Reliving Happy Days

  I like this series-closer, especially the understated performance by Molinaro as the voice of reason, so I'll give a B-.  It's interesting how upset Louisa is about the possible elopement, considering how accepting she is of the idea of Chachi proposing I assume just a few months later on HD, however this chronology works out. A couple notes: Chachi is somehow still 18. Millee Taggart didn't write anything else for the Marshallverse, and instead seems to have done a lot of soap operas. Over the course of its 17 episodes, JLC ranges from C- to B-, averaging out to a high C, so it's not as good as Season Ten of Happy Days, although it's better than Season Eight of Laverne and Shirley.  I don't know that it would've been able to improve with more time, but there are certainly worse HD spinoffs.  *coughBlanskysBeautiescough*

This is obviously set before the HD episodes where Joanie gave up the band, since they had to burn off what was left of this series.  Surprisingly, it's a bit of a clip show, using highly selective moments of HD as Chachi looks back on his relationship with Joanie, when her "first love," from seventh grade shows up and is somehow already in med school.  (Did he skip high school or something?)  I went with a C because the continuity errors bugged me.

  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.

  This is probably the best episode of the series, certainly the best so far.  I like that it's not about anyone's love life or music career.  It's just about Joanie standing up for herself against a condescending professor, with Chachi's support, and Mario trying to do the right thing.  OK, there is Al and Louisa learning to communicate better in the subplot about a ridiculously tacky couch, but it's not "romantic" per se.  Plus, Moran does a nice, sexy cover of "He's So Fine."  So B-, well done! Notes: William Woff, who plays Bill Ziegler, would be The Skier on HD the next year. Scott's brother Steven Baio is Jerry Wood here and would play Joey on HD in '83 and '84. I feel like they've toned down Bingo, and that's a good thing. Barry O'Brien had written a couple HD episodes and one for Laverne & Shirley, but this is his only one for JLC.   It's the first of two JLC scripts for Cheryl Alu, who had written one ...

  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.

No, she's not actually Chachi's aunt.  Vanessa is Louisa's old friend from high school, now a record producer out to seduce Chachi.  Posh Jessica Walter gives the part more than it deserves, as she would a sophisticated regular role a couple years later on Three's a Crowd, but I still don't feel like this show clicks enough to go above a C+ on this episode. Notes: The usual Tuesday night lineup was pre-empted that night, I assume for the midterm elections, but that of course didn't affect JLC and other Thursday shows. There's more of manic rather than monotonal Mario, here at the midpoint of the series. We don't find out what year Vanessa and Louisa graduated, but I assume it was sometime in the '30s. I didn't catch Louisa's maiden name (it might well have been Masciarelli, as in the Marshall siblings), but it definitely was not Fonzarelli. Chachi has a poster of the mop-top era Beatles, so I guess this is '64.  (There's an episode co...

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.

Apparently Suki has moved out and Joanie is living alone at the moment.  But when she and Chachi fall asleep in front of the television, and then Howard calls, Chachi answers, and farce and drama ensue.  I was actually leaning towards a B- but the thing with Bingo's airhead friend was as unfunny as Bingo.  So C+. Notes: Somehow Richie, Jr. is now nine months old, even though he had his first birthday over the summer and  he was possibly born in November of 1962. Richie and his family are now in California.  Remember that for when we get back to him on  HD. Neil Rosen and George Tricker would co-write one more episode.

With Laverne & Shirley back in its old slot, the latest spin-off drifted over to Thursdays at 8:00 p.m.  And its season-two-opener ends up being, well, not bad.  In fact, it's a C+.  That means it's on a level with a couple of the Fonzie cameo episodes of Laverne & Shirley , "Bachelor Party" and "Bachelor Mothers," which honestly is a high bar for JLC.  I like the ongoing Al & Chachi step-relationship development, and the musical numbers are, well, not bad.  There's still a fat joke or two, and I did cringe when Bingo said "mellow," but the writing is better than in the first season.  I still would've rather watched Mork & Mindy in this time slot, but I settled for what I could get, and this is still much better than HD's  season premiere that week. Notes: Fonzie resists the two women who answer his snaps, a hint that he's serious about Ashley Pfister, although she's not mentioned by name. Grant Heslov, who's...

  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 ...