"How's Your Sister?", Scene A

This is the Shooting Script from December 13, 1982, so there won't be any major changes, but there are some surprising lines and edits.  We begin at Cowboy Bill's, in the "late afternoon":

THERE IS A CUSTOMER AT A TABLE.  THERE ARE PLACEMATS ON THE TABLE.  FRANK COMES OVER.

FRANK

No really, those aren't gravy stains.  It's a Cowboy Bill's puzzle.  Connect the dots.  Here's a pencil.

FRANK LEAVES THE TABLE AND HEADS TO THE REGISTER AS CARMINE ENTERS.

That was cut out and the scene begins with Frank greeting Carmine as "Ben Casey."  After Carmine's explanation that he's dressed like a doctor to deliver a singing telegram, there was more:

CARMINE

...Only it wasn't a telegram, it's what we call an "Obit-Gram."  Listen:  (SINGS TO THE TUNE OF "ANYTHING GOES")

"I'M SORRY THAT YOUR UNCLE BIT IT,

BUT NOBODY THINKS YOU DID IT.

AND HEAVEN KNOWS -- EVERYONE GOES."

FRANK

Carmine, don't you ever get tired of being a jerk?

CARMINE

Hey, Potsie Webber [sic] was a jerk -- I'm a working man.

FRANK

A working man dressed like a jerk.

Then Carmine starts talking about quitting this job if he could get a couple hundred bucks, and Frank has the line about giving the cook a "second opinion" on going home early.

Squiggy was supposed to be "nattily dressed" when he enters.  He did not, as onscreen Squiggy does, sing a bit of "The World Owes Me a Living," which I feel like came up in another script.  He also didn't comment to "Doris" about her daughter.

We lost Squiggy's line, "What's wrong?  Don't answer -- I see you're wearing green.  Did a close frog die?"  On the other hand, Squiggy doesn't in the script originally offer $2000 rather than $200, as he does onscreen.  And this exchange was dropped:

CARMINE

Where would you get two hundred dollars?

SQUIGGY

Simple.  My moth came in.

CARMINE

What're you -- staging illegal moth fights again?

SQUIGGY

I sold my moth collection.  Seems I've been sitting on a rare Mothra Japithanus all these years.

THE PHONE RINGS AND FRANK ENTERS FROM THE KITCHEN TO ANSWER IT.

CARMINE

Alright, alright, I don't care about your bugs....

The next couple pages made it in, but in the script it was Squiggy rather than Squendelyn who once stayed in an animal shelter.  "Mary" is referred to by name in a stage direction by the way.  I wish they'd kept Squiggy saying, "Laverne, let's talk Turkish," although I feel like that might've popped up onscreen in another episode.  And then this part was left out:

LAVERNE

They've [that is, the aerospace plant] been forcing us to work double shifts ever since our first-stage test rocket landed in the cafeteria.

SQUIGGY

What do you think they got busboys for, Laverne....

Squiggy's explanation of the reason for Squen's visit got moved in a modified form to the next scene, but in this version he tells Laverne, "Listen to my tale of woe.  Squen's intended, Arnie, left her for the shortstop on a women's softball team.  He said he liked the way she stayed down on those one hoppers."

Squiggy begs much more onscreen than in the script, where he just tells Laverne, "You owe, you owe, you owe," and she gives in.  His final line was cut:  "And don't you cheapen the memory of Mr. Scrubby.  He was destined for greatness.  Who knew one flush would send his career down the toilet?"

Observations:

• These scripts are really determined to convince us that the food and service at Cowboy Bill's are terrible.  
• Not that the telegram songs Carmine performs on the filmed episodes are anything great, but it's times like this I feel sorry for Eddie Mekka.  (And there are a lot of "poor Eddie" moments ahead of course.)
• But not as sorry as I feel for Anson Williams.  And, yeah, Potsie was a jerk at times, but what would Carmine specifically have against him?
• I feel like the "close frog" line would be hard for even Lander to sell.
• On the other hand, I can picture him ranting at screenwriter Roger Garrett, "Squiggy would never sell his moth collection!"  (Garrett wrote "Life Is the Tar Pits" and "Helmut Weekend" as well, so he usually has a better grasp of Squiggy's character.)
• "Mothra Japithanus" works on the following levels:
• Mothra as Godzilla's opponent
• A possible ethnic slur (as in "Jap")
• A really smutty joke about Squiggy sitting on his Japithanus 
• I like it better that it was Squiggy in the animal shelter, since there are enough jokes about how ugly Squen is already.
• The thing about the rocket landing in the cafeteria, and Squiggy's reply isn't funny, but it's better than some of the lines that were kept in later scenes.
• I like Squiggy explaining Squendelyn's situation to Laverne, although I'd always assumed that Arnie was her husband (he calls Arnie his sister's "old man" when telling Carmine) rather than her intended.
• I had to look up "one hopper" as a baseball term, and I'm still not sure if there's a suggestive meaning that I'm missing.  Something about going down maybe?
• That closing line is not much loss.