| Fear of Flying | |
|---|---|
| Season One, Episode Six | |
| Air date | Aug. 30, 1984 |
| Written by | Greg Antonacci |
| Directed by | Stu Silver |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous Mindless Passion |
Next Monte Carlo Night |
Joe has an appointment with a reporter from Reveal magazine, a tabloid. The reporter makes no bones about it: he's looking for dirt. Unfortunately for Joe, he's come to the right place: Joe's friend the governor has shown up at the restaurant with a date. The governor misunderstood Joe's call, thinking he needed help (all he wanted was a reference for Penny's college entrance). The governor drops a bombshell on Joe: he nearly died six months earlier from a heart attack. When the reporter arrives, Joe hides the governor in the store room where Lou has gone to study his racing form.
Kelly goes into the store room for supplies and comes back to tell Joe that his friend has died. Panicked, Joe hands Cliff over to the reporter, inviting Cliff to tell about being gay. When Joe goes to investigate, he discovers his friend had a fatal heart attack. The problem is to do something about the body while the reporter is snooping around.
Lou has the solution. When Donald calls to leave a message about working late, Lou hides the governor's body at Donald's apartment. Donald arrives home and finds the body, and promptly goes into a frenzy. The Waters brothers show up to try to calm Donald down, and to try to figure out what to do with the governor's corpse. Joe suggests they dress the body up and fly it back to the capital, which will clear the governor of any implication of being unfaithful or not being in Puerto Rico as he told his staff he would be.
The plane has pilot problems, so Donald takes over. While Donald is flying the plane (which he later explains he learned to do while in the Air Force), Joe has time to think. He decides that his friend should be greeted at the airport with the dignity that the office commands. When Cliff reminds him that telling people that the governor died in Philadelphia, Joe says that all the world will know is that the governor died helping a friend.
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