"The Graduation," Part 2




This has conflicts spring up and then get quickly solved, but there are some fun moments, so I'm going with a B-.

Many more notes:
  • I was mistaken, Sally Hightower actually plays "Sally Hightower," and other usually uncredited cast also appear as "themselves."
  • It's a tiny graduating class, like 20 or 25, so who cares if they add on one night-school graduate?
  • Richie is valedictorian, as is Fonzie for his class by default.
  • I honestly thought we were going to see a montage of high school memories, which would be hilarious, since Richie has been a junior-senior sixteen-to-eighteen-year-old forever.
  • Fonzie is naked under his graduating robe.
  • He dropped out three years ago, so he must be twenty-one at most by this point, unless he was ever left back.
  • Joanie, as an almost sophomore, wants to start having "car dates."  And she is very specifically referred to as graduating in three more years.  The original age gap between Richie and Joanie has shrunk from the original five-ish years.
  • Danny Butch makes his last appearance as Spike, still after Joanie, who's still taller than him.
  • Paul Linke would be back as Bruiser.
  • The audience goes crazy when Arnold shows up, as they should.
  • There's a nice exchange between Arnold and Al about the restaurant still not turning a profit.
  • We're meant to laugh from a 1977+ perspective at Howard's struggles with the instant camera, and then think Oh, Richie, if only you knew that JFK will be another assassinated president and Nixon will nearly be impeached like Andrew Johnson.  Which you know, we're now a heck of a lot further from '77 than '59 was.
  • So it really truly is 1959 now?  Richie says the '50s are almost over, and I know that the following Fall Laverne & Shirley would open with "Airport '59," but I've never been sure if HD and L&S truly sync up their timelines.  (That is, until the "lost years" of roughly '62 to '65 on L&S.)
  • But this being Happy Days, what would seem to be a natural two-parter to end the season with of course had to be followed by six more episodes.

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