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A Farewell to Arm

Maggie invites Jan, Cassie, and Dot once again to her home, but this time she wants the girls to help her clean out her basement so that Maggie can host a yard sale to sell off most of her junk that she and her late husband had accumulated for years.  In the process, Jan, who has a hot date later that evening, gets her arm stuck in one of the basement walls while trying to retrieve a charm bracelet that Maggie accidentally dropped into a hole(the charm bracelet in question was a present to Maggie by her late husband and was thought to be lost for years).  When the girls try unsuccessfully to pry Jan's arm from the hole, they contact Sonny to call the fire department and act as both a lookout for the firemen and a host of sorts for Jan's date when he arrives at Maggie's house while they get her ready for the evening. 

Note: This episode was the series finale on ABC, which broadcast the series for 27 total episodes.  Despite changing the name of the show from "It's A Living" to "Making A Living" for Season 2(1981-82), a radical change of cast members from the previous season, as well as a couple of schedule changes to boost the show's ratings(which were low to begin with from the show's debut in 1980), ABC canceled the series after the attempts to improve the program failed considerably, despite a loyal fan base.  In 1983, one year after It's A Living was canceled, all 27 ABC network episodes were sold to independent TV stations across the country for syndication, where the program did very well in local ratings(the 14 episodes of Season 2 were reedited to include the original title of "It's A Living").  As a result of this, the original creators of It's A Living decided to revive the show as a first-run syndicated program, which would not happen until 1985.  For many television viewers in 1983, both It's A Living and Ann Jillian were first time discoveries, while for original viewers of the show, they were very pleased that their favorite program was back on the air. 

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Guest Cast

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Cast Appearances

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Episode Discussion

nuts4clara posted 2 years ago

Out of the 120 total episodes(27 ABC network episodes - 93 syndication episodes), this is by far the worst episode of the entire series and the weakest one.  The episode barely has any good laughs and it seems that every cast member was disinterested in doing this particular episode.  

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