"That's Entertainment"

"That's Entertainment"
March 9, 1982
B

This episode is definitely less notable for the only L & S script by either Etan McElroy or Larry Strawther than for the musical performances and of course shipping fodder up the wazoo.

We start with the unusual spectacle of Carmine singing "It's Not Unusual," very Vegasly, as sort of an audition for Frank, in the girls' apartment, while they're working late.  This is odd because, one, Frank, looks visibly uncomfortable; two, they could've held the audition at Cowboy Bill's; three, the audition is for the "second anniversary" of Frank managing Cowboy Bill's, which muddies an already sticky tar-pit of a timeline; and four, Carmine has no reason to audition when he used to sing regularly at the Pizza Bowl. However, it does prepare us for more bizarre even by early '80s standards "entertainment" that is, in spite of itself, entertaining.  (OK, there is one genuinely marvelous scene, in or out of context, but I'll get to that.)

Frank and Carmine argue about new and old entertainment for most of the rest of the episode, a lame frame, but I'll take it in the absence of a Shotz Talent Show or any more plausible device.  It does bring up the question of whose fantasy sequences these are: Frank's? Carmine's? Both?  Neither?  In some cases we can guess, in some it doesn't matter, and in others, well, I'm going to go with the collective consciousness of the L & S fandom.

Season Seven has mostly been a blur in checking it against my memories of the time, but I do kinda sorta remember Rhonda's version(s) of "Blue Moon."*  Frank says "Something like," as the lead-in, but the "doot doot doo" version is presumably Carmine's part of the fantasy.

Frank is the one to rave over the Dr. Kronkite comedy routine, which is gender-flipped with Shirley as the leering doctor and Carmine as her sex-object nurse.  So Frank ships Shirmine, and in a somewhat smutty way?  Note that this is not played as sexual harassment, since when the doctor wants to take the patient's blood pressure, Carmine tells her to take anything she wants, and it's clear he's a willing participant throughout, even when she has him bend over, twice.

I suppose that I should mention that there's an impatient customer that Carmine has to wait on.  I'm not clear why he's working as a waiter, but like I said, the frame is weak.

The next sequence I guess belongs to Mr. DeFazio, too, since he raves about Eleanor Powell and then his daughter shows off her dancing skills with Carmine.  If dancing is symbolic of sex and/or love, then Mr. DeFazio does not ship Carverne.  Laverne and Carmine dance parallel more than together in the sense of touch-dancing, and there's a set of shots that, if I recall correctly, would pop up in the next year's opening credits, which at the time I called Laverne & Laverne (which we'll get to).  I'm not saying Marshall & Mekka have no chemistry together, but I mean it seems to be more about the joy of dancing with another highly skilled dancer than about flirting, especially after the doctor sketch.

The dance is the first sequence that really clicks and then it's followed by one of my favorite Lenny & Squiggy numbers, although an atypical one for them.  To begin with, "Call the Police" is a cover song, and they are not playing as Lenny & the Squigtones (if such a band still exists after the California move).  Not only that, but they are actually outshone by their (very early-1980s-looking) back-up band, especially on that exquisite opening, where the drums, sax, bass, and piano tease the listener, and the boys seem perfectly happy to be "taken home" and made to "feel good" by their band.  They get more and more into the song, going from professorial instruction** to sheer release, only to be arrested at the end, with Squiggy closing out with "Call the police?"

Pics are below, but this is still really easy to find on Youtube if you don't own the episode.  (I've had days where I just play it a half dozen times in a row.)

The last number is a six-and-a-half-minute opera, or I guess operetta.  By any objective standard, it's pretty bad, and even at fourteen I probably cringed.  But as a shipping smorgasbord, it's hard to beat.  The "plot," which I guess could be a collaboration of opera-hating Frank and opera-singing Carmine, is that sisters Mimi and Brunhilda will be evicted if they don't either come up with the rent or agree to marry their evil landlord, the Baron Squigliacci, and his not as evil assistant, Leonard Feather.  You know how the pairings go by now, and you probably know that Mimi (Shirley) believes, "We surely know that if we married you, the day would come when we would rue it."  This is similar to Laverne's dream in "2001: A Comedy Odyssey," but Laverne (at least in whoever's fantasy this is) has had enough of package deals.  A little wooing from Mr. Feather, and Brunhilda tells Mimi to sing for herself. 

Then Carmine shows up as a clown, Mimi's "beloved Carmine," and the fencing champion of France.  He fights and kills Squigliacci, and Leonard says, "I never cared much for him anyway." The surviving six pair off-- including Frank & Rhonda!-- and they go into the finale.  One censor-bait line, when they sing of having to go, is "We have to pull out, quit, retire, withdraw."  (Opera interruptus?)  And Squigliacci comes back from the dead.

Now, as much as I can remember after almost 38 years, I think I knew that there was this weird opera in the episode, but I couldn't catch the lines at the time (unfortunately lip-synched by the cast, although they do their own dialogue, including Laverne's not-even-trying-not-to-sound-Brooklyn "Squigliacci's dead").  Even today I had to turn on the subtitles to get them.  But this is an opera to watch more than to listen to, so here you go, Pic Spam City!

Taking the ships in reverse order of interest:

• Um, Fronda?  Not gonna happen, even after Edna officially leaves him.  Besides the age difference (and Frank is a very old 56), they have nothing in common and normally hardly interact.  If this is Frank's fantasy, then he wants to cheat on Edna, and if it's Carmine's fantasy, I don't know where he's going with this.
• Squiggy appears to be the last Squigley shipper standing, with Lenny here almost as eager as Laverne to break out of the package deal.
• If this is Carmine's fantasy, then of course the forces of good and Shirmine must defeat the wicked Squigliacci, even if the "dead man" manages to hold hands with the prospective bride.  Carmine and Shirley smooch, but they got more action (and more focus) in the doctor sketch.
• It is not just shipper's bias that makes Lavenny reign supreme, in a season with sadly too many episodes that can't even put Lenny and Laverne in the same room.  Only McKean and Marshall could wear ridiculous costumes and somehow come across as not only "adorable and sweet," but, well, pretty sexy, like they can't wait to take advantage of each other.  (Note that in the opening, Brunhilda comes home from a date where her boyfriend "sat on her horn," more of that reverse Freudianism that we get sometimes with Laverne.)  Leonard seems to blow in her ear, and soon they progress to nose-rubs.  Then his boss dies and, instead of mourning, he caresses her face, a little like on "I Do, I Do."  They embrace and kiss for at least twenty seconds, and unlike the Mimi/Carmine (Carmimi ship?) kiss over the "corpse," we can see their faces and his hands.  They are also more scantily clad than anyone else onstage, which includes Rhonda for a change.  After their kiss, with her trying to spit out one of his feathers, they sing of their future.

BRUNHILDA: I know that we will have a happy life.
LEONARD: You'll make a very fine and feathered wife.
BOTH: We'll have a child or two or three or four.  And when we've had our fourth, we'll try for more.

Sounds like she's going to be covered with a lot of feathers.

And the episode ends with Frank declaring that "old food" is better than new, because this is Season Seven and the normal rules don't apply.


*I just checked, and the Three's Company episode that night, "Critic's Choice," is hardly one of my favorites, even for that season, while I seem to have blessedly blocked out most of the ninth season of Happy Days, to the point that an episode from two weeks earlier, "Hello, Flip," in which "Roger's irresponsible, younger brother comes to town to straighten out his life," is a complete blank to me.  (I can tell you that Roger was played by Ted "You know your show is on its last legs when you hire this guy" McGinley, so if they were already throwing in his brother, Season Nine must've been truly pathetic.)  I digress, but so does this episode.

**We're informed that Nat King Cole released the song in October of 1941, when "little Chuck Berry" was only 10 years old, and thirteen years before the invention of rock & roll.  Well, an online discography has the song on a December 1940 NKC album, although I guess it could've been a single the next year.  Oh, and Chuck Berry was a not so little 15 in 1941.  As for the invention of rock & roll, yeah, I guess if you want to say "Sh Boom" or whatever kicked things off, but isn't '55 or even '56 the more standard launch into the mainstream?  Is this Carmine's error or Lenny & Squiggy's?  And, OK, these are hardly the biggest timeline mistakes in this series.  Perhaps I shouldn't care about "such distinguishments."

"It Only Hurts When I Breathe"

"It Only Hurts When I Breathe"
October 27, 1981
B

OK, the writing improved.  In fact, Al Aidekman's script turns out to be both funny and touching.

The girls are eating breakfast together, at 10 a.m. we later learn, so presumably it's the weekend.  (They still at work at Bardwell's by the way.)  They bicker good-naturedly but things escalate when they get an invitation to their tenth-year high school reunion on July 15th*.  Shirley, who wanted to hold a reunion a week after they graduated, and who did hold three reunions in quick succession (as we learned in Season One), is not so sure about going to this one.  It seems to be tied up with both girls feeling like they're showing their age.  (Marshall was 37 at the time this was shot, Williams probably recently turned 34, while their characters are 28 or nearly.)

And they start punching each other, harmlessly at first, until Shirley coldcocks Laverne.  Since she's always shown as the weaker, more peaceful one, this comes as a shock to everyone, although a pre-series Shirley did accidentally punch out Richie Cunningham on their first date.  Laverne has to get her jaw wired and it's a tribute to Marshall's comedic skills that she can convey Laverne's various moods without being able to speak for much of the episode.

Williams rises to the challenge of showing Shirley's guilt, irritation, and fear.  It turns out she's mostly worried that she'll seem like a failure at the reunion.  When Laverne is able to speak, she says she's proud of both of them.  (This resembles a bit the movie Romy & Michele's High School Reunion [1997].)

Before the fight, Laverne and Shirley danced together, and in the end they sing together, "High Hopes" of course.  And Laverne's reference to Shirley's "balloon" of optimism also takes us back to the first season or two.  The episode is very much about the girls' friendship and history, with Carmine, Lenny, Squiggy, and even Rhonda just popping in and out of the apartment to comment on things.  (The boys guess that Laverne broke her own jaw.)  If Season Seven has more episodes like this, I'm actually looking forward to the rest.


*The actual reunion episode is much later in the season, so all we know is that it is now between January and June of 1966.

"Sing, Sing, Sing"

Throwing a bone to the Shirmine shippers

"Sing, Sing, Sing"
May 19, 1981
B

Ria Nepus and Deborah Raznick co-wrote this episode in which the Lavenny not only interrupts the main plot and the subplot but subverts them and then circles back.  And somehow Squiggy ends up contributing some of my favorite moments.

We start out with Laverne enviously watching and listening to Carmine and Shirley sing a lovely duet at Cowboy Bill's.  (Interestingly, this is Cindy W's only directing credit ever, quite a contrast to Penny M.  Shirley is hardly in the episode and so we never find out what she thinks of Laverne's singing.)  Laverne wants to move people with her singing, and she is up next, with that acoustic guitar she's been practicing with all season.  Her father introduces her and mentions that she'd make "a wonderful wife," or "a fun date," apparently still hoping to marry her off but sort of having given up on it by this point.  Unfortunately, Laverne's very offkey rendition of a "pretty" song clears the room and even causes the police to call about the disturbance.

The next scene is set in the girls' living room, where an embarrassed Laverne tells Lenny what happened.  On the surface, this is what happens: he encourages her to not give up singing.  But, well, to put it mildly, that's not what plays out on the screen.

Breaking this down a little more, he gives her a pep talk and gently teases that she should admit she wants to be a singer.  He gets more playful with her, until he bounces the couch.  She gives in to the giddiness until she looks a little seasick, so she stands up and says she wants to be a singer, not a trampoline act.  He says this is wonderful and he gives her a big hug, but he wishes his crush, Sabrina Bouche*, were there, "preferably in the nude."  This distracts him enough to almost choke Laverne, although he either realizes this or McKean and Marshall break character enough right before the fade that we get that final still above.

How much of this was in the original script, or came out in Williams's direction (and gosh knows, she would've been witness to the majority of six years of Lavenny), we'll probably never know, but I think it is fair to say that Marshall and McKean play up their chemistry in a scene that doesn't in fact require it.  (And, yes, that's not a criticism.)  Whether it's smiles and looks, or touches ranging from the way she drapes her hand over his knee to the way he embraces her on and off the couch, they invest so much affection, attraction, and sheer joy into the scene that I honestly can't think of anything comparable in the previous six years.  If this were the only Lavenny scene, well, it would be like the ones in "High Priced Dates" and "Fifth Anniversary," a random treat for shippers.  But of course, there's more.

But first, let's talk about Carmine.  We learned in the previous scene that he's been giving Shirley voice lessons, and Lenny suggests Laverne have him teach her.  So the next scene is Carmine trying to give Laverne voice lessons.  You might therefore think the scene is going to be about Carmine and Laverne, but, no, Lenny comes in and pokes Laverne with "the patented singing finger stick," a red foam hand on a stick, like from a sporting event or something.  She thanks him for "showing her his finger" but wants to get back to rehearsal.  She sings a bit of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and Carmine stands there with a stunned look on his face.

Lenny approaches Laverne with the finger so she can hit certain notes, but then he drops the stick and covers his eyes.  Laverne takes this personally, but Lenny claims that her singing a Platters song reminds him of Sabrina, who's a waitress.  Now, I have to point out, either something dropped out in an earlier draft of the script, or it's bad editing (although I think the episode is complete and I don't remember the version on YouTube being any clearer), but at this point in the episode, about eight minutes in, we don't actually know anything about Sabrina.  If she's in the first scene, I didn't notice her, and anyway Lenny wasn't there.  Maybe there's a dropped line at the beginning of the second scene, where he was supposed to say something like, "How was Hoot Night?  Was Sabrina Bouche there?"  It's typical of Season Six's sloppiness, but annoying under the circumstances, because how are we supposed to care (to the extent we could) about Lenny's crush, if the writers hardly do?

Seeing how upset Lenny is, Laverne sends Carmine across the room because she's "got a basketcase on my hands."  Carmine says he knows the feeling and leaves the frame, although not the apartment.  So this next Lavenny sequence has a witness, and a subtext that is, if possible, even more surprising than the previous Lavenny sequence.  On the surface, it's now Laverne's turn to cheer Lenny up, and he wants to sing a specific duet with her, but that's not what she wants to sing, and anyway he's trying to impress another girl, so she asks why he would want to sing with her.

Here's the story told in picspam:

I mean, seriously, if you didn't know the context, and particularly if you were looking at McKean's expressive eyes, would you think that she was just rejecting an offer to sing together?  And where did this mysterious song "we used to do" come from?  Is it, like other McKean-written songs, written by Lenny in-universe?  How long ago did they sing it and under what circumstances?  She clearly remembers it well enough to sing a bit here, and her entire part later.  I'll get back to this, but it does make the whole thing about Sabrina feel even more like she's just a prop and not an actual goal.

Lenny tells Laverne she sounds "so good" in that song, but Laverne wants to do a love ballad.  Is Lenny just disappointed because he knows Laverne can't sing a love ballad well, or does he regret not getting to do something fun with his friend?  Or is there something more going on?  And what is Carmine doing all this time?  He's picking out an instrumental for Laverne, and presumably ignoring the weird sexual tension on the other side of the room.

The entire rest of the episode takes place at Cowboy Bill's on Hoot Night.  Frank warms up the crowd with jokes that everyone knows.  Lenny and Laverne sit on the payment counter together and McKean and Marshall look like they're in the middle of a blooper when they react to Laverne's father's embarrassment.

Edna and her "dear friend" Rhonda go up and perform "Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Bees," Edna using her ukelele again and Rhonda surprisingly playing trumpet.  It's a cute little number, and I guess in a way this episode comes closest to the Shotz Talent Shows of old, although Squiggy's musical performances are unrehearsed (but I'll get to that).

Laverne encourages Lenny to go talk to Sabrina, who's a pretty brunette.  He's still shy with girls sometimes, and he's unable to speak, so Sabrina walks away.  Laverne comforts him.  Carmine comes in and asks if Laverne's gone on yet.  She says she has to warm up first, so Lenny gives her the finger (no, really) for "those hard to reach places" (seriously).  And this is how that all plays out:

Both Lenny and Carmine are afraid to tell Laverne how bad she is, so it's Squiggy to the "rescue."  As a talent agent, he's used to hurting performers' feelings.  (Presumably, this is not a skill set Lenny has, or at least not when it comes to Laverne.)  Carmine tells him, "Be gentle, Squiggles," which I guess is pretty shippy out of context.

In a less visually interesting episode, I would be doing cartwheels over the return of Beehive Girl.

Squiggy goes into the ladies' room because what he has to tell Laverne "knows no boundaries of sex or gender."  He bluntly tells her her singing stinks and even laughs like a villain when she says that Lenny and Carmine, who know more about music than Squiggy does, think she's real good.  He says they were too cowardly to tell her the truth.  "They didn't even have the common decency to come in here and hurt your feelings."  And in a weird sort of way, he's right.  I mean, Lenny and/or Carmine should've said something back in the rehearsal scene, rather than wait until Hoot Night, but it's up to Squiggy to, well, here's what the IMDB summary says: "Carmine and Shirley perform a beautiful duet at Cowboy Bill's.  Laverne too, wants to sing as pretty a song as they did.  Carmine gives her voice lessons and Lenny also tries to help, but it just may be Squiggy has the real answer for her."

One of Squiggy's rare apologies.  Notice that the body language between
Marshall and Lander is nothing like that between Marshall and McKean

When she cries in a stall, he carries her out like "a hefty motherless child" and does his best to make amends, while still not taking back what he said about her singing.  He says she shouldn't sing love songs because she doesn't have a lovely voice.  She should instead sing novelty numbers because she has a novelty voice.  He demonstrates by singing "Chantilly Lace" without sounding the slightest bit like the Big Bopper, shifting into spoken falsetto when someone knocks on the door.  (It took me three plays before I realized that "bo-deece" was his pronunciation of "bodice.")  He encourages Laverne to go out there and entertain "tens of people."  He leaves Laverne thinking things over and, well, fingering Lenny's finger.  (I'm not making this up, I swear.)

Squiggy goes back out to the dining area and explains to Mr. DeFazio that Laverne can't go on because she caught a hairball in her throat.  So Frank introduces Lenny, "the Polish Bobby Vinton," as the next act.  Lenny dedicates "this number and all preceding numbers" to a waitress who "slings the hash of his heart."

Sabrina is oblivious, but Squiggy and Beehive Girl are touched by Lenny's romantic dedication.

Lenny plays an instrumental on his guitar, backed up by the house band, and Sabrina ignores him, until Laverne pokes her with the Finger and says, "Sit down and watch him.  He's pickin' his heart out for you."

After Sabrina reluctantly sits, Laverne starts to pack up her own guitar, but Lenny tells the band to "do the other one."  Now, wait a minute, did Lenny tell the house band he might sing with Laverne?  Was he still hoping she'd say yes to the duet?  And it definitely is a duet, which would not make any sense without her part.  Has the band had a chance to rehearse or are they just being thrown into this?  Lenny says there's a song he'd really much rather do than the instrumental, although he does tell Sabrina, "Excuse me, My Darling, hold that thought."

He calls over "the lady trying to slip out the back way," and Squiggy comes over to take Laverne's guitar.  Was he in on this, and to what degree?  Lenny starts singing "Standin' on the corner," encouraging Laverne to jump in.  She reluctantly comes onstage and they sing together, so he can win over Sabrina and so Laverne can get her confidence back.  Or at least that's what's going on on the surface.

I highly recommend you watch the performance on YouTube if you don't have access to the full episode, because in addition to all the Lavenny, it's actually a really good song that stayed with me when I was thirteen and for years after.  (Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kz-3bw5Rq0.)  But, yes, I have to picspam the heck out of it because there's so much going on here with body language, as Lenny nudges Laverne and gets her to open herself as a performer until she's letting herself go as much as he is.  If Lenny's pep talk and the "trampolining" sequence looked like foreplay and consummation, it's got nothing on this:

All this teasing, flirty energy is unleashed on a song about a man with a wolfish (maybe Lone-Wolfish) "look" and the savvy girl who knows her way around a boy like him.  Laverne's tough-cookie-ness comes into play, as does play itself-- check out Penny's very New-Yorky spoken "You wanna meet my mother?"-- while Lenny carefully chases after her, following her around the stage at a distance and singing double entendres with the deeper, less nasal voice that McKean used for Lenny's singing voice as opposed to speaking.  And there's so much joy and, yes, romance here, far more than in the ballad that Carmine and Shirley open the episode with.  (And no offense to Shirmine.)

So Laverne and Lenny end their performance with a big kiss on the lips, as you would do with a platonic friend, right?  They smile and talk afterwards, and then Sabrina comes over for an autograph, and Lenny looks, well, see for yourself.  And Laverne makes a graceful exit to get congratulations from her other friends.

I expect a similar facial expression if I ever fangirl Michael McKean when he's 80 and I'm 60.

Where else can an episode like this go for a tag but into a romantic duet that morphs from Shirley & Carmine to Squiggy & Frank?

Squank?  Friggy?  The mind reels!

I'll discuss this episode more in the context of Season Six, and in the series as a whole, on my next entry, since this is the penultimate episode of the season, but for now I will just say that this episode both builds on what came before and goes places that I don't know if Nepus & Raznick intended.  And we'd never see or probably hear of Sabrina again.


*The actress who plays this McGuffin of a role is uncredited and has no lines.  Interestingly, the character's name means "boundary mouth."