Mork and Mindy is the classiest of the lot [of new television shows]—the very best garbage in the trough…. Mork provides an unlikely showcase for the outsize talent of Robin Williams, who is to the typical junk television performer what Horowitz is to Liberace….

What Williams can't overcome is the trash formula, which imprisons a basic situation in permafrost. In a line stretching from Mister Ed and My Favorite Martian to Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley (the latter two produced by the team responsible for Mork and Mindy), the same essential joke is endlessly recycled. The possibility for surprise is zero. Until the final episode, we may be sure that Mindy will remain cutesy chaste, and that whatever goes on between her and Mork will be consummated only in our minds. For all his virtuosity, Robin Williams is a Horowitz condemned to playing chopshtiks…. (p. 44)

Karl...