Night Court (season 4)

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Night Court (1984–1992) is an American sitcom, airing on NBC, about the night shift of a Manhattan court, presided over by the young, unorthodox Judge Harold T. "Harry" Stone.

The Next Voice You Hear... [4.01]

Bull: This is Rozalind Russell.

Dan: Hello! I'm Mr. Ed!

Harry: Rozalind Russell, that's a neat name.

Roz: My mother was a show business freak.

Harry: Ah.

Roz: I do, however, feel more fortunate than my sister, Zsa Zsa.

Christine: Oh, the poor thing.

Roz: That's what my brother says.

Harry: Your brother...?

Roz: Slappy.

[a few minutes later, when Harry receives his mother's letter]

Bull: Harry's mother abandoned him when he was five years old. He hasn't seen her in thirty years.

Roz: My brother hasn't seen my mother in over thirty years.

Bull: Your brother...?

Roz: Topo Gigio.

Buddy: [about Harry's mother] Harry, she went into a psychiatric institution after she left you. That's where we met.

Harry: I'm gonna go out on a limb here... you weren't on the staff, were you?

[Buddy grins and shakes his head]

Buddy: But I'm feeling much better now.

Giving Thanks [4.02]

Harry: He saved Christine?

Bull: It's true. If Dan hadn't been carrying this card, she wouldn't be with us today.

Harry: [reads card] "Wanda's Whip Emporium"?

Dan: The other side.

Harry: Oh. [reads] "Step 1, give a swift blow to the victim's back to clear air passage. Step 2, clear the mouth of any foreign objects."

Mac: "Step 3, loosen constrictive clothing."

[Christine looks beneath the trench coat she's wearing, and shrieks. Dan pulls her undergarments out of his pocket.]

Dan: Better to be safe than sorry.

Dan: You know, this could be the greatest night of my life...

Hotel Manager: Mmm.

Christine: [storms into the room] Okay, I want this over with before I vomit!

[She disappears into the bathroom.]

Hotel Manager: [leaving] Let the good times roll.

Author, Author [4.03]

Dan: [runs to the bench] Your Honor, circumstances of an very extremely urgent personal nature have arisen and regrettably force me to ask for a recess.

Harry: [not looking up] Sex or money, Dan?

Dan: [feigning offense] Oh, I'm hurt! Oh, I'm offended! I mean, that you would jump to such an assumption. Has it ever occurred to you I could be in the midst of a dire personal tragedy? [Harry gives him a look] Sex.

[after Bull has an emergency]

Harry: Well, in view of these circumstances, I guess it would really be proper for us to call...

Dan: Yes?

Harry: A short...

Dan: Yes.

Harry: Recess.

Dan: YES!

Harry: Now, believe it or not, I really understand how you feel?

Bull: No, you don't.

Harry: Yeah, I was what you'd call a lonely kind of kid. I was never invited to the cool parties. Nobody asked me to join the popular clubs.

Bull: Well, I'm one up on you there. I was asked to join the most popular club in high school.

Harry: Really?

Bull: Yeah. Eight of us were selected to go through the initiation. And all we had to do to join was... shave our heads before we showed up for the junior prom. So I did. And when I walked into the gym to meet my date...

Harry: You were the only one who'd shaved his head.

Bull: I was only 16, Harry. Unsure of myself. Worried like most adolescents about the way I looked anyway. And there I stood. Humiliated. In front of what was for me, at the time, the whole world. I wanted to kill myself. And then I wanted to kill them.

Harry: Just like Bully the Dragon.

Bull: Yeah, only I didn't live happily ever after.

Bull: This is an introductory poem for the new book I wrote.

Some monsters roar and shake the ground with fury as they tread.

But I never actually met a beast who truly wished me dead.

Oh, sure, their ugly faces and steely eyes can scare.

But they never seem to be more mean than the ferocious teddy bear.

So I guess it's true, like the covers of the books of this story, it's only a part.

That the monster's face never gives you a clue to the love that's in his heart.

Harry: Well, I'd say the real Bull Shannon just showed up.

Bull: Thanks.

Harry: What're you gonna call your book?

Bull: The Snake Pit of Chucky's Mind.

Halloween II: The Return of Leon [4.04]

Dan's Operation: Part 1 [4.05]

Dan: I'm quite all right, I don't need this ridiculous operation!

Dr. Flick: What are you going to say when your ulcer perforates and you start hemorrhaging?

[Dan lies back in bed and gurgles sarcastically.]

Morgue Attendant: [rolling a gurney in] I'm here to take Dan Fielding to the morgue.

[Everyone tells him there must be some mistake.]

Christine: He's just here for a minor operation.

Morgue Attendant: [smiles] I'll check back later.

Dan: Yeah, over my dead body.

Morgue Attendant: It's a date!

Dan: Yes, and please give my regards to the lovely Mrs. Dracula.

Dan's Operation: Part 2 [4.06]

Christine: Your Honor, would you please this man I'm not a pervert?

Harry: [starts to speak, but turns back] How are we defining pervert?

Christine: Sir!

Morgue Attendant: Look, folks. Pervert, prude! It's not my job to label people. Wait a minute... [pulls out toe-tag] I guess it is! [laughs]

Dan: I don't have a life, Harry. I have a lifestyle. Do you know how many women I have slept with?

Harry: It doesn't matter how many women you've slept with! [pause] More than a hundred?

Dan: You know the slogan under the Golden Arches? "Over four billion served"? Let's just say I'm competitive. And out of all of them, not one of them ever said, "I love you."

The New Judge [4.07]

[the defendants are an elderly couple who have been disturbing the police by having sex in their own apartment, very often, and very loudly]

Judge Mike Watson: I don't mean to pry, Mr. MacNulty, but why are you so loud during these romantic interludes?

Mr. MacNulty: [cupping a hand to his ear] What?

Dan: ...And when the police arrived, Mr. MacNulty attacked the arresting officers.

Christine: He was merely protecting his wife!

Dan: Burn this image in your mind, sir: this man, standing stark naked, swinging a baseball bat.

Mrs. MacNulty: My Louisville slugger.

Mr. MacNulty: [tilting his head] What?

Dan: SHE SAID SHE LIKES YOUR BAT!

Contempt of Courting [4.08]

Judge Eve Gardner: [on Dan] Is he always such a boot-licker?

Mac: Shinola is Dan's favorite flavor.

Earthquake [4.09]

[Dan and Roz are trapped in an elevator with two sumo wrestlers]

Dan: Don't let on. I have a pack of C-H-U-C-K-L-E-S.

Sumo Wrestlers: Chuckles?! [They corner Dan] Chuckles?!

Dan: No way, Porky! These are mine. [One wrestler speaks angry Japanese] What do you think he's saying?

Roz: I don't know, but I think it's something about singing soprano in the Vienna Boys' Choir.

Prince of a Guy [4.10]

New Year's Leave [4.11]

Harry: So you really think you're gonna be responsible for everything that happens next year?

"1987": I'm gonna make ABC the number-one network again!

Harry: [bangs gavel] Held over for psychiatric.

Lieutenant Gerard: Stop by the prison sometime, Judge. I'd love to...

Harry: Drop me in a hole with a psycho killer for about an hour?

Lieutenant Gerard: Is Thursday good for you?

[Harry lifts his hand and fire flashes between his fingers. Gerard takes a step back.]

Harry: Fine.

Murder [4.12]

Dan: [enters courtroom angrily] You don't know what you're talking about, lady!

Alice Beeker: Please, Mr. Fielding, it happens to a lot of men.

Dan: Not to me, it doesn't!

Christine: Dan, what happened?

Dan: They rejected me.

Alice Beeker: Many are called, but few are frozen.

Christine: They rejected you? Why?

Alice Beeker: His sperm is slow and immature.

Christine: [fighting not to laugh] Oh... I'm so sorry I asked.

Dan: That's great. Why don't you just go ahead and tell the whole world while you're at it?

Bull: [excitedly] I'll start with the cafeteria! [runs out of the courtroom]

Harry: Miss Beeker, is this something abnormal?

Alice Beeker: Oh, not at all. He just doesn't fit within our semen parameters.

Harry: Which are?

Alice Beeker: Sixty million per cc.

Dan: I demand a recount!

Alice Beeker: You know Mr. Fielding your problem could be attributed to fatigue. How recent was your last sexual encounter?

Dan: ...What time is it now?

Alice Beeker: It would be no problem to retest you. But to be sure we have an accurate result I suggest you abstain for two weeks.

Harry: ...From sex?

Christine: ...Dan?

Mac: I got twenty, says he doesn't make it back to his car.

Dan: I haven't had sex in two weeks. It's 3:00 in the morning, and I don't have a date...

[He begins looking obsessively around the cafeteria.]

Roz: Run for your lives, girls!

[All females flee the cafeteria. Dan still looks around obsessively.]

Harry: Better safe than sorry, guys!

[All males flee.]

Baby Talk [4.13]

Lorna Huebner: Your Honor, my father's dying words were, "No matter what, don't make me go with Arlene."

Arlene Huebner: Why, you lying...!

Harry: Whoa, whoa, whoa! "Dying words"? Is Dad dead?

Dan As a kipper on a cracker! [shocked looks] I'm sorry to say.

Harry: Well, the way you were just talking about him, I kind of got the impression that he was, you know, here.

Bull: He is, Your Honor.

[Bull holds up a small urn and places it on Harry's desk.]

Bull: This is Mr. Huebner.

Harry: Gee, he's a lot shorter than I pictured.

Bull: Your Honor, the Hubner sisters are waiting to see you.

Harry: Herb's kids? What do they want?

Bull: Apparently they settled their differences and had some kind of reconciliation.

Harry: So what about the ashes?

Bull: They say whatever you decide to do with them is fine with both of them.

Harry: [picks up the urn] Oh. Well, okay. I hadn't really... [opens the urn] Hey, this thing's empty!

Art: Oh that, yeah I'm sorry, Your Honor, I had to use that herb tea to test the coffee maker.

Harry: Art, this wasn't herb tea! This was Herb!

[they look over and see Dan standing at the coffee maker, his mug frozen against his lips]

The Modest Proposal [4.14]

Roz: [deadpan] Quite a day today.

Mac: [deadpan] Yep, quite a day. We almost had a wedding here.

Roz: Yep, almost. But we didn't.

[They sit impassively for a moment, then make Harry's "crazy" face at each other.]

A Day in the Life [4.15]

Harry: What have we got left, Mac?

Mac: Last case, felony drunk driving, sir.

Harry: Felony! All we gotta do is turn that over to the grand jury. We could still make it!

Christine: I'm afraid not, Your Honor. My client refuses to waive the reading of the information.

Dan: [grabbing defendant's jacket] You what?!

Mac: We never do that.

Harry: But the formal charge goes on and on and on.

Christine: Unfortunately, word got out that anyone not arraigned before midnight was set free.

Mac: We were so close.

Harry: Oh, well, that's it. We're finished.

Dan: [takes charge from bench] No, we're not. Not as long as I got a chance to sleep with Matilda the Hun, we're not. Hold on. [takes a deep breath and reads rapidly as an onscreen clock hits 11:59:11 PM] "Count one: The undersigned declared in complaint states without prejudice the city did inform the police department of such information that they prepared a police statement upon November 11, 1986, in the public judicial city of New York, New York state of a prima violation of 23152 of the New York Vehicle Municipal Code that the defendant did willfully and unlawfully, while under the influence of alcoholic beverage, intended to drive the vehicle. Count two: Further, there is a separated complaint being of different cause but of the same class to answer the character of the information being set forth the court prepared in complaint and setting forth the information that the police had the information and belief saying that the state and judicial city of New York, in the state of New York in violation of 23152 of the vehicle code, a misdemeanor was committed when the defendant did willfully and unlawfully while 1.0% or more blood weight of alcohol did drive the vehicle." The end! [Finished at 11:59:40 PM. Harry and Mac are shocked, Christine is impressed] My god, man, gavel!

Harry: Oh, yeah, yeah. Held over for a grand jury! Court adjourned! [Bangs gavel at 11:59:59 PM]

Rabid [4.16]

Christine's Friend [4.17]

Christine: Are you two done mentally undressing my friend?

Dan: Hold it a sec.

[He and Harry close their eyes and lean back their heads, smiling blissfully.]

Caught Red-Handed [4.18]

Mac: First case sir, People vs. Trixie Dubois. She's charged with prostitution.

Harry: Mr. Prosecutor?

Dan: Ah yes, sir, familiar story: boy meets girl, girl asks for a C-note, boy flashes badge, girl offers discount, boy busts girl.

Harry: Ain't love grand?

Mac: Uh-huh.

[Christine, Harry, and Bull storm into Thursby's office]

Harry: Thursby, you're scum!

Arthur Thursby: [into phone] You'll have to excuse me, Monsignor. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly just dropped by.

Arthur Thursby: You're insane!

Harry Stone: They called me mad at the university!

Paternity [4.19]

Dan: Listen, pal, you can't make me pay for something I didn't do!

Pete Petey Peterson: But, Danny, I have affidavits on you from half the women in this town! And, may I add, you photograph quite well...

Dan: Yeah, you just prove that's me behind that mask.

Pete Petey Peterson: If you refuse to settle, you force me to launch a vicious, no-holds-barred smear campaign.

Dan: Listen, buddy, nobody drags Dan Fielding through the mud!

Harry: [looking through the photos] Not according to Action Photo Number Five, Dan.

Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson [4.20]

[swearing in a group of new citizens]

Harry: You've all gone through a lot to reach here. You've learned our history, our culture, our secret handshake...

[confused murmur]

Harry: Well, you have learned our secret handshake, haven't you?

[more confused murmuring]

Harry: Ha-ha-ha! No, there's no secret handshake! I was just kidding!

Clinton: I stuffed myself into the dashboard of a Datsun to get here, and he's kidding?

Roz: It's his inalienable right to make an ass of himself.

Vega: God, he's good!

[on a busy night at the hospital, a podiatrist is sent to Mac and Quon Le's hospital room, while she is in labor]

Doctor Aidleman: Good lord, this woman is pregnant!

Christine: Oh, don't tell me you've never delivered a baby before?

Doctor Aidleman: [sarcastic] Well, just how many people who aren't obstetricians have?

[raised hands from Christine, Harry, Mac, Bull, and Dan (a reference to Season Three's "Hurricane: Part 2")]

Doctor Aidleman: What are you? Some kind of a cult?

Her Honor: Part 1 [4.21]

Mac: Dan's still trying to put on a good face for the Mayor's judicial selection committee.

Christine: Yesterday he actually taught a civics class at an orphanage. Can you picture Dan in a roomful of little kids?

Roz: Yeah. Ransacking their little lunch boxes for milk money...

Bob Wheeler: Hello, it's us.

Harry: Bob and June Wheeler, ya Yugoslavian recidivist knuckleheads, you! What the heck brings you by?

Mac: They were picked up on a 509-B violation, sir.

Harry: 509?

Mac: Uh-huh.

Harry: B?

Mac: Yep.

Harry: I don't believe I'm familiar with that one.

Dan: Well, sir, it's not used in Manhattan very much. It refers to the illegal detonation of... poultry.

Harry: Excuse me, but I didn't think that chickens were among our more widely-used explosives.

Christine: Sir, the Wheelers were merely trying their hand at egg-farming. They ran into a bit of difficulty with a propane-powered incubator.

Harry: So all the would-be chicks are now...

Dan: Quiche, yes sir.

[Dan is throwing a tantrum over being passed over for a judicial appointment.]

Dan: Maybe I'm just not cut out for this job!

Christine: Dan...

Dan: [to the courtroom] All right, who wants to share gas to Florida? Show yourself now!

[A flasher stands up and, taking Dan literally, opens his trench coat. Dan mulls it over for a second.]

Dan: ...Okay, but you gotta ride in the back.

Her Honor: Part 2 [4.22]

Mac: Oh, poor Harry. This whole thing must have him really depressed.

Harry: Gangway!

[Harry streaks out of the cafeteria kitchen on roller skates, wearing a jet pack made from a fire extinguisher. He speeds out of the cafeteria - CRASH! Everyone gets up and rushes to the exit.]

Bob Wheeler: Don't worry! Don't worry, he's all right. The girl scouts broke his fall.

Christine: There's got to be a way to get your job back!

Harry: Like what? Like it turns out I'm on Dallas and I've been dreaming all this?