"Not Quite South of the Border"

"Not Quite South of the Border"
January 7, 1980
C

So a new decade dawned and ABC realized that it had been a mistake moving Laverne & Shirley over to Thursdays, so they shifted the girls over to...Mondays?  I was an ABC sitcom loyalist well into the '90s and I can't think of any of their shows I ever watched on Mondays.  I'm guessing, but Mondays that season I was probably watching Little House on the Prairie on NBC, with occasional WKRP over on CBS.  I have absolutely no memory of this episode from the time, even as a summer rerun.  But maybe that's because it's not very good.

The idea in this story, the only one written by Susan Seeger, collaborating with Deborah Leschin, isn't a bad one, with the girls taking a cheap vacation in "Near Mexico," although if they'd taken Frank's advice to visit Laverne's grandmother in Brooklyn again, I'd have been perfectly happy.  It's the execution of the story, with timing of dialogue off and the physical comedy not really working, although I can see everyone, including the special effects crew, throwing themselves into it, as I listen to the studio audience roar with laughter like it's a classic I Love Lucy episode or something.  I didn't find the episode painful or anything, and I of course liked the stuff with Lenny and Squiggy wanting to stow away in the luggage (with Lenny almost eating Laverne's garter belt), but as with the "army" special, I just don't see the point of this episode.

Billy Sumper's middle of five L & S roles is as Lou, while Neil Thompson's second of four is as Fred Frick.  And Peter Elbling's final "foreign" role on the show is as Jose.  Carmine is absent, although you'd think he'd want to see Shirley off.