Cliff wants food that he can see

(top 2 pictures:  Sid Caesar;
3rd picture:  the writers for Your Show of Shows)


"Comedy has to be based on truth.  You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end."

~ Sid Caesar

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(Note to self:  
Heathcliff Huxtable, I know.
I do not know Bill Cosby, and never did.)
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     There's an episode of "The Cosby Show" in the second or third season where Clair wants her husband to learn to eat lighter.  She makes dinner -- chicken and potatoes for the children, and salad for Cliff and herself.

     Cliff's first idea is that he will enjoy eating the nice salad and then have some chicken and potatoes.  Clair tells him, Well, no, the children are having the chicken and potatoes, "...you and I are having salad."  She pauses, observes his slightly distressed look.  She adds cheerfully, gently:  "Just for tonight."

     Cliff says reluctantly but cooperatively, "Yeah, ok, just for tonight -- little salad."  And he smiles, to try to make himself feel happy about the salad.  Picking up a fork, he looks into the bowl of salad and requests dressing.

     Clair:  "It's on there."

     He looks more closely at the salad, searching.

     She tells him it's (I think) olive oil and -- "a splash of lemon."  (She's being a little over-cheerful, now, trying to sell the salad-as-dinner idea....)

     Cliff then bursts forth in anguished, hungry tones:  "That's not dressing!  I want salad dressing, something that's creamy, and cheesy, and I can SEE it!  I can't see splashes!"

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     While the family eats their dinner, Theo comes home from his friend's house where they had pulpeta.  (When I watched this Huxtable episode in the '80s, I had never heard of pulpeta.)  Theo says it's a Caribbean dish, and describes it in enthusiastic, delicious detail.  Listening to this good food that isn't salad, Cliff gets this very longing look on his face.

     After dinner, he speaks to his son quietly in the living room, asking him to go back over to his friend's house and see if there's a plate of pulpeta that he can bring back, and then enter through the office door and meet him downstairs with it.



    
      (Theo:  "Dad, you had a big salad."
      
        Cliff:  "I want some food!!")


     Later, as Cliff surreptitiously begins to take a bite of pulpeta, behind the locked door of his office, the door is abruptly knocked on, and comes Claire's voice through it -- "Theo, are you in there?"

     Theo:  "Sort of."

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     If a person is going to eat differently, it needs to be their own idea.  If wives or husbands try to "police" each other's food choices or calories, it only leads to people huddling in a basement office over exotic Cuban lunchtime fare....

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