The essential episodes of Gimme a Break!
Watch these 12 in order and you've got Gimme a Break! — each pick states its reason.
- 01
In the series premiere, Samantha comes home with a black eye, and Nell teaches her a few skills on how to fight. Julie an her friend are studying on where babies come from, and as the cheif comes home, he walks into the kitchen to find them kissing. Simpson then arrives at the house with Katie, who was picked up for shoplifting, but wasn't arrested. Katie has been actin like this because of the recnt death of Margaret, her mother, and the cheif and her make amends in the end.
- 02
Nell's finds out that her ex-husband Tony is in town and wants to meet with her. At the house, he tells her that he is going to be on the Merv Griffith show and needs $1,000. Nell agrees to give him the money and lies to the Cheif, telling him she needs $500 for her Aunt to have an operation. The Cheif gives her the money, even if he knows that Tony is going to blow it and not get his big break on the Merv Griffith show. Sure enough, when he auditions on the show, he is told to get off, since they already have enough singers like him.
- 03
The chief is counting on Katie to do real good on her final exam, but she gets Julie to take it instead. The family is shocked to hear what has happened, when she declines the money they give her for her college life, and she tells them she cheated on the test The cheif is very upset, and then finds out it was Julie who took the test for her. However, Katie appologizes and decides to re-take the test on her own.
- 04
Katie comes home with pain in her stomache and Nell rushes her to the emergency room. Once there, she meets a pushy receptionist and seeks a doctor on her own time to help Katie. The doctor tells Nell that Katie was using an IUD (Inter-Uterinary Device) as a form of birth control and will be okay. She is shocked to hear the news and so is the chief. The Chief leaves the hospital disgusted, but returns and goes to see Katie. He tells her what would her mother think about her doing that sort of thing if she was still alive? Katie tells him that she and her mother talked a lot about it before she died and she knew Katie had been using IUD'S. The Chief understands that he cannot protect Katie from IUD's and other sorts of sexual related issues, but tells her he will always love her.
- 05
As the chief is preparing a speech for an awards banquet, Nell accidently sits on his cap, which ticks him off. As the two fight, Samantha comes home, complaining that a girl called her a dumb Pollak, but Nell and the cheif are too busy arguing. To get their attention, she tells Nell ""how would you like it if somebody caled you a niggar?"" The chief gets her attention, goes on a rampage, and she locks herself in the bathroom, only to escape through the bathroom window, steal her fathers squad car, and take off to the police station, where she meets a drunkard named Bill, who is out of his cell, drunk in the cheif's office. In the end, the chief and Nell show up at the police station, and all is forgiven, as Nell tells Samantha that they should have listened to her in the first place, instead of fighting over a stupid squashed police cap.
- 06
Katie's friend Valerie shows up at the Kanisky house, pregnant and due any day. She tells Katie that her boyfriend Jonathan had a fight with her and the two broke up and she has nowhere to go. Valerie is welcome to stay with the family, however, once the Cheif finds out she is pregnant and split with her boyfriend, he does not tolerate this. When Jonathan shows up to see Valerie, the Cheif insists that he and Valerie marry before the baby is born and he agrees. Valerie and Jonathan quarrel about marriage until he tells her he loves her and asks her and the baby to marry him. In the end, Valerie goes into labor and decides she isn't having the baby until she and Jonathan are married. Julie rushes outside to find the neighborhood priest and the ceremony is performed. Shortly after the ceremony, as the ambulance arrives, Valerie gives birth in the front of the Kanisky house.
- 07
Katie's friend, Valerie shows up at the Kanisky house with her new baby David. She tells the family that she and her husband Jonathan broke up since he left her for a bleached blonde lady at ""Kentucky Friend Chicken"". Valerie is serious about putting Dvid up for adoption, since she doesn't have a job to afford his upkeep. Nell and the girls take Valerie shopping for baby supplies and leave David with the Cheif, who grows attached to him. When the girls return home the Cheif tells Vallerie that they would have to kill him first before he lets her put David up for adoption and that the family will help her find a job. Nell then takes Valerie to a job interview to become a receptionist and uses her keen sense to drive off fellow competators for the job. In the end, everyone is glad to hear that Valerie got the job and can afford to keep David.
- 08
Nell hosts another one of her PORKO meetings at the house, where the head of the weight loss group shows up. When he arrives, the members of the group mock him for gaining all the weight he lose back. He tells them he is sorry and leaves. Shortly after Nell gets a phone call from him and realizes he is about to jump from the 13th floor of his hotel. Nell and the other members go to the hotel and get in the elevator but it stalls due to everyone insdie of it together. The elevator then safetly makes it's way back to the bottom floor as Nell takes the stairs and the PORKO members take the elevator. In the end, Nell talks the Dr. out of jumping off the balcony and everyone agrees to lose 2 pounds a week and stay on their diets.
- 09
Julie invites a handsome boy at school to come over to stud with her, but he falls for Katie, and the two go out. When Katie comes home, Julie and her have it out in a hilarious catfight of sister versus sister. In the end, Katie finds out that the boy knew Julie was Katies sister and wanted to go over the house so he would get a date with her. Katie and Julie final make up when Katie tells Julie what the boy told her.
- 10
Nell is woken up in the early hours of the morning by a neighbors barking dog. When the Cheif wakes up he sees that she is asleep at the kitchen table and she tells him why she didn't get enough sleep. He phones their neighbor to come over and have coffee and Nell tells her about her dog. She then leaves and Nell goes outside to throw his dog doo inside a bag and light it on fire as he bites her and she takes the neighbor and her dog to court. At court, the neighbor says that the dog never bit anyone before, and the case is dropped, until Simpson shows up and says the dig had bitten two people before and the case is open again, the lady is sued, and the dog will be put to sleep. However, Nell changes her mind and drops the case when she hears about the dog being put to sleep for what he did. The neighbor tells Nell that she will keep her dog inside at night from now on.
- 11
The Return of the Doo-Wop Girls
Nell tells about her singing past with a doo-wop girl group. Nell and her two friends years before she met the Kanisky's decide to audition to get called back by a famous celebrity. However, the man likes the other two girls, and refuse Nell to be part of the group. Nell knows that the girls are going to visit her and havent seen her in years, and in the end she finds out they are fat like her, and lost their singing careers after they gained weight.
- 12
When Grandpa comes to get the boys' pajamas, since they are sleeping in his apartment because Addy is sick in bed, he tells Nell that her mother has a date. Nell wonders why her mother would have a date, and when her mother shows up, she meets her date, Ernie, a man from her past. It turns out that he was a jazz musician that knew her mother before she married Nell's father. When they were young, he took her to a dance contest, and asked her to go on the road with him, but she refused. Nell can't believe that this is true. In the end, as Ernie waits outside for Maybelle, Nell asks her mother if the two of them ever had sex, and Mama Maybelle tells her that Nell should know the answer to that question, and tells her she has a lot of growing up to do, and that she must realize that her mother is a woman, just like herself.
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