Reliving Happy Days

It's now 1982, which is a fairly significant year in the Marshallverse, but not quite yet.  This episode does hint at the spinoff in waiting, with Joanie wanting to take a gap year before college.  In fact, this would've been a B- instead of a C+ if the J&C song weren't so forgettable.  I like everyone being concerned about Joanie but supporting her, well, everyone except for Jenny, who's as selfish as ever. A couple notes: Joanie is now eighteen, but it's also the time of homecoming, in an episode that aired in January, so the timeline remains wacky. Lori Beth tries to give her opinion and is sent upstairs to look after Richie, Jr.  Fonzie tries to give his opinion, while lying in bed with Howard and Marion, and we're supposed to feel sorry for him when he's told he's not one of the family.  (It is kind of funny though.) I do like Marion's surprisingly feminist reason for wanting Joanie to go to college.

Although uneven, this ended up being better than I expected, although not quite as good as the Christmas episodes from Seasons Two and Six.  So a C+. Notes: With various subgroups being separated by snow, this is similar to a superior Roseanne episode from 1992. I do remember originally feeling cheated that we don't see or hear Richie when he calls, because I already missed him, and Ralph to a lesser degree. Marion and Lori Beth definitely miss Richie.  (No one mentions Ralph.) The four guys stuck at Arnold's compare their fathers, and Potsie decides his is OK sometimes, which canon does not otherwise support.  Chachi's father, by the way, seems to have died when he was young. Jenny doesn't get much to do beyond give Roger an "I love Jenny" T-shirt, so, yeah, her crush continues. Howard and Joanie get a chance to bond, and I liked the backstory of Howard running away to New York the summer of 1933, when he was 18.  (You can see how happy Bosley is to actually ...