Mookie and Pookie
Susan "Pookie" Anderson (Justine Bateman) is strongly attached to her computer genius twin brother Kevin "Mookie" (Ron Asher), who dies of a terminal illness during a family game of Scrabble. Sometime after the funeral, Susan vows to finish a program that Kevin had been working on before dying. Susan soon discovers that this program houses a copy of Kevin's soul, allowing him to live on through his computer. Susan's parents, particularly her father, don't believe Susan's claims about Kevin and threaten to sell the computer due to her growing obsession with it, prompting Susan to find a way to show them the truth before it's too late.
Tropes:
- Affectionate Nickname: Kevin and Susan go by "Mookie" and "Pookie", respectively.
- Bookends: The episode begins and ends with the Andersons playing Scrabble. The first time, Kevin is doing it from his room. The second, it's from his computer.
- Brain Uploading: Kevin's program allows for a copy of his soul to be uploaded into his computer, and Susan has to prove that fact to her father, who's threatening to sell the computer.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After all the grief Susan goes through, her parents finally learn that Kevin is indeed living on inside his computer. After all is said and done, they bring the computer downstairs so Kevin can play Scrabble with them, treating their now-computerized son as if he were still human. Kevin even puts down the word "Voyager" in the final scene, describing how he's managed to voyage beyond his mortality.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Susan's father doesn't believe that his son is a computer, trying to sell it or unplug it to get rid of what he sees as his daughter's coping mechanism.
- Lighter and Softer: This is the first episode of the show to go this route, as it focuses on a teenage girl who tries to convince her parents that her twin brother is still alive in his computer.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Once the alarm signaling a loss of life functions goes off over the radio, Susan and her parents promptly ditch their Scrabble game and rush to Kevin's side.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Kevin succumbs to his illness in the opening act of the episode, and Susan works on his computer to bring him back to (somewhat) life.
- Reflexive Response: Hearing Kevin's voice synthesizer chime in during a climactic argument, the father instinctively tells "Kevin" to stay out of it. This is ultimately the final push that convinces him that Susan is right about her twin brother being alive.
- Technophobia: Mr. Anderson has a very clear distrust of computers, even saying that terminology used for them doesn't count as English. Susan herself is frustrated with her brother's obsession with said computer and her hopelessness with using it, but she takes up using it to help Kevin cheat death.
- Twins Are Special: Kevin and Susan have an immensely strong bond with one another, to the point where Susan, under Kevin's earnest pleas, takes up learning how to use his computer, after she told him how dumb it is and wanted to shut it down to stop his obsession with it, to finish Kevin's program and allow him to live on.
- You Are Not Ready: Susan's attempt to have Kevin speak to their parents through the computer yields no results. Once she's alone, Kevin claims that he didn't speak up because they weren't ready to believe.
