"Call Me a Taxi"

Supplemental income

"Call Me a Taxi"
February 1, 1977
B-

Deborah Leschin and Paula A. Roth wrote this episode that, while not feminist per se, does inadvertently address the pay gap and the double standard.  And it's another episode I sort of remember from the time, both the "taxi dancing" and Shirley's bosom-stuffing.

In 1960 (the year this episode might be set), women who worked full-time made 61 cents for every dollar men made, while in '77 it had dropped to 59 cents.  (It reached 78 cents in 2013, with no more recent stats at this website: https://www.infoplease.com/womens-earnings-percentage-mens-1951-2013).  Now admittedly, Laverne and Shirley aren't doing the same job as Lenny and Squiggy, but when the girls are laid off for three weeks and the guys start making overtime, there is a feeling that it's unfair, especially since the girls are good at their job and the guys possibly aren't.

And when the girls decide to make some money during the three weeks away from the brewery, they get the humiliating work of a-dime-a-dance.  Lenny and Squiggy (who must by the laws of sitcoms show up) think it's normal for guys to be there but shameful for women.  And yet, it's clear that most (maybe all) the customers are "vermin," while our girls are "nice."  Also, Laverne refuses Rosie's pity money but agrees to work minimum wage for her father.  So the gender dynamics here are not that simple.

I will say that I was leaning towards a C+ but Lenny and Squiggy are genuinely funny in their guises as respectively a big-game hunter and a novelist, and I like the irony that they feel they are supplying fantasy to the humdrum lives of the dancers, rather than the other way around.  We know that when they give their tickets to Laverne and Shirley, they will pair off L & L and S & S, but there's also a bit of them accidentally dancing together.  (Not the last time LenSquig will be teased for humorous purposes.)

Larry Hankin is Tall Dancer here and would later play Biff.  Peter Elbling is Dancer (presumably the shorter one), doing a vaguely European accent again after being Eric the German before.  Frances Peach is Mary but would have two other roles.  Julie Payne is Charmayne here and would be Colonel Turner in a two-parter a couple years later. 

And Rose Michtom is uncredited as the elderly Ticket Lady, but she'd later appear a few times as Mrs. Kolcheck/Kolchek.  (I instantly recognized her today from a taping of Too Close for Comfort, where she kept screwing up the line "I'm a drowning victim" by emphasizing "victim" rather than "drowning."  She has no lines here but she was then pushing eighty, and I'm curious to see how she does with L & S dialogue.)