"A Woman Not Under the Influence"

Sigh.  So it's September 28, 1982.  I am a freshman in high school so my world is further being shaken up, and Tuesday Nights on ABC are not the refuge they once were.  Tonight, Three's Company will offer a funny but highly questionable look at the Jack/Janet relationship.  Laverne & Shirley will marry off Shirley to a man completely covered in bandages.  And Happy Days?  It will decide that the way to examine Fonzie going monogamous is to have him stalk a stranger, who of course falls for him by the end of the episode.  Still, I'm going with a D+ because at least Potsie wasn't pointless this episode.

Notes:

• I had a minor meltdown just watching the credits, with all the changes, some of them ridiculous, like Potsie serenading Jenny and the not-yet-introduced K.C..  And then we got to Flip doing an acrobatic flip in the first scene (in one of those annoying crop tops), and I honestly didn't know if I would make it through this episode.  And that was before we got to the stalking plot.  But I'll stick with the D+ for now, since I can actually picture this show getting much worse.  And it's not as bad as "The Other Richie Cunningham," I think.
• The "Marion watches Bonanza" sequence also helps.
• Potsie's father still runs a gas station, although very early on in canon it was a dress shop I think.
• Yep, that's Rita Wilson as Roxanne, and she'd return as Barbara McManus.
• We finally meet Clarence the Cook at Arnold's, played by Gary Friedkin, and he turns out to be a little person, which makes all the Clarence jokes in past seasons even more questionable.
• And speaking of people who used to be just offscreen characters, it looks like from the opening credits that Jenny Piccalo is still in high school somehow.  At least Cathy Silvers and Ted McGinley finally made it into the opening circles.  
• But then so did Linda Purl.  She would do I think fifteen more HD episodes as Ashley Pfister, and yes, she was Richie's girlfriend Gloria, long ago.
• Seven-year-old Heather O'Rourke, as her Danzaly named daughter Heather, would make eleven more HD appearances.  She would of course go on to the Poltergeist film series, and die tragically at the age of twelve.
• So, yeah, let's enjoy the rest of Season Ten.  But first, let's get back to the latest spin-off...