"Strip Joint" finds one guy feeling the heat during a severe cold spell. Todd Susman (third of four) plays Edward Yakel, who claims to be suffering from spontaneous combustion; Barney's men have their doubts, until his presence is enough to set fire to a waste basket. Meanwhile, book store owner Ivan Kessler (Walter Janowitz, third of five) lodges a complaint against the 'jiggle joint' next door, featuring strippers and underage drinking, unimpressed by Harris' proud boasting about publishing his first novel. Described by Harris as 'The Club Aphrodite Bop 'n' Grope,' headed by artistic director and chief administrator Teresa Tasco (Rosana Soto, last of four), accompanied by Stephanie Wolf (SOAP's Diana Canova), just paying her way through college with 'The Bolshoi Bump 'n' Grind' (Harris: "the chairperson of the board was gyrating from table to table, enticing the stockholders to stuff dollar bills down her portfolio!"). Captain Miller is shocked to learn that the club is a government-run outfit headed by Neal Spencer (James Cromwell, second of four) from the Department of Energy, who told Teresa he was with 'organized crime!' Dietrich hits it off with Stephanie, due to their mutual interest in mating rituals of foreign cultures (in real life, the recently divorced Canova was living with Steve Landesberg, until marrying her second husband in 1985). She wants Dietrich to level with her (Stephanie: "if you've got something to say, why don't you just drop the anthropology and stop beating around the bush?" Dietrich: "now we're talking aborigines!").
