The WORST episodes of 227
Every episode of 227 ever, ranked from worst to best by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The worst episodes of 227!
This popular sitcom that starred Marla Gibbs, who played Florence Johnston for many years on The Jeffersons, got her own show. She played Mary Jenkins, a housewife who lived with her contractor husband, Lester and their 14-year-old daughter Brenda. Mary's best friend was Rose Lee Holloway, who used to sit out with her on the stoop of the apartment building (#227) and discuss many things, especially Sandra Clark, the wise-cracking, hyperactive, and often scatter-brained woman from upstairs. Rose had a daughter named Tiffany. Next door to the Jenkins was the gossipping, yet loving, Pearl Shay, a crotchety busybody who lived with her grandson Calvin Dobbs, who was Brenda's first love. Throughout the final two seasons, several new characters appeared. Broadcast History September 1985-June 1986----Saturdays----9:30 p.m. June 1986-May 1987----Saturdays----8:30 p.m. June 1987-July 1987----Saturdays----8:00 p.m. July 1987-September 1988----Saturdays----8:30 p.m. October 1988-Jul
#1 - And the Survey Says...
Season 4 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/19/1988
Mary is a star player of "Family Feud"... in her house. She decides to try out for the show when it visits Washington D.C. Sandra also decides to try out, and when she and Mary argue during the interview, the producers decide to air a Neighbor's version of "Family Feud." She and Sandra pick teams from a hat and Sandra's team wins on the show. But in the final round, they only make 199 points-- one point away from 200, which was needed to win. Sandra decides to split the money they won (almost $1000) among everyone on both teams.
#2 - Double Your Pleasure
Season 4 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/5/1988
Sandra's cousin Conchita (also played by Jackee) comes to visit, and her finacee follows her to America. Conchita does not want to marry Carlos in an arranged marriage so she asks Sandra to tell him for her. The two go back and forth with whether or not they want to marry each other, until finally Conchita realizes that she does love Carlos and they decide to get married.
#3 - A Yen for Lester
Season 4 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/26/1988
Lester and Raymond decide to buy a Jaoanese Restaurant together. Pearl and Rose each put in $500 and receive a stock of the restaurant. When the deal is sealed, the kitchen staff all quit, right before a Japanese tour group arrive to eat. They all hustle to try to serve them but it is a disaster, as Pearl cannot cook (or understand) Japanese food and the ladies are horrible waitresses. The chef returns and decides to buy the restaurant from Lester and Raymond at the same price they bought it for.
#4 - Looking Back
Season 4 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/3/1988
When Mary throws pictures of Sandra, Rose and Pearl away, they each find them and reminisce over the past 3 227 seasons.
#5 - Shall We Dance?
Season 3 - Episode 14 - Aired 1/16/1988
Mary catches Lester dancing with his old girlfriend.
#6 - Video Activity
Season 5 - Episode 7 - Aired 11/11/1989
Bobby Brown shoots a video at Brenda's high school, while Brenda plagiarizes an old essay of Mary's to win a part as an extra. Brenda kept putting off writing it by going to pep rallies, football games, and parties with Calvin at Morgan State, and on Sunday night, she still does not have her paper done. When Mary wrote it (25 years earlier), she received an A+, but Brenda gets a C and is not one the five chosen to appear in Bobby Brown's video. Meanwhile, Julian bribes Travis into bringing Bobby Brown to his penthouse so he can discuss going into business ventures with each other. Bobby Brown decides that he does not want only five students to appear in his video, but the whole class. Brenda is allowed to be in the video but she is stil grounded and has to write 3 more papers for Mary.
#7 - We the People
Season 1 - Episode 17 - Aired 2/1/1986
Lester's old boss comes to visit the Jenkins from Hawaii. While there, Rose hires him as the building repairman and lets him live an efficiency on the third floor. Pearl begins to notice that people go up to visit Lou and never return. She and Mary investigate and find out that Lou is homeless and his homeless friends are the ones that have come to live with Lou. It turns out his business in Hawaii went belly-up, and Lou lost everything. Mary has sympathy for them and feeds them, while trying to keep the news from Rose, because she would have to put them out based on the housing codes that they are breaking. Lester finds out about an abandoned building that his company will fix-up so the homeless people will have some place to live. This will also give Lou the chance to get back into business again.
#8 - Gone Fishing
Season 5 - Episode 21 - Aired 2/24/1990
Julian recruits Mary to help him keep 227 out of the hands of his soon-to-be ex-wife (Rosalind Cash). (tvguide.com)
#9 - A Matter of Choice
Season 2 - Episode 12 - Aired 1/17/1987
Lester has a chance to do a big project and give a friend who's out of work a job. But things change when he learns that the company whom he'll be working for sponsors apartheid. So he has to choose which is more important.
#10 - The Great Manhunt
Season 2 - Episode 4 - Aired 11/8/1986
After Sandra sees her neighbors (a married couple) interact with each other and with their daughter, Sandra decides that she wants a husband and a child. She goes out on a series of dates which end in disaster becasue of Sandra's openness about wanting to be married and have a child. She finally decides that since she can't find a suitable husband that she'll just get artificially insiminated. Mary and Rose try talk her out of it. But nothing is more of a rude awakening than when Sandra witnesses Cathy going into labor and she sees how Jim was there for her every step of the way. Then Mary and Lester talk about the night Brenda was born and how they really needed each other then. Sandra changes her mind and decides that when she does have a baby she would like to be married so she can have a husband that loves her and loves their child.
#11 - The Fourth Time Around
Season 2 - Episode 19 - Aired 3/21/1987
When Lester goes to watch the game at a friend's house, Mary and the ladies decide to have a girl's night out. They go to a club/bar where Pearl meets man. They hit it off. When Pearl comes home, she tells Mary that she and Felix are engaged. Mary seems to be the only one concerned about it, while Rose and Sandra want to throw her a bridal shower. Mary thinks that he is after Pearl's money. Pearl doesn't care what Mary thinks, and she and Felix get married any way. When she returns from her honeymoon, Mary apoligizes, but Pearl has bad news. Felix passed away. She admits to Mary that they knew that he was dying. Because she loved him and didn't want him to be lonely, they married so soon.
#12 - Jackee
Season 4 - Episode 23 - Aired 5/11/1989
Sandra has moved to New York, but finds herself jobless after she finds out that the film company that she works for specializes in porn films! So once she find her apt., she meet a woman who tells her about a job opening at her job. Sandra goes with her the next day and gets the job at the spa. Sandra finds out that her new friend's boyfriend is using her, but when she tells her, she doesn't believe Sandra. Finally, when she hears it for herself, she cuts the boyfriends loose and her and Sandra are back on good terms.
#13 - The Perfume Game
Season 5 - Episode 10 - Aired 12/2/1989
Sandra comes up with a slogan for a new perfume, but she thinks it stinks when her ad-agency boss steals her idea. (tvguide.com)
#14 - How the West Was Fun (2)
Season 5 - Episode 6 - Aired 11/4/1989
Conclusion. Lester puts together a posse to find the womenfolk when the water rustlers take them hostage.
#15 - How the West Was Fun (1)
Season 5 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/28/1989
At a dude ranch, Mary lassos Rose and Sandra into a treasure hunt, and Dylan takes a likin' to a filly. Part 1 of two
#16 - No Place Like Home
Season 5 - Episode 24 - Aired 5/6/1990
Mary dreams that she's homeless after misinterpreting a plea for help from a street person (homeless advocate Theodore Hayes) as a threat to her safety.
#17 - The Audit
Season 2 - Episode 16 - Aired 2/21/1987
The IRS audits Mary and Lester. At a diner, Mary gets into an argument with a man whose views on women are old-fashioned and clash with Mary's views. She goes as far as to insult his mother. When she and Lester are finally let in to see the auditer, it's the man Mary insulted! She knows that she and Lester are in deep trouble. Mr. Stone doubts the validity of their receipts and Lester is upset. Sandra bursts into the room because she has a date with Mr. Davis ans wants to know what's keeping him. She verfies a that a questionable dinner party was truly a party for Lester's investors and employees. Mr. Stone lets them go.
#18 - Pity the Poor Working Girl
Season 1 - Episode 9 - Aired 11/16/1985
When Sandra tells Mary how she can't keep a job because of jealous wives, Mary asks Lester if he knows of any job openings. He admits that his company needs a receptionist for their main office and Sandra gets the job. Howvever, Pearl and Rose worry Mary so much about Sandra working with Lester that Mary becomes suspicious and jealous. When she goes down to the office one day to take Lester to lunch, she tells Lester how she feels about ""Ms. Wiggles"" and Sandra quits. Pearl and Rose put Sandra and Mary in the room together to talk it out and Mary apoligizes. Sandra takes her job back, on the premise that Mary's jealous days are over.
#19 - Fifty Big Ones
Season 1 - Episode 19 - Aired 2/15/1986
At their vows renewal ceremony, Mary's parents are in the middle of the argument and are not talking to each other. Lester talks to his father-in-law, and Mary talks to her mother to encourage them to make up and go through with the ceremony. Meanwhile, Sandra meets a man who turns out to be married, and Rose has a peculiar conversation with another man: it turns out that both her late husband and his late wife both used to vacation in Vermont for one week out of the year, to go ""fishing"" and ""writing poetry,"" respectively. They both assume that their mates were cheating with each other, until they realize that their mates used to go to separate cities in Vermont.
#20 - Young Man with a Job
Season 1 - Episode 22 - Aired 5/3/1986
When Calvin has a hard time finding a part-time job, Brenda and Pearl persuade Mary to convince Lester to offer Calvin a job working at the construction site. But when Calvin proves to be inept with his hands, he gets terminated. With some helpful advice from Mary, Calvin later lands five interviews.
#21 - Temptations
Season 2 - Episode 5 - Aired 11/15/1986
Mary is in charge of the church's charity show, and it's like divine providence when the Temptations show up at her door.
#22 - Father's Day
Season 2 - Episode 8 - Aired 12/6/1986
Calvin's dad comes to visit D.C. He and Calvin have fun going to basketball games and going to see the Blue Angels fly. Because he and his grandma have been arguing a lot lately, Calvin makes the decision to live with his dad in Iceland, thinking it would be more fun than living in D.C. Pearl is sad about it but doesn't want to show it too much. Mary throws Calvin a going away party, and after he hears what nice things every one has to say about him, he realizes that he has more ""family"" than he thought and decides to stay in D.C.
#23 - The Handwriting on the Wall
Season 2 - Episode 11 - Aired 1/10/1987
When Mary and Rose come home from the movie theater, they see JoJo spray painting his gang tag underneath Pearl's window. Pearl hits him with her pillow, Rose grabs the spray can and accidentally sprays his shirt, and Mary grabs hims, but tries to talk sense into him. JoJo tells his mother everything that happened, while leaving out the part about him spray painting on the building. They decide to sue the ladies, and use Sandra as a witness, who was in the car on a date. When they get in court, his mother and the Judge eventually find out the truth and JoJo is made to clean up his damage. His mother apologizes to the ladies and the ladies are fined 10 cents each.
#24 - The Working Game
Season 2 - Episode 21 - Aired 5/23/1987
Upset when Brenda comes home from University Day wanting to attend Northwestern, Mary anticipates an empty nest by demanding that Lester give her a job at the construction site --and gets fired on her first day. Mary takes a job at a travel agency (with Sandra), where her boss finds her so invaluable that he wants her to accompany him on a trip. The boss comes on to Sandra, who then quits and tells Mary not to go on the trip. She goes anyway, and Sandra then tells Lester about their boss. He surprises Mary in Philadelphia and jumps to the worng conclusions when he finds a man's suit and bathrobe in Mary's closet. He finds out that Mary bought them for him as a surprise.
#25 - Bull's Eye (a.k.a. Mistaken Identity)
Season 3 - Episode 5 - Aired 10/31/1987
A man with a knife rents an apartment.