Pretend We're a Couple

A character asks someone to pretend to be their significant other to fool other people, often at a high school reunion or similar event.

Taxi

Appearances

• The Mary Tyler Moore Show: Season 2, episode 6, "Cover Boy" (1971). Ted and his brother, Hal, are super competitive, so when Hal comes to visit, Ted asks Mary to pretend she's his girlfriend to make him look good.
• Sanford and Son: Season 6, episode 10, "Aunt Esther Has a Baby" (1976). Fred agrees to pretend he's Aunt Esther's husband for an adoption interview because her alcoholic husband, Woody, would blow it.
• The Bob Newhart Show: Season 6, episode 17, "Emily Carlin, Emily Carlin" (1978). Mr. Carlin asks Emily to pose as his wife at his high school reunion.
• Taxi: Season 1, episode 10, "Men are Such Beasts" (1978). Tony tries to break up with his girlfriend, but she refuses to accept it and won't stop harassing him, so Elaine tells her that Tony is in love with Louie, and Louie begrudgingly goes along with it.
• WKRP in Cincinnati: Season 1, episode 19, "I Do, I Do... for Now" (1979). When an old friend from her hometown shows up and expects Jennifer to marry him, she claims she can't because she's already married to Johnny, and the rest of the gang play along to help her out.
• WKRP in Cincinnati: Season 3, episode 21, "Til Debt Do Us Part" (1981). Johnny's ex-wife, Paula, is getting re-married, and a misunderstanding convinces her new fiance that Johnny and Jennifer are dating, so they play along when they join Paula and her fiance for lunch.
• WKRP in Cincinnati: Season 4, episode 7, "Three Days of the Condo" (1981). Johnny hates the condo Venus talked him into buying, but the management won't let him out of his contract, so he pretends that he and Venus are a gay couple, and Venus plays along.
• Cheers: Season 1, episode 6, "Any Friend of Diane's" (1982). Diane's old friend, Rebecca, is depressed after breaking up with her longtime boyfriend, and to cheer herself up, she wants to have a one-night stand with Sam, but Sam is turned off by her boring personality, which makes Rebecca even more depressed, so Diane explains why to Rebecca by claiming she and Sam are in a relationship, and Sam plays along.
• Cheers: Season 2, episode 13, "Battle of the Exes" (1984). Sam pretends to be Carla's boyfriend to spite her ex-husband, Nick, at his wedding.
• Cheers: Season 3, episode 6, "Sam Turns the Other Cheek" (1984). The husband of a woman Sam dated pulls a gun on him. To try to empathize with the gunman, Diane pretends she and Sam are still in a relationship, so she knows how he feels.
• Cheers: Season 7, episode 3, "Executive Sweet" (1988). The new, very young, president of the Lillian Corporation asks Rebecca out, and she turns him down, but she doesn't want to upset him, so she tells him it's because she's dating Sam, and she agrees to go on a date with Sam to convince the new boss.
• Cheers: Season 7, episode 6, "Norm, is That You?" (1988). When Frasier and Lilith discover Norm's interior decorating skills, they introduce him to another couple who want him to decorate their home, but they don't want to hire a straight decorator, so he pretends to be gay, and when they want to introduce him to their gay friend, he tells them he's in a relationship with Sam. Sam plays along at first, but he can't keep it up and tells them he "loves babes."
• Night Court: Season 7, episode 7, "Auntie Maim" (1989). Roz's aunt visits the courthouse and interrogates her about not having a boyfriend, so Roz tells Mac to pretend to be her boyfriend, and when Roz's aunt is disappointed that they have no wedding plans, Roz makes Mac pretend to propose to her.
• Wing: Season 2, episode 7, "Hell Hath No Fury Like a Police Woman Scorned" (1990). Brian is too much of a coward to break up with Colleen, the police officer he's been dating, to get out of some parking tickets he got with Joe's car, so he tells her he's already in a relationship with Helen. When Helen finds out, she tells Colleen that she can have Brian.
• Cheers: Season 8, episode 17, "I'm Getting My Act Together and Sticking It in Your Face" (1991). When Sam thinks Rebecca wants to marry him, he decides to execute "plan Z," which involves his friend Leon coming into the bar and pretending that he and Sam are a couple. Rebecca doesn't believe him, so she tells Sam to kiss Leon or admit that he's a coward. Sam kisses Leon, and Leon subsequently punches him in the face.
• The Golden Girls: Season 7, episode 14, "Goodbye, Mr. Gordon" (1992). Rose books Blanche and Dorothy to appear on a talk show she's producing about "women who live together," but it turns about to be about lesbian couples. Blanche and Dorothy plan along to keep Rose from losing her job, and it seriously curtails Blanche's social life.
• Herman's Head: Season 3, episode 12, "A Decent Proposal" (1993). Heddy talks Herman into pretending to be her husband to impress her old friend, and she agrees to clean his apartment for two weeks in exchange.
• Cheers: Season 11, episode 25, "One for the Road" (1993). When Diane calls the bar and tells Sam she has a husband and children, he lies and says he does too, so when Diane shows up at Cheers with her alleged husband, Sam asks Rebecca to pretend to be his wife. Rebecca, who has nothing to lose, agrees. Eventually Sam discovers that Diane was lying about having a husband and children too.
• Seinfeld: Season 5, episode 17 "The Wife" (1994). Jerry finds a locket in his jacket pocket and returns it to his dry cleaner, Marty, who's so happy that he says he'll give Jerry and his family a 25% discount, so Jerry's current girlfriend, Meryl, Tells Marty she's Jerry's wife so she can get the discount too. Jerry plays along, and soon they start acting like a real married couple.
• Dream On: Season 5, episode 6, "The Homecoming Queen" (1994). At their high school reunion, Martin rekindles an old flame, which pisses off her cop ex-husband, who holds him at gunpoint and threatens to shoot, so Eddie tells the cop that they're a gay couple, and Martin plays along to save his life.
• Frasier: Season 4, episode 1, "The Two Mrs. Cranes" (1996). Daphne pretends Niles is her husband to fool an old boyfriend who still carries a torch for her, and Niles is all too happy to oblige.
• Wings: Season 8, episode 20, "Heartache Tonight" (1997). Roy begs Joe and Helen to come to dinner at his house as a "buffer" when he introduces his girlfriend to his mother, but just before Mom arrives, Roy's girlfriend calls and dumps him, so he asks Helen to pretend to be his girlfriend to avoid upsetting his mother.
• Spin City: Episode 16, "Kiss Me, Stupid" (1997). When Carter's ex-boyfriend, Spence, shows up with his bride-to-be and asks Carter to be his best man, Carter pretends he's dating Mike so Spence doesn't think he's been pining for him, and Mike goes along with it.
• Just Shoot Me!: Season 2, episode 18, "The Kiss" (1998). Elliot takes Maya with him to check out an apartment, and the elderly landlady assumes they're a couple. To score the apartment with its crazy low rent ($200/month!!), Elliot asks Maya to pretend to be his wife at a tenants party, but Maya refuses, so Elliot asks Nina to do it, and she refuses too. After Elliot makes an excuse for why his wife can't attend, both Maya and Nina show up.
• The Nanny: Season 6, episode 13, "The Yummy Mummy" (1999). Niles plans to confess his love for CC with a bouquet of flowers, but when he finds out her boyfriend dumped her, he changes his mind and covers by pretending the flowers are for Lynn Redgrave, who is at the mansion for a business meeting with Mr. Sheffield. At first, Lynn refuses to play along, but Niles convinces her by saying, "I loved you in Georgy Girl."
• Spin City: Season 3, episode 21, "The Last Temptation of Mike" (1999). Doug, the City Hall tour guide, keeps hitting on Stacy, so Stacy tells Doug that Carter is her boyfriend, and Carter plays along by trying to act straight, but Doug announces to his tour group that he knows Carter is "an avowed homosexual."
• Spin City: Season 4, episode 9 "The Thanksgiving Show" (1999). Mike and Caitlin are trying to get a outgoing senator's endorsement for Mayor Winston's senate campaign, and when Senator Grady meets them, he assumes they're a couple, so they go with it to make him happy, and they have to keep it up for a whole three-day weekend at the mayor's Connecticut mansion for Thanksgiving.
• Spaced: Season 1, episode 1, "Beginnings" (1999). To score the perfect affordable apartment, Time and Daisy pretend to be a "professional couple," learning everything about each other and taking fake vacation photos a la Green Card.
• Frasier: Season 7, episode 15, "Out with Dad" (2000). Martin pretends to be gay to escape the advances of the mother of Frasier's crush, Emily. So when Emily stops by the apartment, she brings a gay friend as a date for Martin. When Martin realizes what's going on, he claims Niles is his boyfriend. Niles plays along for a minute, but he's so disturbed by the whole thing that he pretends to break up with Martin and storms out.
• Spin City: Season 4, episode 16, "Suffragette City" (2000). Carter hears about an apartment building that is allegedly discriminating against gay people, so he gets Stuart to pretend to be his partner, and they try to rent an apartment, and Carter is disappointed when they get it, but Stuart is thrilled because it's a really nice place.
• Frasier: Season 11, episode 6, "I'm Listening" (2003). When Martin runs into Ronee at the coffee shop with another man, he grabs Roz, calls her Sheila, and pretends she's his date so Ronee doesn't think he's a desperate old man.
• Still Game: Season 2, episode 9, "Dug'" (2003). When Isa's estranged husband, Harry returns, she tells him she's met someone else in an attempt to get him to leave her alone. To help Isa, Winston pretends to be her boyfriend. They hold hands and walk around the town, and he has dinner at her house every night.