Reliving Happy Days

As a Very Special Episode about diabetes, this would be a C at best, but add in that, one, we never actually get a sense of the tour with the Beach Boys that Chachi might miss out on, and two, the comic relief is wincey, and I have to go with D+. A couple notes: Neil Thompson, who plays the D.J., had four different roles on Laverne & Shirley. Martin Ferrero plays Omar the pilot again.

It's September 27, 1983.  I'm a high school sophomore and I'm still tuning in to ABC on Tuesdays out of inertia and what's left of my loyalty.    Laverne & Shirley is gone and Happy Days has been shuffled to 8:30.  ( Just Our Luck, about a modern genie, is on at 8:00.)  Three's Company is starting its eighth season at 9:00. I don't remember what I felt that night specifically, if I noticed how they showed younger and current Joanie and Chachi in the opening credits, how poor Anson Williams got shuffled to just before Ted McGinley.  I do know that I have absolutely no memories of this episode.  (Although I do recall rolling my eyes later in the season when they tried to tell me J & C would've been Kinks fans.)  Anyway, this is a C-, because I just don't care about Fonzie trying another pointless stunt. Notes: It's allegedly been twenty years since Fonzie's mother abandoned him, but maybe he's rounding that off. Harris Kal and Kevin Rod...

This has some tonal shift problems, if not as much as the Laverne & Shirley and Three's Company episodes that aired that first Tuesday of 1983.  (Laverne is gang-banged by sailors while in an alcoholic blackout and "Furley learns that Terri's boyfriend is a convicted murderer.")  This at least has a plot that might've worked with better writing, but I just found it implausible that Ashley would get drunk and make a scene at her estranged parents' wedding anniversary.  So, yeah, it's a C-. A couple notes: Ashley's parents are named George and Millicent and they've been married thirty years.  She appears to be an only child. "The Prince of Wales" has gone vegetarian.  Charles was about 16 at the time this is set.

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.  A...

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.

Joanie and Chachi are now 18 and talking engagement and marriage down the road.  But Chachi feels like his musical ambitions aren't enough of a career to support Joanie in the way Howard expects.  (No one suggests that Joanie might also work.)  This is one of the better Season Nine episodes, so C+. Notes: Here we are, with Joanie Loves Chachi around the corner, and more emphasis placed on Chachi's musical career, and I don't think we've yet heard him (with or without Joanie) sing a complete song at Arnold's.  Unless that's a syndication edit. Chachi was a salesman when we first met him, so I don't know why it's a such a stretch for him now. Jenny hits on Roger, and a random boy, while waiting for her unseen date! Lori Beth again waitresses, but she doesn't have any lines, except screaming. Potsie does get to give Chachi an aptitude test, which is nice. There's a reference, I think, to the Bay of Pigs.

Act now and this final draft could be yours at eBay for just $50! OK, so we know Eugene and Jenny did actually date, but here it's as if they've never gone out.  The "twists" in the story are predictable, and I'm just glad that this thing isn't as bad as it could've been.  So C-.   A few notes: Rocky Baruffi, and his wife Buffy, are name-checked. It doesn't look like the middle of winter anymore.   I doubt they had gumball machines in the 1880s.

I feel like there's a good episode potentially here, maybe with sharper writing.  After a year of dating, Chachi still hasn't had Joanie over to his "house" (apartment) or introduced her to his mother.  So Fonzie invites the Cunninghams over and mild havoc ensues.  There are some sort of sweet moments, so I'm going with a C+. Notes: Somehow how both The Blob and Psycho are playing at local theaters, and  "Surf City" is playing at Arnold's. Chachi says Richie has his own room even though he's not living at home, but I thought they turned Richie's room into Roger's?  I never see Roger sitting at the Cunningham dinner table, so maybe he just stayed there temporarily. Potsie is apparently living in the apartment without Ralph, and there's a not quite subplot where he and other Psych students are studying how Fonzie picks up girls. Jenny is actually still dating Eugene but is ashamed of him.  Their ship name is probably Eugenny and I think...

Yes, we have arrived at Ted McGinley.  I'll probably have more to say about this later, but, as with Fonzie being the Auto Shop teacher, this isn't a bad premise, to have Marion's Ivy League graduate nephew as Fonzie's opposite and antagonist, but the execution again needs work.  I'll go with C-, since at least there was less of Bobby and Eugene. Notes: Jenny of course literally throws herself at Joanie's tall, blond, handsome if bland cousin.  I can't remember if her crush would be ongoing. Teddi Siddall is the best thing about the episode, for whatever that's worth, as Lucille Scarabatza, so I'm relatively glad she'd be back thrice as Hillary. McGinley had sixty more episodes ahead in this role.  I'll note here that Roger Phillips seems to be about 22, Ted's age at the time, although he looks older.  Oh, and since Marion's maiden name is Kelp, I guess he's her sister's kid. Roger is the basketball coach and he teaches Englis...

An odd episode, in of itself and in the larger arc of Fonzie's character.  Even though Fonzie has risked his life before, this time he wants to have "home plate" covered, so he meets Al's twin brother, a priest named Anthony, and decides to get baptized.  And then the tag doesn't really fit the mood.  So a C. A few notes: This time Sally Hightower is Mary Lou. There are various Cunningham relatives mentioned, but Chuck is very officially erased, with Marion calling Richie the firstborn. Al allegedly got a nosejob, a joke that Bickley & Warren felt bore repeating. The baptism takes place on "Sunday the 17th."  If this is 1959, that would make it May, although Richie has already graduated (as he mentions).  If it's '58, then it would be August, which fits better, although Laverne & Shirley would very definitely be set in '59 the following Fall.  Then again, it's supposedly cold out. Fonzie doesn't like getting his hair wet, whic...

This has conflicts spring up and then get quickly solved, but there are some fun moments, so I'm going with a B-. Many more notes: I was mistaken, Sally Hightower actually plays "Sally Hightower," and other usually uncredited cast also appear as "themselves." It's a tiny graduating class, like 20 or 25, so who cares if they add on one night-school graduate? Richie is valedictorian, as is Fonzie for his class by default. I honestly thought we were going to see a montage of high school memories, which would be hilarious, since Richie has been a junior-senior sixteen-to-eighteen-year-old forever. Fonzie is naked under his graduating robe. He dropped out three years ago, so he must be twenty-one at most by this point, unless he was ever left back. Joanie, as an almost sophomore, wants to start having "car dates."  And she is very specifically referred to as graduating in three more years.  The original age gap between Richie and Joanie has shrunk from ...

It's September 21, 1976.  I am in third grade and among the many people who watched Mr. Cool fall in love in a one-hour special.   Almost 45 years later, I am most struck by how Roz Kelly created such a vivid character in such a short amount of time, when most of Fonzie's other "girls" have been forgettable and interchangeable.  It helps that she just has to be introduced to the viewer and that Richie and Joanie inform us that she is an old friend of Fonzie's.  Winkler does a nice job of showing what an infatuated Fonzie looks like, but it is Kelly's Pinky Tuscadero, sassy, sexy, and arguably feminist, who steals the show.  She causes Fonzie to compromise on some of his sexist notions, out of love, and that is actually a good development for his character.  When Pinky is injured, the viewer and the characters are all concerned.  Still, I'm not big on sports, even one shot outdoors, like the demolition derby, so I'm going with a B-. Notes: Doris He...

I suppose I could've gone as high as a C+ on this morally dubious episode, but it wasn't even funny.  Even on a cheesecake level, there are better episodes for that.  Heck, even Potsie's song is unmemorable, except for Richie interrupting him.  So C-. A couple notes: Richie claims he, Ralph, and Potsie have never dated cheerleaders, which is a retcon over the first two seasons. Garry's mother Marjorie is the Piano Player. The first non-Fonzie episode of Laverne & Shirley aired that night, "Bowling for Razzberries" [sic].

This and the previous episode were featured on a recent Zoom reunion fundraiser, with the cast (and guests) reading the scripts out loud.  I found it a little flat, although Ron Howard remains an under-rated actor.  Anyway, I honestly can't see this episode being done in Season One or Two.  Fonzie would never have considered Ralph a friend, and the Cunninghams wouldn't have tied the Fonz to a chair, pretending it was one of Joanie's magic tricks.  Nor would the episode have ended on a bathroom joke.  Still, I'm entertained, just in a different way than by the early episodes. William S. Bickley's co-writer this time, Michael Warren, would do thirteen more episodes, through to the end.