"The Monastery Show"January 4, 1983
D-
Damn. This episode.
Deep breath, I'll try to unpack this without going into great detail. (I don't know if I can sit through it again for actual quotes.) The episode begins with Laverne going to Confession for the first time in fifteen years, which is nonsense. Are we supposed to believe she hasn't gone since she was 13 or 14?* Without Frank noticing? What about the time she was going to have a church wedding to Sal Molina and it was Lenny who hadn't been to Confession in three years?
Wait, forget continuity. Let us talk about the Queen of Flanderization. Laverne has run to church from the pier, in a torn outfit, after waking up on an aircraft carrier, which was after getting blackout drunk. And all the sailors saluted her and said, "Oh, Baby!" as she left. If this was "consensual," this goes well beyond her kissing 2000 sailors goodbye when Bobby Feeney shipped out. And if it wasn't consensual, oh God!
No one in the entire episode, which admittedly includes a lot of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, ever suggests that maybe, perhaps Laverne is a victim of gang rape. Instead it's a question of whether she's a "good girl" who made a mistake or an irredeemable "bad girl." Laverne herself wants redemption, so, on the priest's advice, she checks into a convent. (Not a monastery, which would be an even stranger episode.)
The nuns play football (offscreen), some of them roller-skate and sing (the St. Andrews Sisters, ha ha, no, that's really a joke in the script by people I'm not going to let get away with just a parenthetical mention), and they all do pottery. But they mostly don't talk, except when the plot calls for it. Laverne, who somewhere took on the trait of klutziness**, makes a shambles of things of course, including when she decides to turn bell-ringing into an excuse to do a Quasimodo imitation (comedy gold, I'm tellin' ya) to the tune of "Frere Jacques," causing the far too obedient nuns to randomly wash, eat, sleep, and make pottery.
I mostly watched with my jaw dropped, but when Sister Margaret (Louise Lasser, post-Mary-Hartman and even post-Alex's-wife-on-Taxi) got a spotlight for her speech to Laverne, and then Laverne got one for her speech to God, I snapped, "What is this, Our Town?"***Mother Superior Fran Ryan was on a lot of shows, but is probably best known as Arnold the Pig's "mother" on Green Acres. That series looks like Shakespeare compared to this episode, with its story by Ken Sagoes (first of two), Nick LeRose (who also co-wrote "Death Row: Part 2"), and teleplay by Jill Gordon (middle of three) and Ed Solomon (last of three). Ken, Nick, Jill, and Ed, I'm sure you're not bad people. You're just good people who wrote something really bad. And Brother Garry, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to direct your kid sister's humiliation.
*On the Adam West episode, she was suddenly 28 again, although she must be 29 by now.
**Remember in Season One when Shirley was Klutzy, while Laverne was Gutsy and their future nun friend Anne Marie was Nutsy?
***For the record, I've never seen a production of Our Town, but throwing in this bit of staginess somehow took me even further out of the episode.
AND THEY TOOTED THE BIG HORN. Just. Ugh. Just what you said. Either the show's blaming Laverne for getting gang raped when she was drunk, or she got blitzed and had a lot of sex with a lot of guys and the show's...also blaming her for exercising her right to do so in the dawning years of free love. Either way, the weird morality at play. I think it was the writer's attempt to course correct on the "Port Laverne" flanderization, but it just makes everything worse.
ReplyDeleteLOL those spotlight speeches. WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?! Louise Lassiter tries her heart out but Jeeze. All I could think of was "A my Name is Alex." LAS should NOT be doing its own "A My Name is Alex"
But yeah, mainstream fans either consider the LA move or the Mummy marriage to be the shark jump. Most diehard fans I know hate this episode with the heat of a thousand firey suns and consider it the shark jump. It's still my least favorite episode.
ETA: "Ken, Nick, Jill, and Ed, I'm sure you're not bad people. You're just good people who wrote something really bad." I'm HOWLING.
DeleteAnd I howled at the part about "A My Name Is Alex." That is a Family Ties episode I simultaneously erased from my memory and had scarred into my brain. It may not be as cheesy as I remember, but jeez! You're right that LAS shouldn't be doing it.
DeleteI don't "hate" this episode that much (but then I'm not a diehard fan either). Louise L is indeed doing what she can with the comedic and dramatic parts, and I can hypothetically imagine a worse episode. But this series rarely got below a C in its first seven seasons (by my grading anyway), and now I find myself grateful for C+s.
I thought of mentioning the "big horn" line but it's not one of those cute little double entendres like the show usually does, but an ugly symbol. You're right, either Laverne is being blamed for her own multiple rapes, or she must be punished for what is the equivalent of a scene in the movie Pirate Radio, where a male character (non-drunkenly) beds approximately a dozen women simultaneously, except we're meant to admire him.
Hah! I'm an early '80's kid and even I was like "why is Alex P. Keaton dramatically yelling in this weird setup?"
DeleteYEP. Welcome to season 8. It only gets a little better from here.
And the show TRIES to course correct it by saying Laverne's not bad for getting drunk and having sex, but jeez. It's not even looking at the situation with modern eyes, it's a terrible thing for Laverne to go through even if it was consensual if she feels so much shame about it, and how am I supposed to laugh at that?
I can't wait to see if anything pulls down an F.
That must've been upsetting to a little kid. I was 19 and was probably more upset about the SORAS of baby brother Andy.
DeleteI don't remember what I thought of this episode at the time, if I even fully understood what it was saying. (I was probably more upset that night over the way Three's Company handled Terri dating a murderer!) But you're right, it's not even a "modern eyes" PC thing. In the context of the episode itself, how are we supposed to think that Laverne feels incredible guilt and laugh at her doing cheesy slapstick?
I gave an F+ to "House Arrest," a third-season M*A*S*H episode, which is actually much worse about rape and consent than anything on Laverne & Shirley. Sample line, Trapper says he's "never been to a rape before" when a false and loud accusation is made against Frank. Cue the laugh track!
Oh yeah - It was a weird, weird time to be a kid. I was Punky Brewster fan at 5 and I don't think anyone got over the refrigerator episode.
DeleteYep. Like they literally have her beg God for forgiveness in between doing bellringer schtick. The show usually combines sentiment and slapstick well but eesh.
Good lord. I don't remember that ep.