Reliving Happy Days

While Leather and Ralph are adorable together, I wish there had been more of them as themselves, or at least another episode after this to explore that relationship.  She doesn't even sing!  Instead we get another Potsie & Jennifer duet, which is nice, but shrug.  So B-. Notes: Ralph's concern about Cuba is both funny and prescient for (approximately) February 1961. The three boys are in three different branches of the service, as they were before. Chachi is going to Inspiration Point on foot, with two girls. Joanie is going to I.P. with a boy who is actually bringing his telescope, not a line. Marion keeps beating Howard at games he teaches her, and she outdoes him at basketball, too. Mother Kelp taught Marion basketball, and gave Richie's ball to him.  One wonders if Chuck was her favorite. I like that in this makeover episode, Leather actually asks to be made over (hence the title), unlike some uses of this trope.  And I especially like that Leather and R...

This episode is funny by Season Six standards, especially some of Potsie's lines, so C+.  I didn't remember this episode but I successfully called the "twist" that Richie's scandal would win him votes. Notes: This has one of the most wholesome "massage parlor" scenes I've ever seen in a sitcom, surprising for its era, but then the "stripper" episodes in early seasons were pretty clean, too. Howard references Nixon's unshaven debate, and presumably the 1960 election has now passed in the Marshallverse.  (This episode aired on December 12th.) Was it a common thing to have "presidents" for each college year?  Richie is running for Sophomore President, which just seems odd. He's still dating LB as far as we know, since she's been mentioned a few times, but it does feel weird to not have "his girl" react to his scandal.

Startlingly, this actually aired on February 14th, but it does take Joanie's voyeurism to new heights, as she imagines romantic scenarios, most of them musical, for her family and friends.  (Well, Richie's friends and Chachi.  The censors probably wouldn't show what she'd cook up for Jenny P.)  I mean, an Apache Dance for Richie and Lori Beth?!  The best sequence here is of course the one for Howard & Marion, playing off their middle-aged memories for "I Remember It Well."  And of course Chachi is being creepy to showgirls during "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."  (It's a very Chevalier episode.)  In the end, Joanie's previously referred to but unseen boyfriend Binky Hodges shows up and is of course played by twenty-year-old Christopher Knight. Anyway, I'm going with a C+. Notes: Joanie probably goes further with Peter Brady than Richie went with Marcia, since they're heading up to Inspiration Point. Howard literally becomes erect ...

Unlike Marion Ross, this episode has not aged well (especially the Arabian Nights stuff), but I did laugh a couple times, like Richie and Joanie silently exiting the kitchen towards the end, so C+. Notes: Sisters Jan and Jill Bunker are the new Suedes, both with anachronistic blonde hairdos. While it's nice to see Leather again of course, it feels a little shoehorned that she's in a plot where Marion fears Howard leaving her for a younger woman, as one of their middle-aged friends did. And the nightmare where "Howie" is a chick-magnet has Leather mildly flirting with him, which is just weird. This is Fred Maio's first of four HD scripts, and the last would also be Leather's last. Marion borrows her "harem" outfit from Jenny's mother, who was wearing a Bo Peep costume at the time.  And the Hooper Triplets recently dressed as Huey, Dewey, and Louie for Fonzie.  Some crazy shit happens offscreen in this 'verse. Marion fears that she looks like h...