Why a “Good Times” episode gave Wendi McLendon-Covey nightmares as a child

The "St. Denis Medical" star celebrates her top 7 sitcoms, also including "Cheers," "Veep," "Arrested Development," and "Happy Days."

Wendi McLendon-Covey really wanted to be the Fonz's girlfriend.

But not for reasons you might expect. Sure, pretty much every girl who grew up watching Happy Days probably wanted to be Mrs. Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli. But for the actress, it was more about the woman Henry Winkler's iconic character was dating.

"Oh, god, I wanted to be Pinky Tuscadero so badly that it made me sob," the actress recalls of Fonzie's season 4 girlfriend, played by Roz Kelly, as she shares her Top 7 Sitcoms with Entertainment Weekly for our cover story on her new workplace comedy, St. Denis Medical (premiering Nov. 12 on NBC). "I'm a second-grader sobbing in my room because my parents won't buy me a pink motorcycle and pink motorcycle boots and a silver jumpsuit. I don't think I was asking for too much."

Related: Wendi McLendon-Covey is glad she didn't know The Goldbergs was ending when she filmed the finale

Watching a clip of the episode, which features a sequence that "goes on for way too long" of Pinky riding her motorcycle — "Yes, another wheelie, we get it, Pinky... less motorcycle-jumping, more making out!" McLendon-Covey says as she narrates the action in the video above — the actress explains that she chose the show as one of her personal favorites because of the its "affectionate look at decades-past that couldn't possibly be real, but we don't need 'em to be because it's just a fun tv show."

Also on the Reno 911! and The Goldbergs alum's list: Arrested Development (the pilot of which she says "should be studied in universities"); Cheers ("Rhea Perlman, Shelley Long, and Kirstie Alley did not get enough flowers for being on this show. They were so funny, and the way it was written, they always went head to head with the boys humor-wise, and they always delivered."); Too Close for Comfort; The Comeback; and Veep ("I bow down to her," she says of star Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

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Rounding out McLendon-Covey's top seven is Good Times. Her memories of that show, though, aren't necessarily for its laughs, but the stories that "were grounded in the truth." In this case, a storyline involving new neighbors Lynnetta (Chip Woods) and her daughter Penny, played by a young Janet Jackson.

"Penny was being abused, and this really upset me," McLendon-Covey recalls while watching a scene where Penny, tears in her eyes, begs her mom not to burn her with a hot iron. "This was my first exposure to what child abuse was, and I thought that being burned by an iron was all that child abuse was.... This actually gave me nightmares."

Watch the full video with McLendon-Covey above.