Reliving Happy Days

  I was leaning towards a C- but the sentimental last part bumps this up to a C. Notes: This manages to both offer backstory for the middle-aged people and to contradict HD.  As for the latter, not only does Joanie say she's never had a home-movie camera before (contradicting the "Summer of '62" two-parter), but we even get a different version of the Cunninghams' Christmas that week!  Joanie will not get to see Richie, Lori Beth, their son, or Grandmother Kelp, none of whom were expected on "All I Want for Christmas." Chachi says he's never had Christmas with a "father" before.  Did his biological father die when he was a baby? Al says his father always had to work on Christmas, so Al would go look in the window at another family gathering.  But what about his mother and twin brother? Rico was nine and Louisa was seven one Christmas during the Depression.  So that puts her born somewhere between 1922 and 1933, probably towards the earlier e...

Full of questionable content, from Joanie thinking her relationship with Chachi depends on her ability to cook to his hiding his food poisoning to spare her feelings, to her dreaming that Mario is married to his father in drag.  So C-. Notes: Joanie's dream is set fifty years in the future, by which point Erin Moran would be two or three years from death. Annette's hunky, new, younger husband is definitely the Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I. type. The old age makeup is terrible, even for the time. Chachi is a better cook than Joanie, so she jokes that she hopes he'll cook like that every day when they're married and she comes home from work, which in a stronger episode would be cutely feminist. This is the only JLC episode written by Paula A. Roth, who was then in the midst of writing seven HD episodes, although her thirteen for Laverne & Shirley are more notable.

  Al reluctantly fires the band for irresponsibility, so Uncle Rico gets them a gig at an Irish-themed pub.  The wardrobes look more anachronistic than ever.  I'm going with C+ again. Note that Bill Kirchenbauer (the future Coach Lubbock) makes a brief appearance as Phil, not as memorable as when he'd guested on Mork & Mindy, but still nice to see.

  The title refers to Joanie getting her foot stuck in a seat at a movie theater showing a racy French art movie.  C+ again. Notes: Ellen Travolta's sister (and John's) Ann plays the Cashier. Martin Ferrero, who plays Mr. Bresner, would be Omar twice on HD. Joan Brooker and Nancy Eddo would go on to co-write for Charles in Charge among other shows. And this episode is Henry Winkler's first directorial credit.

OK, so Al has never heard of Paul McCartney, but everyone else has, so this is maybe set in the Fall of '64?  Anyway, I'm going with a C+ because Joanie and Chachi come across as extra dumb or at least naïve to think that Macca would just randomly be in a Chicago hospital without an entourage, and not even a private room.  Plus, the DVD left off whatever Beatles song that J & C sing with "Marvin."   Notes: Uncle Rico is now back to the "sleazy agent" role rather than "sexist pig," although who knows what order these were shot of course. Joy Claussen was Carol before and is Nurse Benson here.  Hillary Horan, the "Drummer Girl" and other roles on HD, here is Janice, her last screen credit. The script's writer, Gary Menteer, was more of a producer, but he did direct two Laverne & Shirley episodes the previous season.

I didn't really care about either thread, of Chachi's jealousy of Joanie's art teacher or Al's interest in joining the Chicago chapter of the Leopard Lodge.  I did wonder what was up with Derrel Maury totally changing his acting style.  I thought at first it was because he was hitting on a random blonde, but it's like this in all his scenes.  Anyway, a C. Notes: Bingo has an unseen sister. Uncle Rico is again the male chauvinist representative, meant to contrast with the supposedly evolving Chachi. The studio audience, which can get quite squealy just when Chachi enters a room, is seriously losing their shit over the idea of him going nude, as if we haven't seen the "nude modeling" twist a dozen times on other '70s and '80s sitcoms. Anita Merrit, who is that random blonde, was Gloria on  HD  a couple years earlier. Terry Hart had written "Richie's Job" in '79 and a Season Seven episode of Laverne & Shirley, and he (she?) w...

This sort of makes a feminist point, not particularly well, but I guess points for trying, so C. Notes: Nancy Lieberman, who plays Nancy, was a real-life basketball player.  I have no idea how much name recognition she had in '82. Uncle Rico makes his first appearance in awhile, mostly to be a sexist pig that Joanie can react to. Larry Levinson also wrote a Laverne & Shirley episode that aired the previous winter. Howard Storm directed most of Mork & Mindy and some early L&S, but he didn't do any HD and this is his only JLC.

  This actually doesn't have a bad concept, but the execution is disappointing, as Chachi worries that Joanie will outgrow him when she starts hanging out with her roommate, Suki, and Suki's college friends.  So C-. A few notes: I don't get why Annette and Mario dance together at the end.  I guess the joke is that the weird loser cousins are stuck dancing together, but why aren't they up onstage accompanying Joanie's solo? Brian Byers, who plays Squelch, was Biff on HD in '77. Lowell Ganz was more of a writer, but this is the first of two JLC s he directed.

I was actually leaning towards a C+ because the writing and direction are a little sharper, but I had to mark this down to a C because of too many fat jokes and the way that Joanie is used as bait. A few notes: Annette is almost nineteen. Anson Downes, who's Annette's creepy fiance, was Joanie's date on Happy Days a few months earlier. Joel Zwick directed Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Bosom Buddies, but never Happy Days.  He would do a couple more JLC episodes.

Between Chachi guilting Joanie and the ridiculous number of anachronisms, especially with Bingo, I'm going to have to drop down to a C-, although this week's one-minute song is relatively good. Notes: "Aura," "finding yourself," etc. The timeline is a mess anyway, since Joanie wants to go to Richie Jr.'s first-birthday party, but he was born in approximately November 1962, probably not the summer anyway. On the one hand, Joanie and Chachi's different reasons for performing music are interesting, and on the other, shouldn't they have discussed this before she left Milwaukee to join his band?

So, yeah, it was time for another Garry Marshall spin-off, so why not take those teen idols J & C and give them their own show, with Chachi's mother and his new stepfather, Al?  Season One was very short, four episodes, and I'll just drop them in as they come up chronologically with what's left of HD's Season Nine.    This premiere is OK.  I mean, there are worse HD S9 episodes, but also some better.  I'm going with a C. Notes: I watched this series at the time but I don't think since, other than the theme song on YouTube, because I actually like the theme.  We'll see how much of any of JLC comes back to me. Howard and Marion pop into Chicago, at the worst time of course. I'm still not clear, almost forty years later, why Al had to go all the way to Chicago to open a new restaurant. Also, the restaurant is really successful for being open only two weeks.  It's not like there weren't other Italian places in Chicago. This is now "the Sexy ...