Revised Shooting Script of "The Monastery Show," Act One, Scene B

OK, a little thought experiment: Let's say you moved across the country with a half dozen friends and family (your father, your stepmother, your best friend, your best friend's boyfriend, and two other guys you grew up with and are still friends with despite their weirdness).  Your best friend runs off to get married and your stepmother is never around anymore.  (You'll find out later she was having an affair with a jockey she'd eventually elope with.)  Your favorite guy friend is gone a lot, too.  (You'll later find out he's got a secret identity as a member of an English rock band, and you're not sure how that happened.)  Your support system has crumbled after two and a half years in your new home, but, hey, you've still got your father and the two guy friends who are around all the time.  Wouldn't you tell them if you had a traumatic experience?  Or at least come up with a plausible reason you're going to be out of town for two weeks?

Not if you're Laverne DeFazio in the eleventh episode to air in Season Eight.  However, that's not how the episode was written.

Presenting pp. 6-9, Scene B, Int. Cowboy Bill's - Day, with my comments in curly brackets....

CARMINE IS CLEARING OFF TABLES.  SQUIGGY ENTERS.

SQUIGGY

Carmine!  Do my eyes precede me?  {Squiggism alert.}  What are you doing?  The Big Ragoo wasting his talents cleaning tables?  This is terrible.  It's criminal!  You missed a spot.

CARMINE

What do you want Squig?  I'm busy.

SQUIGGY

I've got a proposition for you.  {Surprisingly, this does not lead to innuendo, although I could picture Lander adding it in.}  What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say dead celebrities.  {A period, not a comma.  Either they had a lousy typist or, as with "Devine," no one cared.}

CARMINE

You're disgusting.  {Or, wait, was "proposition" meant to be suggestive?}

SQUIGGY

Correct.  {Carmine is correct that Squiggy is disgusting?  Or correct that Carmine thinks Squiggy thinks Carmine imagines necrophilia with celebrities?  This episode really could've been more tasteless than it became!}  But the second thing that comes to mind is money.  {Sex and money, that is the Squiggman hierarchy of needs I guess.}  Think of it.  Thousands of people from around the world.  Coming to see the great and not so great in their final resting place.  The Squiggman-Ragusa Tour of the Stars' Graves.  {Note the billing.  Also, where is Kosnowski in this plan?  Was it too tasteless for even Lenny?}  

CARMINE

You'd probably charge money to see your own dead grandmother.  {True?}

SQUIGGY

Nah, not big enough.  She's hardly known outside of her own hometown.

CARMINE

I don't think it's a good idea going to see dead people.

SQUIGGY

But that's the beauty of it.  When they're alive, they're always selling houses and moving around.  But once they're dead, they're dead.  They usually stay put.

CARMINE

This is the sickest idea you've had since you tried to sell frozen worms on a stick.

SQUIGGY

Everybody loved the wormsicle.  It was very high in protein.

CARMINE

Forget it, Squig.  I'm not interested in celebrity graves.

SQUIGGY

This may be your only chance to get in on somethin' on the ground floor.  Actually, below the ground floor.

{I have to say, by Season Eight standards, this exchange is almost funny and in character, with Squiggy as tasteless schemer and Carmine as weary straight man.  It might've worked in another episode.  (And I feel like I've heard it elsewhere, so maybe it got recycled.)  It would've been better with Lenny of course, but I understand why he was absent.  And if you're wondering what any of this "comic relief" has to do with Laverne's dilemma, with only a page left in the scene, I don't blame you.  Is this going to be one of those "meanwhile" plot threads, where we go back to Cowboy Bill's to see what wacky hijinks the boys are getting up to while she's "contemplating her sins in peaceful quiet"?}

LAVERNE ENTERS CARRYING A SUITCASE.  {So she went home from the church near the pier, packed a suitcase, presumably changed her clothes, and headed over to her father's restaurant?  And by the way, where is her father while Carmine is clearing off tables?  For that matter, are there any customers around?  What about Mary the waitress?}

LAVERNE

Hi, guys.  Is my Pop around?  {Pretty casual phrasing, although I can picture Penny putting some emotion into it.}

CARMINE

He's not here.  I'm covering for him.  He went down to the ball park -- he heard they were having a sale on day-old hotdogs.  {So they didn't want to pay Phil Foster that week?  Or they just didn't want to deal with Laverne telling her father what happened on the ship and then running off to a convent for two weeks?  Also, geez, I really feel sorry for Eddie M., sometimes, getting a pathetic line like that.  For that matter, does Cowboy Bill's even serve hot dogs?  Maybe Frank would chop them up and put them in chili or something.}

LAVERNE

Well, tell him I stopped in to say good-bye.  {I don't even know how to take this line.  Was Laverne hoping to see her father or is she relieved she won't have to face him for two weeks?  This scene could've taken place at Squiggy's apartment and just not mentioned Laverne's father.}

CARMINE

(SEES SUITCASE) {Wow, nothing gets by you, does it, Ragusa?}  You taking a vacation?  {Or a vocation?  Ha ha, I'm surprised Jill Gordon and Ed Solomon didn't come up with that one!}

LAVERNE

Kind of.  {In the sense of not at all.}  I gotta go spend some time with some nuns at a convent.  {No mention of which convent, or request that either of the guys drive her there, or for that matter, explanation of why she's "gotta."}

SQUIGGY {who hasn't said a word, even "hello," since she came in}

Convent?  Wait a minute.  Are you in the family way without a paddle?  {This is actually a reasonable conclusion to draw, especially since Laverne hasn't told the guys how much time she's gotta spend with nuns.}

CARMINE

(TO SQUIGGY) Hey, watch who you're talking to.  (TO LAVERNE) Are you?  {In character for Carmine I think.}

LAVERNE {I'm going to give my reaction to her line its own section}

No, and you might as well stop guessing 'cause I ain't saying.  But if anybody from the U.S.S. Hackbush calls, I'll be back in two weeks.

AS SHE EXITS, WE:

CUT TO:

{Scene C on p. 10}

....

"No, and...."  No?!  No?  No!  How the hell does she know she isn't pregnant?  It's implied she had sex with multiple guys during a drunken blackout.  Here's the dialogue from pp. 2-3:  "You know one minute I was on the beach toasting the memory of Buddy Holly....Anyway, the next thing I know, I see the sun coming up from the deck of an aircraft carrier....When I woke up and left the ship, all the sailors saluted and they tooted the Big horn."  Is she infertile and just never told us?  Does she have an amazing foolproof form of birth control that works even when she's possibly passed out?  (The priest says, "So you had a little too much to drink and passed out.  It happens.")

So here's my new headcanon: she gave a bunch of blowjobs!  You're welcome!

"You might as well stop guessing."  Sure, Laverne, you show up where you know you have a good chance of running into Carmine and Squiggy, rather than just calling your pop before you leave (maybe Mary could've taken a message), and then you refuse to tell them what's going on, even though you must know that saying you have to spend time in a convent is going to make them curious.  And, Laverne, almost everyone in your friend circle is completely nosy.  If you didn't want people guessing, you could've mentioned it to Rhonda before you caught the bus and hoped she'd be too self-absorbed to pry.  (Although by Season Eight, even Rhonda would've cared.)

" 'Cause I ain't saying."  Really?  You'll go to Confession for the first time in fifteen years [sic], and spill your guts to a priest you've never met, but you won't tell at least Carmine?  Are you afraid Carmine will call you "easy" and/or Squiggy will call you "DeFloozio"?  Or are the writers afraid to face their victim-blaming head on?

"But if anybody from the U.S.S. Hackbush calls...."  {"...I'm pressing charges!"}  Good grief, could they have given the ship a more rapey name than that??  I guess it's supposed to have a Borscht Belt old-school comedy feel to it, but no, just no.  And why would anyone call?  Is she hoping for a "second date"?  Dreading that the sailors will track her down?  And why, in the name of the God she apparently wants to get right with, would she give them the Cowboy Bill's phone number?  The phone number of the restaurant that her overprotective Italian father runs!

"I'll be back in two weeks."  So Carmine and Squiggy can assume she's not leaving town to give birth to a bastard.  And she wants them to tell the sailors to expect her back in two weeks?  So she had a nice time but she feels utter shame about it?  This episode, I can't even.

But anyway, there you go.  A scene that's worth $50 in settling my curiosity, despite all the new questions it raises.  (Spoiler, nothing else in the script comes close to this little beauty, although the tag is utter crap on a dozen levels.)