"Hi, Neighbor, Book 2"

"Hi, Neighbor, Book 2"
March 1, 1977
B+

"Davy" L. Lander and Michael McKean co-wrote this episode that is not only very Lenny-and-Squiggy-focused but is also very shippy.  And it has some class-clashing, in a French restaurant.

We begin in Lenny and Squiggy's apartment, which we and, it's implied, the girls have not seen since the boys moved in for the first "Hi, Neighbor" episode.  Squiggy is "in love" again, this time with Barbara Tedesco.  (This is the first of six L & S roles for Lynne Marie Stewart but the only one she'd repeat.  And it sounds from the dialogue like her last name is Hummel, but that's not what IMDB says.)  They want fashion advice from Laverne & Shirley, so Squiggy, while Lenny is in the bathroom, yells down the dumbwaiter that Lenny has swallowed his comb.  The girls race upstairs in record time (about fifteen seconds, or the time it takes for Squiggy to pour himself Listerine, despite what earlier was supposed to be three or four stories' difference between the apartments) and slapstick ensues.  The girls recommend that the boys go rent "evening wear" for the double date with Barbara and her (unseen) friend.

Laverne and Shirley are dateless on a Friday night, but it turns out that Mrs. Babish is going out with Laverne's father.  Shirley is instantly a Fredna shipper but Laverne feels uncomfortable about it, even though she likes Mrs. Babish.  (Although arguably, at this point, Shirley has bonded more with their landlady, as when she turned to her about Laverne being in jail and possibly pregnant.)  In any case, this ship is launched and would be somewhat successful, but more on that later of course.

The girls are dressed to clean the apartment, and Laverne ends up accidentally French-kissing a vacuum cleaner!  But she's about to get a better offer.

The guys show up to model their outfits, or as Lenny puts it, "Well, Girls, this is what we'd look like if we was handsome."  Laverne in particular is amused, to the point that Shirley has to quietly scold her for laughing.  While Squiggy calls Barbara to let her and her friend know that he and Lenny are going to go pick them up, Laverne goes over to "Len" and fixes his cummerbund, which he's wearing high enough to be a "brassiere."  He turns out to be ticklish but doesn't object to her touching him.  He and Laverne share amused looks when Squiggy tells Barbara it's "Squiggles."

But when Barbara breaks the date, L & L look concerned.  They also look like she was doing more than fixing his cummerbund.  Shirley is less physical with Squiggy here, but she does brush his suit off a little, like she doesn't want him to have lint on it, even if he probably won't be going out that night.

L & L encourage Squiggy to tell Barbara off, although Shirley doesn't.  And when Squiggy says that there are "plenty of women just dying to go out with us," check out the look L & L share as she strokes his arm, as if he's the one who needs comforting, and maybe as if she is on some level dying to go out with him.

Squiggy puts a very reluctant Shirley on the phone to speak with Barbara, but Shirley is in her too-nice mode and can't insult Barbara.  However, she delights as much as the guys do when Laverne grabs the phone and tells Barbara that she and Shirley are very much looking forward to going out with these two "hunks."  Lenny calls both girls terrific, but it's Laverne he keeps touching on the back.

Lenny assumes that Laverne meant it, while Squiggy wonders if he should call Barbara back.  The girls wonder what they've gotten themselves in for and "solemnly" thumb-swear that they will never tell anyone about this double date.

At the fancy French restaurant, Lenny drags Laverne over to a free table but then pulls her chair out for her, impressing Shirley with his manners, although Squiggy mocks him.  However, both the maitre d' and the waiter are appalled by the foursome's lack of couth and elegance, as when they wear the napkins as hats and can't read the menu.  (The nameless waiter is Gino Conforti, a few years after playing a much nicer waiter, Nino, on That Girl a few times and still a few years from perhaps his best known role as Jack's frenemy assistant Felipe on Three's Company.)

When Laverne tries to teach Lenny not to grab food from across the table, she ends up falling over and the waiter helps to pick her up.  Lenny tells him to let go of his date, and Laverne says the waiter gave her an Indian burn.  Lenny, while still eating, manages to hold Laverne's arm and blow on it, which is sweet if not helpful.

Squiggy goes to borrow butter from another table, and he sees Barbara with a date.  He is distraught to the point of hiding under his own table, although his friends try to get him to come out.  When he finally does reemerge, after, as Lenny puts it, "paying under the table," Shirley puts her arm around his shoulder and says that he's been "a perfect gentleman" all evening.  When she says that they all had fun, Lenny says, "I did," so many times that Shirley tells Laverne to shut him up, which Laverne does.

Shirley convinces Squiggy to leave with dignity, so the four of them get up and stroll over to Barbara's table.  Shirley calls Squiggy "so witty," but the best Laverne can up with is that Lenny is "so...tall," which disappoints him.  Barbara pretends she doesn't know Squiggy, who manages to hold on to his dignity.  But the foursome stop in the doorway when Barbara calls Squiggy a creep and the girls "bottom of the barrel."  Squiggy goes over and yanks the tablecloth off Barbara's table and he and his friends run out, although he does come back to ask Barbara on another date, before Lenny pulls him away.

The tag, which remember, Boys and Girls, is the part of an episode that usually gets chopped for syndication so it isn't supposed to contain any vital information, is set back in the girls' apartment.  The tone is relaxed and surprisingly intimate, considering that one of the premises of this series is that the girls are physically repulsed by their two old friends.  Shirley (in what looks like Cindy flirting with her on-again-off-again boyfriend David L.) is playing with his spit-curl at one end of the couch, while Laverne is amused by Lenny's amusement at the other end.  We find out that Shirley set the lobsters free and the waiters chased the gang three blocks.  Squiggy puts his arm around Shirley as they talk about the lobsters, and she doesn't object.

It's not until Squiggy suggests another double date next weekend, and Lenny puts his arm around Laverne and suggests the Godzilla film festival,* that the girls pull away physically and emotionally.  They fake sleepiness and the guys catch on, leading to one of my favorite throwaway exchanges on this series.
LENNY: A truck doesn't have to hit me.
SQUIGGY: If it does, I'll be driving it.

The guys get to their feet and Squiggy "officially" ends the date.  Lenny adds that since the girls have been so nice, "we ain't gonna try to get anything off ya."  Yet, the guys are still hopeful and they draw out their goodbyes, one of them (I think Squiggy) saying that they'll see them around since they live in the same building.

The girls look at each other and know what they have to do.  It is like and unlike the end of their double date with Richie and Potsie.  Shirley's kiss seems to take Squiggy by surprise, but Lenny is clearly and happily anticipating his kiss from Laverne.  S & S's kiss lasts about four seconds and is enough to make his leg pop and his mouth stay puckered.  Then he slaps himself!

L & L's kiss lasts about six seconds (seven if you count the slow moving in for it), and it causes Lenny to bite his wrist, throw papers around, trip, and bite his wrist again, as Squiggy staggers out the door.

The studio audience oos and whistles, but also laughs and claps, because this is all so over the top.  The girls' reactions are calmer.  Shirley pats her lips, probably surprised at herself for kissing Squiggy for presumably the first time.  Laverne says Lenny "kissed better than the vacuum."  And so ends the girls' quiet Friday night.

Unlike with Frank DeFazio & Edna Babish, this does not lead to immediate romance and eventual marriage.  But the fact that Laverne and Shirley had fun on a double date with Lenny and Squiggy does mean that, despite all those hellos to come, the girls are not as repulsed by their two guy friends as the series will tell us on the surface that they are.  As for the guys, those kisses aren't going to scare them off like Potsie was scared off.  They will see the girls around and they all live in the same building.


*At this point, timeline nitpickers note, there were exactly two Godzilla movies out.  (King Kong vs. Godzilla wouldn't be released until '62.)  So this is hardly "eighteen straight hours of monsters in Tohoscope."  Still, we'll learn in a later episode that Laverne shares Lenny's love of such movies.