Introduction
This is the first night of what will become a wildly popular lineup, but no one knows that yet. In an hour, I will watch Jack (played by the very talented and boyishly handsome John Ritter) look for a job, as a nude male model and/or an encyclopedia salesman, on the breakout hit of the previous Spring, Three's Company, now in its first full season. It is the second episode of the year, the eighth overall, and continues the playful naughtiness it has already become notorious for, here with Janet pretending to be a horny housewife until Jack tickles her. I will have a crush on Ritter until his extremely upsetting death, and ship Jack/Janet for decades. I will also have to figure out what being a feminist Three's Company fan means to me.
The middle show tonight is the surprise hit of the previous year's mid-season replacements. It is a spin-off in a decade full of spin-offs, e.g. All in the Family begat Maude, which begat Good Times. Laverne & Shirley in its third season will surpass the show it sort of originated in, becoming the number-one-rated show in America, not just among sitcoms, and not just on ABC. Its brother show will be No. 2. And Three's Company will be No. 3. Laverne & Shirley wasn't on last week, so Season Three debuts now, with the episode where Laverne flies an airplane and a panicked Shirley kisses her goodbye, which Laverne says they'll talk about later but they never do (onscreen anyway). L & S is funny in a different way than Three's Company, but unlike Three's Company, I will not watch it until I've memorized it. It won't be syndicated much and it will become a lost piece of my childhood and adolescence, with stray memories and a half-forgotten Laverne/Lenny ship. Until star Penny Marshall's death makes me revisit the series and reappreciate it in middle age.
The anchor of the Tuesday night lineup is a mid-season replacement from back in 1974, which is already two presidents ago. It was not an instant hit but it is unquestionably a steamroller by now, in its fifth season. Last week, L & S's season premiere was delayed for a one-hour special, called "Fonzie, the Movie Star?" Arthur Fonzarelli is arguably the most famous character currently on TV, especially among nine-year-olds. Tonight, sometime after 8 p.m., he will perform a death-defying stunt: jumping a shark!
Happy Days will end up more heavily syndicated than Laverne & Shirley, so that I will know about Chuck and other early characters and, even in my preteens, prefer the pre-live-studio-audience seasons. I will by the time the series leaves the air have developed what seems to be a lifelong like-dislike for HD, to the point that even in my fifties I will cringe at the opening credits of crossover episodes for Laverne and Shirley, and Mork from Ork.
And then one day I'll tell myself It's time. You've got to go back to Happy Days. You need to find out what it is that haunts you about this show. You need to make peace with it, even if you can't love Chachi, or Roger. You could wait for the fiftieth anniversary, but Covid still lurks and you're still stuck at home (when not at work or the grocery store), even if you've got a remote and no cats.
So that's my story. Maybe you weren't born yet, or maybe you actually remembered the 1950s and didn't want to relive them in the '70s. Maybe your parents didn't believe in television, or maybe they or a sibling preferred The Richard Pryor Show, or The Fitzpatricks (whatever the hell that was). Maybe you wouldn't see this Tuesday night lineup until it landed in your country in pieces and taught you idiomatic English. Or maybe you watched every Tuesday, but your reasons and reactions differed drastically from mine. You've got your own Happy Days.
These will be mine. As of this writing, it appears that only the first six seasons are for sale on DVD. I've just ordered the first three. I may not get up to that point when this show started to become painful for me. (The name Eugene springs to mind.) But here are some questions I will try to answer as I go along:
- The one that is as inevitable as "Why did the Howells bring all that for a three-hour boat tour?" in another fandom, and one of this show's earliest mysteries: What the hell happened to Chuck?
- How else did this series change in the shift to a live studio audience? What was lost and maybe gained?
- What the hell is this timeline and how does it match up to Laverne & Shirley and the various other spin-offs?
- What does this show say about sex, sex roles, love, friendship, family, etc.?
- What about race and politics?
- Ditto music, movies, television, and any other media?
- How anachronistic is it? Why did I scoff at the idea that Joanie and Chachi were the kind of people to be Kinks fans?
- How many guest stars will I gasp at the presence of?
- Just how many alter egos could one man (Al Molinaro) have in the Marshallverse?
- And of course, did I like Richie and dislike Fonzie or was it never really that simple?
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