Plot
Clair Huxtable, an attorney, and her children are having dinner at home. Clair is upset with Theo due to the poor grades on his recent report cards. His younger sister Vanessa was trying to get Theo in trouble for throwing food at her as well. Dr. Cliff Huxtable comes home from a long day at his job as an obstetrician/gynecologist just after the meal.
Cliff confronts Theo about his poor grades and asks how he plans to get into college with such grades. When Theo replies that he's not planning to go to college, Cliff replies "Damn right." Theo explains that he just plans to get a job after school as a regular person. Cliff uses play money from a Monopoly game to show just how far a "regular person"'s income would actually go in the adult world. Cliff gives him an amount of money representing a generous monthly salary for a "regular person". He then takes money out of Theo's hand in amounts representing various costs such as housing, food, clothes, transportation and finally a girlfriend, until there is nothing left.
Cliff also meets Denise's earring-wearing beau, who had recently been in a Turkish prison. When Cliff tells his daughter about what time he expects her home and what attire she should wear, she scoffs at the notion since it is a Friday night and thus, "not a school night." Cliff responds by asking her if she went to school that day and that it was a "school night."
Theo responds that he should accept his son's weaknesses and love him unconditionally because they are father and son—a typical sentimental idiom in family sitcoms of that time, and one which generated the typical applause from the studio audience. Cliff, however, to the audience's surprise and amused approval, immediately and angrily calls this sentiment "the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life". He completely rejects the notion that loving his son means he must quietly and willingly accept it when the boy does not give his best effort in school, and famously threatened him with the often quoted line, "I brought you in this world, and I'll take you out." Cliff then tells his son that he expects him to work to his potential and tells Theo that he loves him.
At the end of the day, Clair and Cliff settle into bed. As he becomes amorous, she reminds him that was how they got all those troublesome kids. This puts him off for a few seconds. Then Vanessa and Rudy knock on the bedroom door because Rudy was scared of a fictional monster in their closet. Clair invites the kids to sleep with her and Cliff.
Read more about this topic: Pilot (The Cosby Show)
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“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
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“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)