"Breaking Up and Making Up: Edna & Frank"

"Breaking Up and Making Up: Edna & Frank"
May 30, 1978
B-

Foster wrote this story with Marion Zola, who didn't do any other L & S episodes, and it's the one where Frank & Edna get ampersanded.  (It looks like he also wrote a Season Eight episode called "Councilman DeFazio," so I guess he occasionally had ideas about what would happen with his character.)  Frank is jealous when Edna has dinner with her fifth and at that point final ex-husband, Johnny Babish (Dale Robinette, who was Bart Andrews the year before), but he refuses to admit it.  He also believes that he's too old to change his ways and be romantic.  The girls, whom Edna introduces to Johnny as her best friends, do their best to get Edna and Frank to make up, from Laverne having a heart-to-heart talk with her father (including some nice memories of her mom back in Brooklyn) to Shirley borrowing a slinky green dress from Squiggy's uncle's wax museum and serenading the estranged couple on a piano.  In the end, Frank and Edna admit their love, and I think Fredna stays intact for the most part for the next three or four seasons.

The other shipping notes are some definite Shirmine (Carmine is clearly excited by the green dress) and Lenny and Squiggy of course responding to Shirley's cry, "Will someone help me out of this dress?" when Edna runs off leaving Shirley pinned in a different dress.  But, Fredna aside, I'm going to go with Shirverne as the dominant ship here.  Laverne calls Shirley beautiful in the green dress, and Shirley calls Laverne cute in the waitress outfit that, this being Season Three, shows off Laverne's legs.  Also, Laverne thinks Shirley's excruciating serenade is wonderful.  Now that's true love!

For some reason, the things I vaguely remember from the time are Shirley's list of silly endearments that Laverne starts to read to her father, and  Lenny and Squiggy's hurt reaction to Frank calling them "pickleheads," although I forgot Squiggy's proud declaration that they are "the best pickleheads in the state of Milwaukee."  But I was ten and that's what would've amused me.

Laverne & Shirley was the top-rated TV series for 1977-78, with its brother show Happy Days at #2 and the more suggestive and farcical Three's Company at #3, so Tuesday nights really were must-see television, and not just for me and my fellow fourth-graders.  Watching the season more than forty years later, it ranges from C- to B+, averaging out to a B-, like the first two seasons, but I think the roughly second half (the thirteen episodes starting with the "New Year's" episode) is stronger than the first half.  Things start clicking more, and the characters feel more in character, so the show gets funnier and sometimes more touching.  Also, arguably the musical numbers are better this season.

I don't remember anything specific about Season Four from the time, although I'm sure things will come back to me as we start that part of our journey tomorrow....