"Hi Neighbors," Scene A

The reprint I own for the twelfth episode of the series does not include a cover sheet or a cast list, but it does have this:

Going in clockwise order, this is "Rev.," which must mean either Revised Shooting Script or Revised Draft, I'm guessing the latter, since there are too many differences between this and what would air four weeks later.  The title of this version of the script has plural "Neighbors."  The "1-8" means the pages of Scene A.  Although it is faint, someone (I have no idea whose writing this is) wrote, "Laverne, Shirly, Lenny, Squggy," with those spellings.  They did a big A around the little A, something that was added for all of the scenes.  The word on the lower left is hard to decipher but is clearer on the first page of Scene B, where it is clearly "Atmos," as in "atmosphere."

As on the episode, we start in the Shotz Brewery Break Room," at "lunchtime - day."  The girls were supposed to "enter arguing," but onscreen they're already seated and eating.  The initial dialogue is mostly unchanged, but in the script nothing "bothers" Laverne, rather than the funnier "irks."  And here's how the Hello Entrance originally looked:

LENNY ENTERS.

LENNY

Hi, girls.

LAVERNE PUTS DOWN HER SANDWICH IN DISGUST.

SHIRLEY

Hi, Lenny.

LENNY

Don't talk to me.  I'm in a bad mood.

THE GIRLS LOOK AT EACH OTHER, SHRUG, THEN GO BACK TO EATING.

LENNY (CONT'D)

Ain't you gonna ask me what happened?

LAVERNE

You said not to talk to you.

LENNY

I was just thinking out loud.  That's how teed off I am.  Boy!  So what's new with you girls?

SHIRLEY

Wait a minute.  What happened?

LENNY

Oh, you heard. I couldn't believe it.  I was driving a delivery down to Watertown, making real good time on the pike, when suddenly, just like a monster picture, there's this huge blob of foam and it's coming at me on the highway.  Before I know it, I'm fighting for my life, dodging all these beer kegs.

LAVERNE

You mean somebody spilled their load?

LENNY

That's one way of putting it.  Boy, I'd like to get my hands on the baboon who pulled that stunt.

SQUIGGY WALKS THROUGH THE DOOR.

SQUIGGY

Don't talk to me.

SHIRLEY

Don't tell me you got caught in the beer spill, too.

SQUIGGY

Caught in it, I started it.

LAVERNE

Let's get out of here, Shirl, unless you want Squiggy's blood on your smock.

LENNY

I ain't gonna hit him.  I didn't know it was my best friend who almost killed me.

SHIRLEY

How'd you manage to spill all that beer, Squiggy?

SQUIGGY

It wasn't easy.  First I had to forget to lock the trailer door, then I had to overload the truck and to top things off, I had to drive up a hill.  All that work for nothing.

SQUIGGY GOES OVER TO A MACHINE DEJECTEDLY.

Onscreen, the boys enter together (Lenny saying, "Hi, Laverne," and Squiggy saying hello), and Squiggy is the only cranky one.

The 9000 cantaloupes in the script were reduced to 6000, I guess because that's more plausible.

After Squiggy complains about his mother, there was this:

LAVERNE

Yeah, my father's the same way, he's always butting into my life, always coming over.  He calls me at three A.M. to see if I'm home.

SHIRLEY

Well, sometimes I wish I lived in the same city with my parents.

LENNY

(BREAKING UP) He ain't just living in the same city with his mother, he's living in her apartment.

The girls' lines were omitted, and Lenny onscreen asks how Squiggy's mother can get out of his life if Squiggy won't get out of her apartment.  The girls mocking Squiggy, and Lenny laughing at him again, were added.

In the script, Mrs. Squiggman made her son "serve snacks at her mah-jongg party," which became his stepfather's poker party onscreen.

Also in the script, Squiggy says that getting his own place would "cut into his Chiclets money."  So when Shirley suggests the boys get a place together, Laverne says, "Or share your Chiclets."

Originally, Squiggy was being docked $40 a week for the spilled beer, which became busted melons onscreen.

The scene ends after Lenny sticks his Fudgicle on Laverne's smock, telling her, "Here, hold that."  Here are the last couple pages of the earlier version of the scene, after Squiggy says he'll go live in a storm drain, and he and Lenny exit (minus the Fudgicle):

LAVERNE

You know, Shirl, lunch with those guys is a real change of pace.

SHIRLEY

I didn't invite them.

LAVERNE

But you sure walked into their business.  What are you, Squiggy's den mother?

SHIRLEY

He might have grown up entirely differently if he'd had scouting experience, Laverne.  Besides, I just said what anyone would.

LAVERNE

Shirley, do you remember how we first met Lenny and Squiggy?

SHIRLEY

Not exactly.

LAVERNE

I remember.  Exactly.  It was in the high school cafeteria.  They got into a fight and Squiggy fell in my Salisbury steak.  The first time I saw him he he had gravy dripping from his hair.  I still get nightmares from it.

SHIRLEY

What point are you making?

LAVERNE

I was about to throw him off the table that day.  But you took him in the back and wiped off his jacket, cleaned out his ears, and they've been our companions ever since.  (FIRM) Let them help themselves.

SHIRLEY

I'm sorry.  I'm a naturally helpful person.

THEY GO BACK TO EATING.

LAVERNE

Could you get me the salt?

SHIRLEY

Get it yourself.

Thoughts:

• !!!!!
• Lenny at first acts like he's too mad to talk, but he's actually eager to, um, spill.
• If Michael McKean did not write that outrageous line for Laverne, and Lenny's reply, I will be terribly disappointed.
• I mean, the "monster picture"/ "blob" part is a dead giveaway, as is his later comparing Mrs. Squiggman to Godzilla, which did make it onscreen.
• So then we get the actual Hello Cue for Squiggy, with "baboon," except Squiggy doesn't say hello.  He also doesn't want to be talked to but is eager to vent.
• I furthermore think MMK wrote the very Lenny line, "I ain't gonna hit him.  I didn't know it was my best friend who almost killed me."
• It's kind of sweet that Michael and David (and Harry) wrote a bit about the girls' take on their own parents, although this didn't make the cut.  We would later see Frank actually coming over (disguised as a burglar) in canon on the episode where the girls flashback to moving into their apartment.  As for him calling at three a.m., we'd see this, too, in the episode where Frank and Edna are calling Milwaukee from Burbank, at the beginning of Season Six.
• And, awww, poor Shirley, missing her parents!
• I wish they'd been able to keep at least some of the girls' argument about Shirley getting in the boys' business, because it sets up her meddling later, and it feels in character for both girls.
• Also, the scouting observation is pretty funny coming from someone who got kicked out of the Brownies.  But, yes, Shirley as den mother of her friends is very canonical.  (As is Laverne in that role, in a different form.)
• Except for the girls meeting the boys far later than canon or fanon assumes, I get a kick out of that origin story of the companionship.
• Shirley's rude end line is also oddly in character, at least for those times that Shirley is surprisingly insensitive to Laverne's needs.