"Welcome to Burbank"

"Welcome to Burbank"
November 25, 1980
B-

Jeff Franklin also wrote the first episode set completely in California, with stereotypical establishing shots of the L.A. area (including of course an ABC sign).  The opening credits are the same except for the last shot, of the "California or bust" sign on the ice cream truck.  And after the views of L.A., we see the boys drop the girls and their furniture off in a still-dialogue-less scene.  The actual before-a-studio-audience part starts with the girls arriving in their new apartment, which Frank has found for them.  (Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume he coughed up first month's rent, deposit, etc., especially since the girls are unemployed and made only $18 from selling their stuff last episode.)

Frank and Edna come in soon after, in shorts, which apparently turns Edna on.  (Laverne shares your discomfort.)  They brought the girls gifts back from their recent trip to Mexico: castanets for Shirley and a guitar for Laverne.  (The guitar would return in at least one episode.)  The girls love the apartment, including that it has an upstairs bedroom.*

They soon meet their neighbors, hunky manager Sonny St. Jacques (Ed Marinaro with less curly hair than as Laverne's cousin a few months earlier) and busty actress Rhonda Lee (Leslie Easterbrook, who I remember a lot better than Marinaro from the California years, but she would do a lot more episodes).  Lenny and Squiggy, who are hanging around selling what's left of the ice cream at the beach, immediately lust after Rhonda, but then Laverne and Shirley lust after Sonny.  (As I recall, Squiggy would have quite a thing for Rhonda, Lenny not so much.)

Things seem to be going well and Shirley even adopts a plant, a Wandering Jew named Stanley.  (By the way, I could've sworn that Shirley was Catholic as well as Laverne, but maybe I just assumed that because Shirley is Irish.  It turns out she's Protestant, and a Democrat.)  But then a massive earthquake, like I don't know, a 10.7**, strikes and the girls start rethinking California.  Finding out that Lenny and Squiggy have just signed a three-year lease on the apartment next door doesn't help.  (The boys think that their "male prowess" after scoring with a couple women they picked up is what made the earth move.  Unless they're lying, this is the first definite indication we've gotten that Lenny and Squiggy are sexually active.)

Laverne doesn't want to leave their garbage disposal and she convinces Shirley to give California another chance.  The promise of breakfast with Sonny, who worried about them, helps.  (And there is no sign of Carmine, except in the revised closing credits, which have all been Californized.)


*I don't, at least at this point, understand the layout of the building.  The exteriors don't match the interiors, and somehow there's the girls' apartment between two other apartments, with only one apartment upstairs, making four total.  I mean, it's not Brady-Bunch-house level mind-warping, but it did take me out of an episode that is in part about the building.

**I mean, I've lived in California a total of almost 40 years, and I have never been in a quake that throws beds around the room like that!