"High Priced Dates"April 7, 1981
B-
Charlotte Dobbs's second of two L & S stories has the girls going out with two roughly forty-year-old men that Rhonda fixes them up with. The men spend a lot of money on them and Shirley in particular worries that the men will, as Rhonda puts it, expect music for the dimes they put in the jukebox. The first date is interrupted by Lenny and Squiggy (more on that in a moment), but the girls wonder what Ryan (Jack Lukes in his fourth and final role on the show) and Steve (Neil Thompson in his third of four) will expect on the second. They have a good talk with Edna, who tells them they should never feel obligated to do more on a date than they're comfortable with. And surprisingly, when Laverne is honest with the men, things actually work out OK, and the two couples kiss.
When Lenny and Squiggy walk in on the girls trying to dry spilled coffee off their dates, Lenny calls it "a mirage a trois," getting his French, his math, and the situation wrong. Squiggy is at first shocked speechless, because he says, when he regains his words, he'd always thought of Shirley as "pure as the driven Ivory soap." Lenny tells the girls to go back to their "free-for-all," he just wants to borrow their cookie cutters for his meat cookies.
Laverne grabs his arm to get his attention, but she keeps touching him and standing very close, until he goes in the kitchen. And then, after the dates leave, she gets closer than necessary to see his cookies, and continues standing there even during Squiggy's rant. Even when Lenny goes to take a distraught Squiggy home, Laverne reaches out for Lenny. (Hey, Everybody, it's Pic Spam Time!)
As in "I Do, I Do," the Lavenny (and to a lesser extent the Squigley) overshadows the girls' romances with the two strangers. Note that Laverne thinks, before Ryan and Steve make themselves more comfortable, that they might be gay, although it isn't said in so many words, and Shirley says, in not so many words, that she and Laverne aren't lesbians.
No comments:
Post a Comment