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|---|---|---|---|---|
 Keith Anderson, as played by Ben Powers | ||||
| Personal Information | ||||
| Born: | 1955 | |||
| Birthplace | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | |||
| Occupation/ Career: |
Former collegiate football player | |||
| Character description: |
Injures his knee on the way down the aisle on his wedding day; struggles for a time over the injury and the loss of his NFL contract, in having to work low-wage jobs like the rest of the family to get by while rehabing to get his knee to heal | |||
| Spouse(s): | Thelma Evans-Anderson (1978- present ?) | |||
| Related to: | James Evans Sr. (father in-law, deceased when Keith meets Thelma) Florida Evans (mother in-law) Michael Evans (brother in-law) James Evans, Jr. ("J.J.") (brother in-law) Henry Evans (step-grandfather) | |||
| Character information | ||||
| Appeared on: | Good Times | |||
| Episodes appeared in: | 24 in Season 6 | |||
| Character played by: | Ben Powers | |||
Keith Anderson is a character who appears in the final season, Season 6, of Good Times. Played by actor Ben Powers, Keith, a professional football player, begins dating Thelma, before marrying her in the four-episode story "Florida's Homecoming" at the beginning of Season 6.
About Keith and Thelma
n the season six premiere episode "Florida's Homecoming: Part 1", Florida returns from Arizona without her second husband Carl Dixon (Moses Gunn), who finally succumbed in his year long battle with Cancer. to witness the wedding of Thelma and Keith, a former collegiate star running back for the University of Illinois, who was just drafted by the Chicago Bears.
In the final of the story arc, "Florida's Homecoming:Part 4", at the wedding, in a freak mishap which epitomized the misfortune of the Evans' family's financial plight, Keith injures his knee, tripping over future brother in-law J.J., who held a camera, as he and new spouse Thelma were walking down the church aisle, breaking his right leg, which, at the time, seemingly dashed Keith's hopes of playing a down in the NFL, as the Bears' team doctor advised him not to try to play again, as if he were to take a big hit on that leg, he would probably never even be able to walk again.
Anyway, with his athletic career seemingly over, and as he would later say in the episodes "The Evans' Dilemma" all he keew how to do is play football, as he had an ethletic scholarship. So, consequently, Keith, as the others, is forced into taking low-wage earning jobs to get by, as he doggedly runs and works out in the interim, in hopes that his knee would fully heal, so that he could play football again.
In the episode "The Evans' Dilemma", Keith, upon the visit of a former collegiate teammate who's playing for the Miami Dolphins, he begins to drink heavily,; in a drunken stupor after consuming too much vodka, he reenacts a play from a big game in which he played, forcing J.J. and the others to reenact it with him, which culminates in him slapping Thelma, which angers Michael and J.J.; Thelma, showing strength of character in dealing with the sometimes combative Keith, influences him to make a decision between her and the bottle, and he smashes bottle when he throws it against the bedroom door!
By the time of the series final episode "The End of the Rainbow", the good fortune which happens to spread throughout the Evans' clan and Willona, also reaches Keith, as he finds out from another examination from the Chicago Bears' team doctor that his leg is completely healed, and that he can take full contact on it without risking further injury, which means he can play football again, as the team signs him to a multi-year contract, meaning he and Thelma, who's expecting the birth of their first child, can move out of the ghetto, and into a new duplex condominium in a nearby affluent North Side neighborhood, on Baker Street, which also happens to be upstairs from Willona, who bought the first floor condo!