"Dance Contest"

And now it's 1976, an even more eventful year in Marshalliana, but this isn't a great episode to celebrate the new year (well, technically Epiphany) with.   Marion is feeling restless as a housewife with no "activities" like her kids and husband.  Howard thinks it's her annual plea to get a job, so he puts his foot down.  She just wants to enter a dance contest, which they all think is hilarious, even though she was the best dancer in high school twenty years ago.  So she enters the contest with Fonzie, which means lots of rehearsal time, at his garage and at Arnold's, so then people think the two of them are having an affair.  This was the first episode where I actually felt sorry for Fonzie.  Anyway, I'm going with C+.

Some other thoughts:

• Marion's mother, who hates Howard, lives locally but has not yet been shown.
• The dance number, a tango, isn't all that impressive, especially compared to when Richie would be in a dance contest on a Laverne & Shirley episode months later, but the audience goes crazy.
• Richie plays both hockey and basketball, back to back!
• Joanie is now in the Girl Scouts, rather than the Junior Chipmunks.
• Howard has a lodge meeting.
• Ron's father, Rance Howard, plays the Announcer, his first of three HD guest shots.
• I don't know if Bob Howard is another relation, but this is his first of seven HD scripts.
• This is the only HD episode Norm Gray directed, although he was unit production manager that season and would have that same job briefly on Laverne & Shirley and for about half the run of Mork & Mindy.