"A Nun's Story"

"A Nun's Story"
February 24, 1976
B

I vaguely remember this episode more than the others so far, suggesting it struck a chord with me either in first run or in reruns.  The script by Michael Warren and William Bickley (their first of three as a team, compared to fourteen and seventeen respectively for Happy Days) offers a farcical flashback, something I was a sucker for then and, OK, now.  But it's overall solid, sweet and funny.

Shirley is holding her fourth high school reunion in three years, for the class of '56, so we know that this is 1959 and they're about 21.  Obviously, there are going to be timeline errors, but this is the first real information we've gotten on that.  We also get some background details to not only the girls but also Lenny, who makes a confession to their old friend Anne Marie (Rochelle Richelieu, who wouldn't act on film again until Gran Torino more than 30 years later), who has become the nun of the title.  The three girls were "the three Musketeers" in high school, known as Gutsy (Laverne), Nutsy (Anne Marie), and Klutzy (Shirley).  AM got revenge on Lenny and Squiggy's friend Hector (Greg Antonacci, a role he'd return to later that year), and there's a good payoff to this later, helped by Foster bringing out the protective Italian father in Mr. DeFazio.

Note that not only Lenny and Squiggy went to high school with the girls but so did Carmine.  He gets the two of them to sing the alma mater, which starts with Shirley (I played this back a couple times) calling their h.s. "Fillmore Millard" or some or other error, not necessarily scripted.  And after the song, Carmine kisses Shirley's hand.

I don't remember if it started in this episode or the previous one, but we get the girls locking the door and arming themselves, sometimes with baseball bats, when someone knocks.  I'd forgotten this detail, that there wasn't always an open door policy.  So far Squiggy's hellos are either at work or the Pizza Bowl, so that image of his (and usually Lenny's) comedic entrances through the girls' front door doesn't yet match the show.

However, this is very early days and things haven't quite fallen into place.  Still, I felt like this was the first episode to really show the potential of the series.