"The Graduation," Part 1

I found this to be one of the funnier episodes of this season, even if part of the humor was the cheesiness of Potsie's song.  The scene of Potsie and Ralph interrogating Mrs. C, and then Ralph getting scared, was just right, as was Howard's garish but not too garish blue tux.  And there's some nice stuff about the Fonzie & Marion relationship.  So I'm going with a B.

Many notes:

• Jenny P is now 15, and presumably Joanie is as well.
• I don't know if it's lampshading that Richie is finally going to graduate high school (five years after America first met him as a senior) and then something has to go wrong and the entire class, except ironically Fonzie, flunks due to just one Health & Hygiene test.  (And does this have something to do about their ignorance about the human body, especially reproduction?)
• Richie's Jimmy Stewart impression is inarguably terrible, and Stewart is probably in the Top Five easiest 20th-century celebrities to imitate.
• Marion still doesn't know where anyone is going to college, even though she's "like a mother."
• "Seeing the sunrise" seems like a pretty clear symbol for losing virginity, particularly since Richie sings "Blueberry Hill."
• No offense to Al, but that is a pretty lame, over-the-hill band playing at prom.  (Garry Marshall is, of course, the drummer.)
• Kurt Krakowian is an uncredited Student, I'm going to guess the boy who shyly approaches a girl throughout the prom.  He was "Watcher- Jack" on the "Playing Hooky" Laverne & Shirley episode, according to IMDB.  He also was Larry on Saved by the Bell three times in the early '90s, and considering how old some of the "teens" looked on that show, I'm going to guess he was one on that "Senior Prom" episode.
• Cynthia Windham is an uncredited Teen Student for the first of four times, here probably as the shy girl Kurt is flirting with.  She'd go on to, among other things, a repeatedly uncredited role as the Audio Visual Teacher on Freaks and Geeks.
• Sally Hightower, who had two uncredited roles before, is Sylvia (Potsie's date) this time and in Part 2.
• Lynda Goodfriend returns as Kim, this time Ralph's poor bee-stung date.  She has good comic timing and I'm so glad that she was given something more to do, and I don't mean on Blansky's Beauties.
• Confusingly, Laurette Spang, who was one of the many Arlenes before (Arlene Holder in '74) and then became Denise Hudson, is again "Arlene."
• Ceil Cabot's middle of three roles on the show is Fonzie's night school teacher.
• Dick Van Patten, who was Hunsberger before, is Vice Principal Conners here and in Part 2.
• This is the only HD episode written by Calvin Kelly, who tended to do only one script per sitcom, e.g. the episode where Jack Tripper thinks a nun is in love with him, although Kelly did write a startling 65 episodes of the '80s Dennis the Menace.