"The Bully Show"

"The Bully Show"
October 31, 1978
B-

Chris Thompson wrote this episode that aired on Halloween and deals with an all too real scare: the threat of rape, although it's addressed in the usual cartoon setting of this show, rather than the realism of the attempted rape of Edith Bunker on All in the Family the previous Fall.  Compared to the way this topic was handled in Season One, there is definite progress, not that I'm completely happy with the episode, but it is better than, say, the way it would've gone on Three's Company.

Shirley goes out of town over night to see her unspecified brother graduate from "heavy equipment school."  At first, the worst thing that Laverne thinks she has to deal with is the accidental Manxing of Boo Boo Kitty when Carmine sits on the stuffed animal.  (If I remember anything about this episode from the time it's Carmine saying he "got the cat fixed.")

Unfortunately, Lenny and Squiggy are bullied into setting up their new foreman, Biff (Larry Hankin, who previously was the Tall Dancer on the taxi-dancing episode), with Laverne, who they've just boasted is "loose as a moose" and crazy about one or both of them.  He threatens to fire and beat them up if they don't get him a date with her.  Then they tell her that Biff will be taking her to a Man of the Year banquet.  (This is one of the episodes where Terry Buttafuco is referred to but not seen, here as their supposed next choice for Biff.)  Laverne decides she might as well go out with Biff.

He tells her she might see a "big trophy" by the end of the night and he soon makes his intentions clear.  Although Laverne has gone out with guys who've come on strong, we see that this is not the same thing, especially when he won't let her go out the door and he insists she take off her dress.  He is not asking, he is telling, and then demanding.  And Laverne later gives a little speech about how she chooses the "jerks" she'll be with.  It's played for laughs but it is also a feminist statement of consent, from a character who is not 100% pure (although probably still at least technically a virgin at this point).  She does her best to defend herself, through her intelligence and strength.  But when he plays on her sympathy, she falls for it, and he actually is on top of her on the couch when Lenny and Squiggy come in.

And that's where this episode is, if not problematic, at least not fully evolved.  And, yes, I am looking at this from a 21st-century perspective, as well as a literal child of the '70s and someone who knows quite a bit about the late '50s/ early '60s.  Lenny and Squiggy got Laverne into this mess and it is only Lenny's guilt, and fear of being seen as a coward, that bring them to the rescue just in the nick of time.  (At that, it takes all three of them to beat up Biff as an awkward team.)  Laverne is so grateful that she kisses, Squiggy?!  And then she finds out that the boys knew about Biff and she tells them that a friend should be more important than a job, "especially our jobs."

She does forgive Lenny and Squiggy, and they insist she throw them out to show that she still likes them.  And it's sweet, in a weird way, but let's not forget that even if the boys hadn't set up the date, they were spreading rumors about her in the break room at work, and they should know better about this, considering Season One's "Once Upon a Rumor."

In the tag, Laverne tells Shirley it was dull around there while she was gone, and Shirley finds out about Boo Boo Kitty's injury and repair.