March 1, 1977
B+
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."


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.)

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!

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.
Thing I noticed on the replay: David totally bends one of his legs flamingo-style, like a girl in a romance movie, mid-kiss.
ReplyDeleteAlso it's interesting how the Shirley/Squiggy kiss is played for full-out comedy while Lenny and Laverne just go right over the border into a full-on makeout as the audience hoots its encouragement.
Yep, I mention the leg-pop in my post, and it's a good example of both how this show plays gender reversals for laughs and how, even though Squiggy is much, much more emotionally reserved than Lenny, he does show his feelings physically at times.
DeleteYeah, I'll watch the episode again (along with some other favorites) as a reward when I finish Season Eight, but I do recall that the way it's directed, we're meant to react to the two "couples" in a very different way. Lenny's post-kiss reaction is played for laughs, but we can be happy for his bliss.
Heh, I realized you did seconds after I commented. Whoops!
DeleteA perfect palate cleanser. I thought I noticed that too!
"I thought I noticed that too!" Which that?
Delete