"Blansky's Beauties," Episodes Number Nine and Ten

"Nancy Meets Pa Bates" aired on April 16th.  Some things of note:

• In the opening, some of the Beauties flirt with Joey, and then Arnold wishes he was Joey.  So I guess he's widowed or divorced by this point?  ("Arnold's Wedding" had aired on March, 2, 1976.)  Or just a flirt?  I need to know this for my Nanold fic.
• I don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but the dance numbers are terrible.
• "I didn't mean to poke you with my pole."
• I'm not even Southern and I'm offended by the "Arkansas" character.
• Anthony asks Sunshine to help him get dressed.  Is this the creepiest twelve-year-old on '70s sitcoms or have I mercifully blanked out on the rest?  (OK, Little Earl on What's Happening!! had his moments, but he was only nine.  And hitting on a thirteen-year-old.)
• Scott Baio in a leisure suit.  Yes, I'm going to screen-cap this....
• Pa Bates is such a hick he's never heard of slot machines.
• A gambling addiction?  This must be a Very Special Episode.
• Arnold has a Rhonda-like tendency to refer to himself by his first name.
• Charo reference.
• Wow, that is the first thing on this series I actually laughed at, Nancy slapping a man for saying, "Let's shoot craps"!
• They repeat the slap gag a few times.  Nancy and guest Warren Berlinger actually have good comic timing on it.
• "Tomorrow I'm gonna have chitlin foo young on the menu."
• Nancy and Arnold are going hiking in the desert and he promises her a good time.  See, you ship it now, right?
• And Anthony hits on three girls his own age, playing spin the bottle.
• This is Joe Glauberg's only BBeauties script, but he did write ten Happy Days episodes, including the historic My Favorite Orkan.

"To Nancy with Love" aired on April 30th.  Here are my notes:

• Random Laverne cameo in the opening.
• I could've lived my life happily without ever hearing Arnold sing, or call his waitresses "hot to trot."
• Second laugh, Nancy's reaction to the intercom.
• The camel is named Irma.
• Oh, goody, a reprise of the "French Foreign Legion" number.  Except, the camel doesn't actually show up this time.
• This is one of four episodes that Alan Rafkin directed, but the only one on this disc.  And Warren S. Murray is back, after doing the pilot.

"Blansky's Beauties," Episode Number Eight

"Nancy Meets Laverne" aired on April 9th and here's a running commentary (time-marks may be approximate):

00:17 "I'm Laverne DeFazio and tonight I'm one of the Blansky [sic] Beauties."

02:00 Written by Roger Garrett and directed by (once again) Jerry Paris.

02:18 Scott Baio hits on Lynda Goodfriend again, with his character being twelve as a selling point.

04:14 Marvin the Bellhop returns.

04:46 Shirtless Eddie

05:25 Flashback begins with the "Welcome Milwaukee Visitors" tower.

05:31 "1957" appears on the screen!  So Laverne is nineteenish, right?

05:47 Nancy, with a '50s hairstyle but otherwise not de-aged is greeted in her hotel room by Frank DeFazio.

06:00 Frank is smoking a cigar!  Also, he's running the benefit that she's in town for.

06:30 "Incidentally, my daughter, Laverne, is a good dancer, you know."

07:38 Laverne walks in and of course the crowd goes crazy.

08:10 Laverne is starstruck, by Nancy.

08:50 Nancy was a big Broadway star?  How did I miss that earlier?

09:35 Laverne wants an autograph for her "best friend, Shirley Feeney."

10:10 Laverne is imitating Señor Wences.

10:44 "I just got my first part-time job, down at the brewery."  So it was only part-time then?

10:50 They started her off as a barrel-roller, but she hopes to be promoted to either bottle-capper or labeller.  Also, she's taking a stenography class.

11:02 Nancy offers her a job as secretary.

13:00 Penny and Nancy have decent comic chemistry together and I wonder what they could've done with stronger material.

13:43 Laverne offers to drive Nancy to the rehearsal hall, although she admits she drives "not real good."  Canonically, Laverne at this point is afraid to drive and does not yet have her license in '57.

13:46 Laverne admits she can't drive at all.

14:40 "Pfister Convention Center Sons of Sicily Benefit for Underprivileged Children"

14:43 Frank is hosting.

16:16 Nancy's dance partner, a male butcher, can't go on because his shop caught on fire, so it'll have to be Laverne.

16:57 When Laverne reluctantly agrees, she asks if she can sew an L on the costume.

17:27 Fortunately, the costume fits perfectly.

17:33 "Nancy Blansky and my little muffin."

17:44 "Fit as a Fiddle" from Singin' in the Rain

19:32 Nancy invites Laverne to Vegas, which of course would've eliminated Laverne & Shirley.

21:05 Laverne doesn't want to go to Vegas.  She's going to stay in Milwaukee and work in the brewery.

21:34 Laverne plans to get a roommate and move out and then meet a fella and move out to get married and have a family life.  But by this point, more than six months after graduation, Laverne should be living with Shirley already, according to not-yet-aired canon.  And we know it would actually be "...Get fired from the brewery, move with my roommate and our best friends to California.  And then she'll marry a guy completely covered in bandages, get pregnant, and she'll move out."

22:51 Back to the present.

23:14 Joey has to decide if he wants Cochise more than dancing.

23:33 Joey bites his hand!

23:50 Nancy encourages him to take a break from dedication.

24:42 Nancy gets eaten by an inflatable raft.

Maybe a C+, I don't know.  Not bad for this series, but not on the level of Season Two of LAS.

"Blansky's Beauties," Episodes Two Through Five

"Blansky for the Defense" aired on February 19, 1977.  A few things of note:

• We learn a little about Joey and Nancy's backstories, including that Joey hopes to break into show biz, so I guess that runs in the family.
• Joey does some acrobatic flips at the custody hearing, because you know, Garry figured that's what Eddie should do.
• The combined writing talents of LAS's Judy Pioli, Marc Sotkin, and Chris Thompson still can't make me laugh at this series.  Not even with Jerry Paris borrowed from Happy Days for the time being.

"Nancy's Cover-Up" aired on February 26th (except IMDB has it as the fourth episode).  Here's what I can tell you about it:

• In the girls' opening intro, Arnold Takahashi "from Miami Beach, Florida" pops up!  This is about four months after the last episode Mr. T and Tina (nothing to do with the later famous Mr. T).  How does Pat Morita's crossover character fit in?  Well, he's a fry cook at his own coffee shop.  (And apparently also lives in Nancy's apartment building.)  I have no idea what he's been doing in the dozenish years since his last canonical appearance on Happy Days, Season Eleven, in 1983.  (Yes, it hurt my brain to type that.)  He's still trilingual (English, Chinese, and Japanese).
• A sample of the writing on this series, the British Beauty observes, "Such a pity this country outlawed flogging."
• How desperate is this show that they bring on a live camel this early in the run?  Or that they promise that the girls might go topless?
• The word "kinky" is used no less than six times (including in Nancy's line "I want the world to know that Nancy Blansky is kinky"), which seems like a lot for a Garry Marshall show.

"Nancy's Magic Moment" aired on March 12th (except IMDB has it as the third episode).  Here's more than you ever wanted to know about it:

• Well, they're getting their money's worth out of the camel at least, including in the French Foreign Legion number.
• "Ministers applauding a stripper?"  And the surprise there is what?
• They're not very consistent about how many "Beauties" Nancy manages, since it seemed to be ten and then twelve and now it's thirteen.  Or maybe she keeps hiring new ones to represent more of the United States.  (One girl is named "Arkansas," while one is, shudder, "Cochise.")
• No, wait, one of the baker's dozen of coffee orders is for the comic-relief dog, Blackjack.
• They lock the magician's assistant in a closet for one of their nutty schemes, and I'm so exhausted from being outraged by Scott Baio's character's pubescent predatory behavior, I can't manage more than a head-shake at that.
• You might've thought it was physically impossible for 4'11" Nancy Walker to dip 6'5" Herb Edelman for a kiss, but you'd be wrong.
• King Tut reference, didn't they realize that that would date the series in syndication?
• LAS writers Tony DiMarco and David Ketchum wrote this episode.

"Nancy Goes Sheik" aired on March 19th.  Stuff about this one:

• They seem to vary the girls' introductions each episode, which with much sharper writing would've been neat.
• Joey is a lot shyer with women than his cousin Carmine is, or for that matter than his kid brother, "who turns everything into smut."
• They use the word "noogie" on this series a lot.
• Picture this said as suggestively as possible, "I can't wait to meet Sheik Ben-Ali.  I bet I could make his carpet fly."
• Well, there's a crossover I wasn't expecting.  Fred Fox, Jr., who would be Freddie the Bellhop on the "Fabian" episode of LAS that Fall, and Freddie on HD in '79, here plays Marvin the Bellhop for the first of two times.  He'd already written the LAS/HD crossover episode "Excuse Me, May I Cut In" and had recently started his run of twenty-nine HD scripts, all the way into Season Eleven.  Anyway, under the Blansky Law of Relativity, I'm going to assume that Marvin is Freddie's younger cousin.
• Bambi apparently does make the sheik's carpet fly, because he holds her captive so she can become his 33rd wife.  Hilarious, right?
• Nancy gets a "magic lantern" as an apology gift from the sheik after she helps Bambi escape by donning a Farrah wig (don't ask), and Nancy wishes for Rock Hudson.  Oh, Honey, no.
• Arnold Kane didn't write any other Blansky episodes, but he doesn't seem to have settled at any sitcom for long.  But then this is the worst episode so far, like a D or D+ rather than the C- I might give the first four episodes, if I were grading them.

Episodes Six and Seven, "Anthony Falls in Love" (with Bambi) and "Nancy Meets Francie" (Sunshine's mother) did not make it onto this disc, so I can't share any "goodies" from them.  Next up, the coveted "Nancy Meets Laverne"!

"Blansky's Beauties," Episode Number One

I spent too much for a very cheap burn of most of Blansky's Beauties, just to settle my own curiosity and share this very crossover series with my loyal reader(s).  I won't blog in depth until we get to "Nancy Remembers Laverne," but just make notes along the way.

The debut episode, "Blansky's Biking Beauty," aired on February 12, 1977.  Some things of note for LAS fans and other students of Marshallania:

• It sets up the basic premise and characters.  It is also remarkably laugh-free but not as cringey as some short-run '70s sitcoms.
• Eddie Mekka, as Joey DeLuca, is a devoted nephew and assistant to Nancy Blansky.
• He is also friends with a remarkably well-preserved Pinky Tuscadero (Roz Kelly).  Correction, she is a "friend of my cousin Carmine's from Milwaukee."  So did Carmine move back to Milwaukee after Burbank and New York, or does Joey mean that Carmine and Pinky met in Milwaukee?  (Either way, Carmine probably boned her.)
• I knew going into this that sixteen-year-old Scott Baio (playing Joey's twelve-year-old brother Anthony) would hit on the showgirls, but it's still weird to see him ask out a character ("Sunshine") played by Lynda Goodfriend.  Dude, that's your future wife's sister-in-law!  Not cool.
• Garry Marshall directed.