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Jeff Wakefield is a Harding High School and later Princeton student who appears in four episodes as Mallory Keaton's boyfriend.

Background[]

Jeff's father was in the foreign service, resulting in him living in Paris for five years as a kid. As a result, he's fluent in French and tutors other high schoolers in the language. His locker number at Harding is 253.

On the series[]

In French Lessons, the Keatons hire Jeff to tutor Mallory. With his help, her French grade rises from a C- to a B. Mallory and Jeff are both attracted to each other but are too shy to admit it. Eventually they both overcome their shyness and ask each other out at once. They go on a pizza date, but unfortunately Jeff has asked Alex P. Keaton for relationship advice and spends the whole evening acting like a domineering jerk. After he spills veal parmigiana on Mallory's dress, she storms out of the restaurant. That night, Jeff and Mallory have a conversation in which Mallory tells Jeff that she doesn't want him to change who he is, either to follow Alex's terrible advice or to cater to her - she just wants him to be himself. They agree to give their relationship another try.

In The Fifth Wheel, Jeff takes Mallory to see an unsubtitled Truffaut film.

Between Seasons 1 and 2, Jeff gets into Princeton on a scholarship. His room number is 305. He's miserable there - he's homesick, he's intimidated by the other students, he feels like he can't take the pressure, and the cafeteria food is lousy. In The Homecoming, Jeff returns to Columbus for the homecoming dance, gives Mallory his French Club pin, asks her to go steady, and announces his intention to drop out of Princeton and go to Grant College so he can keep seeing Mallory. He eventually admits that wanting to see Mallory was just an excuse to drop out and decides to go back to Princeton. He and Mallory decide that because long-term relationships are difficult, they should play it by ear instead of officially going steady.

Jeff falls in love with a girl named Sandy. He doesn't want to break up with Mallory in a letter, so he decides that the next time he's in Columbus, he'll tell her about Sandy. Unfortunately, in Go Tigers Alex goes to Princeton for a college interview, and Mallory comes with him to surprise Jeff. She walks into Jeff's dorm room to find him kissing Sandy. Mallory flees the room in tears.

Jeff eventually comes to enjoy his time at Princeton and all the people he meets there. He graduates summa cum laude with a degree in French. He gets a job in Paris and ends up as the vice president of a big manufacturing company. He's married to Gigi, an astrophysicist and former model.[1]

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