Kim Weiskopf wrote this episode over the Christmas Break when he and his wife Jody spent the Holidays with her family in southern Illinois. There had been some kind of contest to suggest a pretext for an episode, and the winner suggested a situation where Chrissie and Jack somehow are handcuffed together. Kim was not happy about being assigned to do the script, but he persevered and wrote it while at his sister-in-law's house. The references in the script to Uncle Bud and Aunt Vi are the names of two of Jody's favorite relatives. I still remember Kim reading the script to Jody while they were seated at the kitchen table. That was then I realized that writing situation comedy was much more difficult than I realized. I never saw the episode until many years later, long after the series had ended.