One thing Christie Brinkley seems to be proving to us again and again with her ageless beauty is that you can go home again. That fact was proven on the “Vacation” episode of ABC’s popular sitcom The Goldbergs. The network describes the episode this way: “Before Erica and Barry go off to college, Beverly insists the family take a road trip to go on vacation to Disneyland in Anaheim, California. But like the film, things do not go as planned as they travel across the country. Meanwhile, Erica worries more and more about her relationship with Geoff when he teases ‘we need to talk’ and won’t tell her anything until the family returns from their adventure.”

What ABC leaves out, though, is that fact that Christie is aboard, reprising her iconic role of “The Girl in the Ferrari” from 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation — only this time instead of flirting with Chevy Chase, she’s got her sights on George Segal‘s Albert “Pops” Solomon. But Pops does Chevy one better, by actually getting into the Ferrari with Christie and taking off.

“I had the hardest time trying to keep a straight face,” Christie laughed on Access Hollywood. “I’m, like, trying to be flirty and do my thing and I just wanted to laugh. It was so funny.”

christie-brinkley-on-the-goldbergs
ABC

Series star Wendi McLendon-Covey adds, “The vibe on set is that we had a goddess on set, so everyone was on their best behavior. And she in that car that looks like we took it right out of the movie, but no, no, no, she was in Palmdale driving in that car on the open road.”

As far as Christie is concerned, the main reason she signed on for this episode is because she sees positive similarities between the Goldbergs and the Griswalds of Vacation. “I think this is a really good reprisal right here, and I think it fits because both families have that same dynamic,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “In fact, when they wanted me to do the [2015 remake], they said, ‘They’ll open the door and it’ll be you and Chevy together,’ and I said, ‘Oh, no! No, no, no, you guys would ruin everything, because what we loved about the first movie was the fact that they can argue, they can carry on, but at the bottom of everything they stick together and they’re a family. You can’t break up that family.’ So I think that there are so many similarities in that family — they’re overcoming obstacles and they don’t want to admit how much they love each other but they love each other so much.”

Christie has been in the news, of course, first when she was announced as a contestant on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars — which generated a lot of excitement from fans young and old. Ahead of the show’s premiere, though, she had to drop out of the competition due to a broken arm suffered during rehearsals and have daughter Sailor Brinkley Cook take over. Get well soon, Christie!