"Some Enchanted Earring"

"Some Enchanted Earring"
December 1, 1981
C+

David Lerner & Bruce Ferber's only L & S script doesn't have a bad concept but the execution doesn't entirely work.  Laverne has a date with a big Hollywood producer, who's actually after her for her money!  They go on a date in the Hollywood Hills (a charmingly obviously fake set) but she ends up walking home.  Unfortunately, she loses something in his car, no, not that.

Earlier, Frank brings over Laverne's mother's diamond earrings, which she thinks he's going to give to her, but he says he wants to give them to Edna but with a modern setting, maybe even turned into another piece of jewelry, like a necklace.  Laverne is hurt and disappointed but she doesn't tell her father how she feels.  She does, however, wear the earrings on her date with the producer and comes home with one missing.  So she drags Shirley up to the Hills to help her look, which somehow involves Shirley making out with the producer to distract him.

I feel like I do vaguely remember this episode from the time, unless I've seen Laverne clinging to the underside of the convertible's roof somewhere else.  (Maybe future credits.)  I definitely didn't recall that Frank (and an unseen Edna) actually wanted to surprise Laverne with the earrings.  Foster and Marshall have one of their nice father-daughter moments in the end, but it's a long time getting there.  Note that this is the second episode in a row where Frank wants to dance with Laverne, although last time it was on a very tiny dance floor, around Carmine and Shirley, a moment we see in the Season Seven credits.