The writing is a little weak on this episode, so a C. It is notable that Joanie has her driver's license and that, when a tornado threatens Milwaukee, Potsie wants to warn everyone at the Pizza Bowl, but doesn't.
Easily the worst episode so far, a D in fact, and that's only because I liked "the Potsie Club" part and the episode starts out with a standard plot, used on The Brady Bunch and Three's Company among others, where someone can't go on a blind date and he (it's usually a guy) gets a friend to pretend to be him. Potsie hits it off with the girl, who of course (another trope here) is not the expected "dog," but then (offscreen) he attacks her and rips her dress as she tries to escape! Then she has to hitchhike back to the hotel where she and her parents are staying. And there are lots of jokes about men being "animals," as if attempted date rape is funny. Even Joanie being voyeuristic, which is weird enough with Richie pranking her by telling an imaginary date that his sister would want to watch, gets even more twisted. And to top it off, Fonzie, the "expert on women," says women aren't real people and they expect a guy to ...
This is better than the last few episodes, actually making me laugh out loud. Also, I've always had a soft spot for Ralph's relationship with his jokester father the optometrist. And I like how Richie's friendship with Fonzie is used, that Richie can now influence the Fonz with just well-placed "huh-huh-huhs" of gentle scorn. So we're back to B-. Notes: From the title, I thought this was going to be the episode where Fonzie is temporarily blind, but it makes sense that that comes later. We get a PSA about glasses being "cool," as Fonzie as role model for the kids at home starts to develop, which would most memorably lead to increased library card registration. (We'll get there.) Jack Dodson would return in the punningly named role of Dr. Mickey Malph. I assume that Fonzie's boss who wants him to strain his eyes reading about foreign cars is the rich guy we met previously. I'm going to guess that Ron Howard was then busy with one of hi...
Not only does Potsie get Fonzie and Roger up in a prop plane with an unreliable pilot, but he says all the wrong things when everyone worries at the Cunninghams'. No wonder Jenny calls him an idiot and Howard ushers him out the door. So I'm boosting this from a C to a C+. Notes: Flip jokes that Jenny won't finish high school while she's a teenager, but it's not exactly a joke. Catherine Gilmour, who's Teresa here, would soon be Patti on Laverne & Shirley. Skier William Woff was Bill Ziegler on Joanie Loves Chachi. Martin Ferrero would return as the pilot Omar, so I guess his parachute worked. There are four writers this time, and they still manage to bring up a possible party and then quickly drop that thread. Francis X. Feighan has absolutely no other IMDB credits, and Michael O'Mahony wrote more things but nothing else for HD, while Richard Gurman wrote five other HD scripts and Larry Strawther two others.
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