In the 1984 made-for-TV movie The Baron and the Kid, Johnny Cash (“The Baron”) teams up with his son (“The Cajun Kid”) to shoot billiards on the road. The fourth-season, 2001 “Do the Hustle” episode of Dharma & Greg reprises the two-generation, family billiards theme, this time by pairing Dharma (Jenna Elfman) with her blueblood mother-in-law Kitty (Susan Sullivan) and teaching her to hustle. The full episode is here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vi6nEYh68c
It’s an awkward set-up, but Dharma & Greg was always a rather odd sitcom. Airing from 1997 to 2002, the show racked up six Emmy nominations and eight Golden Globe nominations. It centered on the offbeat marriage between Dharma, the free-spirited, yet sarcastic, yoga instructor, and Greg (Thomas Gibson), the upright, aim-to-please lawyer. Parents and in-laws feature prominently in the show, providing some of the comic extremes, much the way the Byrnes and Fochers do in Meet the Parents and its sequel.
Like many of the earlier seasons’ episodes, “Do the Hustle” taps into the inherent tension between Dharma and her mother-in-law. When Dharma’s mockery of Kitty’s plan to take the family to a “tulip festival” falls flat, she offers to make a deal. The two women shall play a game of eight-ball, and the winner decides whether to go to the festival. Kitty proceeds to beat Dharma, who had no idea her mother-in-law could shoot “like Minnesota Fats.”
On the way to the tulip festival, Dharma convinces Kitty to a rematch. Once in the bar, redolent with the smell of curly fries, Kitty starts to enjoy playing pool and begins to cast off her aristocratic mien. Dharma, finally having found a connection with her mother-in-law, instructs her in the art of hustling (“let me explain something to you Kit Kat”). After quickly making some money, Kitty, feeling energized, says, “Hell, with the tulip festival, find me another pigeon.”
But, blinded by her hubris and refusing to call it a night (“Who dares to challenge the Queen of Pool?”), she ends up playing “Sweet Lou” who she doesn’t realize has hustled her. When she is unable to write him a check (“Guys named Sweet Lou don’t take checks.”), Kitty loses her car as the payback.
Overall, it’s a pretty unmemorable billiards TV episode, though it appears Susan Sullivan had fun making her bank shot and behind-the-back shot. Still, in a genre that is prone to typecasting women as only playing pool for noble purposes (see my blog post “Battle of the Sexes in Billiards”), it’s at least refreshing to know there are a couple of women whose sole purpose in playing billiards is to “do the hustle.”
