"Fonzie's Getting Married"

The first live-in-front-of-a-studio-audience episode, done as an experiment, a successful one, although it would have a long-range impact on this show, and arguably its spin-offs.  In the short term, although it changes the comic timing, it's fine, and I did laugh out loud a few times.  In fact, I'm giving the episode a B, because I enjoyed it more than I expected.

Other thoughts:

• The sets begin to morph, here with the dining room no longer between the living room and the kitchen.
• Garry Marshall is of course the drummer at the strip joint, and would often show up as a drummer, here and on Laverne & Shirley.
• And speaking of, I think we can safely say that neither the "Shirley" nor the "Laverne" referred to in this episode is one of the famous denizens of fictional Milwaukee, but clearly those names were in the air that year.
• I was a little shocked to hear the word "virgin" a few times.  The message at first seems to be that even Fonzie wants an "untried" bride, but the scene with Maureen and Fonzie, after she's literally unmasked, is more nuanced.  He loves her but can't get past the lying, and she realizes she'd rather have "show biz" than a married life.
• Also, the bathroom humor of Potsie somehow relieving himself and flushing the toilet ("maybe with his foots," Richie guesses) works in an absurd Charles-Addams-skiing-cartoon sort of way.
• Marion coming in wearing a Lone Ranger mask at the end is some of the marital naughtiness that she and Howard would have more of as the seasons went on.
• And, yep, the Lone Ranger would do a cameo, too.
• The switch with the "stag film" for home movies is very '70s-sitcomic by the way.
• There's a moment of Fonzie in the men's room, about to comb his hair, that deliberately replicates the moment from the first season, and sometimes the credits, but like everything else it has a different feel in front of a live audience.
• I didn't quite catch the name, but I think Fonzie's original choice for best man, Rocky Baruffi, appeared in Season One.  The Fonz and Richie are not yet good friends enough that Richie would be first choice.
• On the other hand, Fonzie sees Howard and Marion as the closest thing he's got to parents, I guess the Christmas episode having made a big impact already.
• Club Patron Bob Harks would be a Waiter later in the year.
• It's seems like Jack Perkins was always playing a drunk, as he would again on this show later in the year.