Business Goes Bust

One or more characters start a business and get overwhelmed due to lack of business acumen, legal knowledge, and/or resources.

Mork & Mindy

Appearances

• The Patty Duke Show: Season 1, episode 18, "The Tycoons" (1964). When Cathy's handmade dress makes a splash at school, Patty talks her into selling them. Soon the IRS comes calling, and another girl starts making dresses with boyfriends' photos on them. The business goes bust, and they end up in the red.
• The Patty Duke Show: Season 2, episode 12, "This Little Patty Went to Market" (1964). Patty wants to sell stock, so in true Patty fashion, she ropes in Cathy, Ross, and Richard and starts a business selling Cathy's fruit preserves, but the gang gets overwhelmed as the orders flood in faster than they can fulfill them.
• Good Times: Season 2, episode 17, "The Family Business" (1975). The family convinces James to start his own electronics repair business, but a clause in their lease forbids them from operating a business in their apartment, and when Bookman finds out, he insists on getting free repairs for himself and everyone he knows, which runs James ragged.
• Diff'rent Strokes: Season 2, episode 17, "Big Business" (1980). Mr. Drummond refuses to give Willis and Arnold raises in their allowances, so they decide to start a business selling Adelaide's fudge brownies. They hire Adelaide as their cook and Kimberly as a salesperson, but when the orders start rolling in, Adelaide rolls out, so the boys try to cook the brownies themselves (with predictable results).
• Mork & Mindy: Season 4, episode 8, "Rich Mork, Poor Mork" (1981). Mork invests all of his and Mindy's money in Exidor's bizarre clothing boutique without consulting Mindy. As the business struggles, Mork tries to help promote it by running a fashion show, but eventually he gives up and sells his stock for only $2 just before the store gets popular with teenagers and Exidor sells it to Mindy's grandmother for a bundle.
• Too Close for Comfort: Season 2, episode 18, "As the Cookie Crumbles" (1982). Sara, Monroe, and April decide to start a business selling cookies based on Grandma Rush's family recipe, and they think they have it all figured out, but their lack of knowledge of business and the law leads to legal troubles and bankruptcy almost immediately.
• The Golden Girls: Season 2, episode 3, "Take Him, He's Mine" (1986). Sophia and Rose try to start a business selling sandwiches to construction workers, but they run into trouble when a competing sandwich maker tries to muscle them out.
• Night Court: Season 7, episode 8, "Attack of the Mac Snacks" (1989). Mac starts selling crackers Quon Le made from an old family recipe, and they're a hit, until a mini mart mogul eats five bags and drops dead.
• Just Shoot Me!: Season 3, episode 7, "Puppetmaster" (1998). Nina decides to open a trendy nigh club with her friend Binnie in an attempt to bring back the glory days of Studio 54. They want it to be so trendy that it has no name, no sign, and no one can find it. This proves to be a poor business strategy when on opening night, no one shows up. So the next day, Nina announces that the name of the club is now "Club Fun," and she hands out maps to its location. Nina's dream eventually goes down in flames when Binnie's flare gun ignites a velvet curtain and burns the club to the ground.
• Malcolm in the Middle: Season 5, episode 7, "Christmas Trees" (2003). When Hal gets temporarily laid off, he decides to sell Christmas trees to make ends meet, and all the boys join him. First they get shut down by a local church for undercutting them, then the cops shut them down for selling trees from their lawn without a permit, but Hal manages to talk a neighbor into buying one more tree so that they can make a profit: 25 cents.