to be the same age as his mother Allie. Kate and Allie initially hear Chip tell about his exploits with Louis and assume that Louis is another child, but later learn his true age when they find him in their house in the middle of the night after Chip invited him in so that he would have a place to sleep. Louis reappears in a few more episodes and his friendship with Chip continues.
- Locked in a Room: When the two title characters were having a fight, the kids handcuffed them together in the kitchen, through a counter - and then left.
- Mistaken for Gay: The title characters, two single moms sharing an apartment, were mistaken for lesbians by their lesbian landlords, then have to play along to avoid getting thrown out because the landlords don't think they'd qualify as one "family". After a Patrick Stewart Speech about Tolerance, they're allowed to stay.
- Never Learned to Read: One episode saw Kate trying to teach the building's handyman to read. When he rebels at children's books, she presents him with an adult romance novel, which he is instantly able to read.
- New Year Has Come: "New Year's Eve" (season 2)
- Oven Logic: In one episode, Allie wasn't going to be around for dinner but prepared it in advance, leaving instructions to put it in the oven at a specified temperature for an hour. Not wanting to wait that long, Kate decided to double the temperature, thinking it would then only take half as long. Cut to the next scene where Kate is scraping the burnt dinner into the garbage, while her daughter, Emma, ate a slice of the pizza they wound up ordering.
- Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: Jennie's boyfriend's mother comes home to find the two sitting on the fold-out bed. Jennie quickly leaves after they make some excuse, but the woman isn't fooled—she picks up the phone and the next thing we see is Allie telling Kate that the two were found "hovering on the brink".
- Pillow Pregnancy: Done to hide Susan St. James' pregnancy by stuffing Jane Curtin to match in one episode. (They justified it by making it a flashback episode to when the title characters were pregnant with their daughters.)
- Poorly Disguised Pilot: A pair of season 4 episodes has Allie going to work for a local TV station with a female manager, played by SCTV alum Andrea Martin. This was subsequently developed into a sitcom called Roxie, albeit with Marin's character given a different name; it aired for only two episodes before being pulled.
- "Rear Window" Witness: An episode has Chip looking out his bedroom window and believing he saw a murder. The episode plays out similar to Rear Window until it's revealed that the "murderer" was a magician and what Chip saw was him practicing a trick.
- The Talk:
- One episode has Allie giving The Talk to her son. It ends with him in a state of acute embarrassment, wailing "My mom said 'condom'!"
- Jenny gets one when her mother learns that she's seriously contemplating having sex with her boyfriend.
- Thanksgiving Episode: "Thanksgiving" (season 3)
- Title-Only Opening: Sort of. Each episode starts with a wide shot of the city with the show's title being shown followed by the names of the two principal actresses. It then cuts to the title characters in the city talking about various things that may or may not have to do with the episode. All the while, the show's Instrumental Theme Tune can be heard in the background.note
