Jack On The Lam is the season four premiere episode, and also the 54th overall episode of the series. Written by Neil Lebowitz and directed by Dave Powers, it first aired 11 September 1979 on ABC.
Summary[]
When FBI agents come to the apartment asking for Jack, he is convinced it is because he finagled an early discharge from the Navy and that they intend to send him back to finish his duty.
Jack describes to Chrissy and Janet that while outprocessing out of the U.S. Navy separation camp, playing poker was all there to do there. He also tells them that he won a game against a Ben "Bippo" Miller who had his discharge date moved up a week as payment.
In truth, the FBI agents want Jack to act as a character reference for Miller who is applying for a government job,
Fearing that the FBI agents are going to turn him over to the U.S. Navy MP's, he devises a plot to pose as a woman. He borrows clothes and makeup from the roommates and poses as Chrissy and winds up going out with a businessman from New York named Walter Nessle, a blind date of Chrissy who was working as a paid escort.
When Nessle lays eyes on Jack, in drag as "Chrissy", he's instantly smitten with him, or "her" as the two go over to The Regal Beagle for drinks, and Chrissy and Janet meet them there later.
In what almost foils Jack's plan to evade the FBI agents, who've just walked into the pub, he runs into a very drunk Larry, who's so plastered that he can't recognize Jack in drag, as he makes a pass at him; when Jack tries to explain that it's him, Larry at first thinks that Jack has a sister until Jack says "Larry, you cluck...It's me...Jack!", as Larry, after Jack gets him to focus harder, recognizes him and then jokingly says to him "Does this means that Roper was right?"
When Nessle, returning to their table after going to use the restroom, sees Larry and "Chrissy" together, he thinks that Jack, or "Chrissy", is "two-timing him" as he and Larry get into a "war of fighting words." The girls, in a attempt to divert the attention of the FBI agents who returned to the apartment to try to talk to Jack minutes earlier, decide to go the Beagle, where they catch Jack in drag with Nessle and Larry. When the agents also run into them at that moment, Jack reveals that he was posing in disguise as a woman to hide from them, thinking that they were there because his early discharge from the navy and that he was AWOL. The agents tell him that they needed him to vouch for his old navy buddy Ben as a reference.
Jack asks the agents, "That's all you mean, you don't want me?!" A dejected Nessle discovering that his "dream date" is a guy in drag replies, "I wanted you! Oh, how I wanted you!"
When Chrissy reveals to him that she's that blind date that he was supposed to go out with, Nessle, after glancing over at Jack for a moment, says to her, "Thank you...but when you've met the girl of your dreams...that spoils it for other women!" Jack jokingly says to Chrissy, "Eat your heart out, Blondie!"
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