"Death Row: Part 2"

"Death Row: Part 2"
November 23, 1982
D

Well.  This episode.

This is simultaneously worse than Part 1 and capable of more entertainment than its predecessor.  And Lenny and Squiggy are somehow the best and worst aspects of the episode.

In Nick LeRose's second of four L & S stories, Laverne and Sheba are now on Death Row and going to be executed at midnight of the following day.  They aren't allowed last phone calls because "Smith and Jones" already had their phone calls.  Luckily, sort of, Lenny and Squiggy like to visit women's prisons.  (If I recall correctly, this was actually a hobby of theirs in at least one early episode.)

Newman as a Valley Girl in '75

They are very surprised to see her and she's so happy that she tries to hug them through the bars, causing them to accidentally kiss.  (Lenny remarks, "See, I told you she was a good kisser.")  Laverne wants them to deliver a note to her father, and they're reluctant!  Squiggy fears Mr. DeFazio's violent temper and won't touch the note with a ten-foot pole.  Lenny says he's just "a six-foot Pole" so he can deliver it.  (OK, I laughed at that line.)

Still, even when the guys are sitting at Cowboy Bill's, they hesitate, so of course Mr. DeFazio gets understandably violent with Squiggy when he finally finds out.  He goes and gets a judge, who suggests running a match on the fingerprints.  Laverne is released and (Lavmine shippers take note) carried from the car all the way up to her bedroom when she's sleepy.  Why is she sleepy after almost dying?  Who knows?

At least it makes more sense than her joining in the gospel number with the black priest and the black prisoners.  Not that the song is "bad," I mean, it's well sung (except by Laverne and the monstrous Anne Ramsey, who was a nameless Lady in '79 and here plays Killer), but this isn't like the song at Frank & Edna's wedding, which worked surprisingly well.  This musical number actually made me cringe more than Laverne teaching the other inmates the "Schlimiel!  Schlimazel!" song and dance.

Screw Lavenny!  Fourteen-year-old Rebio had a new ship!

The episode ends with Lenny and Squiggy, who had raided Laverne's refrigerator and assumed she was dead even when Carmine carried her in, wondering what her still being alive will do to "the funeral."

No wonder I have much fonder memories of the Square Pegs episode that week, where Johnny's New Wave band, Open 24 Hours, debuted.