Lately I've been watching the Partridge family with my nine-year-old daughter.

For our younger listeners, let me explain that the Partridge family was a groovy sitcom from the early 1970s.

In each episode, a super relatable white-bred family led by mega cute single mom Shirley Jones

breezes through a domestic issue, a social issue, an issue specific to a family

that has a hit record and whose drummer is seven years old and then finishes with an awkward

lip-sink to a pop song that falls somewhere between a

ballad by the Arches and a Mormon fifth dimension.

It's basically the greatest American sitcom and it should be taught in schools.

One of its great pleasures is the revolving door of guest stars like Dick Clark, Johnny Cash,

and Howard Cossell, often playing bit parts and a veritable who's who of young

actors in their first roles. Mark Hammel as a teenage boyfriend, Farra Fawcett as a girl in a mini dress outside a bank.

Jody Foster is there, Cheryl Ladd and Rob Reiner.

Every episode is an Easter egg hunt and occasionally one of the songs is even kind of good.

Also the costumes alone should have been given a presidential medal of freedom.

So imagine my surprise and delight when on the episode we watched earlier tonight,

the guest stars were Richard Pryor and a young Louis Gossett Jr. It was, wow. See, there was a mix-up. The Partridge family showed up to their Detroit

gig, thinking it was supposed to be in a posh hotel lobby, only to find out that it was in a derelict inner city fire station.

Richard Pryor and Louis Gossett Jr. explained that they were expecting the temptations.

Seems that the booking agent intentionally switched to the bands as part of a nefarious real estate plot and presumably the temptations were just then arriving at a posh hotel in Tucson for a show they imagined was booked in a derelict fire station.

The actors gamely plow their way through a script where Shirley Jones suggests a block party to Richard

Pryor, adorable 10-year-old Danny recruits a bunch of barely toned down for TV black nationalists to play violins and David

Cassidy collaborates with prior on an afro sound number that gets the people dancing and saves the day.

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