"A Visit to the Cemetery"

"A Visit to the Cemetery"
November 14, 1978
A-

The best episode of the series so far (maybe ever) was written by Leschin & Duclon and it features just the core cast of seven, and although it is mostly about Laverne, everyone gets something to do.  In fact, Laverne is the last to enter in the first scene and we get a very silly-- and kinky!-- magic act, I think to lull us into expecting farce rather than dramedy, giving more impact when she comes in upset.

The Great Sguiggini and his "lovely" assistant Lenny are practicing a magic trick.  (Why?  I don't know.  Maybe there was going to be another talent show, or maybe they hoped to get rich quick.  Do we really need an excuse?)  Carmine and Shirley are playing along with it, because they seem quite content to be tied together by "the King of Bondage" and are smooching during the patter.  Squiggy throws his bedsheet over them and then Lenny reveals that Squiggy is now literally between Carmine and Shirley, and she's unknowingly kissing Squiggy.  I expected this to be Squiggy's plan all along, but he seems as surprised as anyone, although Shirley is of course revolted when she realizes. 

As Lenny tries to free them, Laverne comes in and then her father calls.  It's very slapsticky with the four friends clustered in the living room, yelling to Laverne and her dad, and we still don't know why Laverne is upset, but it seems to be related to her dad.  She tells Shirley to make the guys leave, and just her yelling, "Get out!" is enough to undo the knots.

Shirley drags Laverne down to the Pizza Bowl to make peace with her father, although we and Shirley still don't know what the issue is.  Edna has corralled Frank as well, and we see that the DeFazios are both stubborn.  They do make up, and we still don't know what the fight was about, and the viewer could assume that it's about Mr. DeFazio pressuring his daughter yet again about marriage.

Then it's revealed that he wants her to make the visit of the title.  Her mother's 50th birthday is coming up (so born in 1910?) and Laverne never goes to the cemetery.  She talks to Shirley about how hard it was growing up without a mother, learning all the "woman stuff," like how to shave her legs.  I vaguely remember this episode having an impact on me at age 10, like when Mindy would later talk about her mother on Mork & Mindy.  If you're a motherless girl (I lost mine when I was 3), you never do really get over it.  (Not that it doesn't affect boys, just not in the same way.)

Shirley tries her best to relate, and we know that she has a difficult relationship with both her parents.  But it takes Lenny to really understand what Laverne is going through.  His abusive mother abandoned him when he was 5 and he says he was angry at her for a long time, and maybe Laverne is angry at her mother, too.  Laverne slaps Lenny for this and then immediately feels remorse.  They talk some more and she says, "You know, Len, for a guy who keeps falling off the roof [mentioned but not seen earlier], you got some pretty good smarts."

He smiles when he sees her come over to kiss him, but winces in advance when she heads towards the cheek she slapped.  She sees this and chooses the other cheek.  He giggles at the affection and she tells him not to.  And then he stumbles out of the apartment, maybe because he's clumsy or maybe because he is always really affected when Laverne kisses him.  As with the "proposal" scene in Season Two, Marshall and McKean play this whole scene just right and it adds an extra layer to their characters and to the relationship. 

Laverne does go to the cemetery, where Frank is talking to "Josephine."  He hugs Laverne and tells her she's beautiful.  Then he gives her some privacy and she talks to her mother, with a cute interruption from Shirley, to provide comic relief and show how supportive Shirley is.  Laverne even makes the silly face that used to amuse her mother.

And in the tag, everyone abandons Squiggy in a trunk for free beer at the Pizza Bowl, because this is still a goofy sitcom.

"The Bully Show"

"The Bully Show"
October 31, 1978
B-

Chris Thompson wrote this episode that aired on Halloween and deals with an all too real scare: the threat of rape, although it's addressed in the usual cartoon setting of this show, rather than the realism of the attempted rape of Edith Bunker on All in the Family the previous Fall.  Compared to the way this topic was handled in Season One, there is definite progress, not that I'm completely happy with the episode, but it is better than, say, the way it would've gone on Three's Company.

Shirley goes out of town over night to see her unspecified brother graduate from "heavy equipment school."  At first, the worst thing that Laverne thinks she has to deal with is the accidental Manxing of Boo Boo Kitty when Carmine sits on the stuffed animal.  (If I remember anything about this episode from the time it's Carmine saying he "got the cat fixed.")

Unfortunately, Lenny and Squiggy are bullied into setting up their new foreman, Biff (Larry Hankin, who previously was the Tall Dancer on the taxi-dancing episode), with Laverne, who they've just boasted is "loose as a moose" and crazy about one or both of them.  He threatens to fire and beat them up if they don't get him a date with her.  Then they tell her that Biff will be taking her to a Man of the Year banquet.  (This is one of the episodes where Terry Buttafuco is referred to but not seen, here as their supposed next choice for Biff.)  Laverne decides she might as well go out with Biff.

He tells her she might see a "big trophy" by the end of the night and he soon makes his intentions clear.  Although Laverne has gone out with guys who've come on strong, we see that this is not the same thing, especially when he won't let her go out the door and he insists she take off her dress.  He is not asking, he is telling, and then demanding.  And Laverne later gives a little speech about how she chooses the "jerks" she'll be with.  It's played for laughs but it is also a feminist statement of consent, from a character who is not 100% pure (although probably still at least technically a virgin at this point).  She does her best to defend herself, through her intelligence and strength.  But when he plays on her sympathy, she falls for it, and he actually is on top of her on the couch when Lenny and Squiggy come in.

And that's where this episode is, if not problematic, at least not fully evolved.  And, yes, I am looking at this from a 21st-century perspective, as well as a literal child of the '70s and someone who knows quite a bit about the late '50s/ early '60s.  Lenny and Squiggy got Laverne into this mess and it is only Lenny's guilt, and fear of being seen as a coward, that bring them to the rescue just in the nick of time.  (At that, it takes all three of them to beat up Biff as an awkward team.)  Laverne is so grateful that she kisses, Squiggy?!  And then she finds out that the boys knew about Biff and she tells them that a friend should be more important than a job, "especially our jobs."

She does forgive Lenny and Squiggy, and they insist she throw them out to show that she still likes them.  And it's sweet, in a weird way, but let's not forget that even if the boys hadn't set up the date, they were spreading rumors about her in the break room at work, and they should know better about this, considering Season One's "Once Upon a Rumor."

In the tag, Laverne tells Shirley it was dull around there while she was gone, and Shirley finds out about Boo Boo Kitty's injury and repair.

"Steppin' Out"

Rosie seems to have a
different hairstyle in every
 episode, but then she
 is comparatively rich.

"Steppin' Out"
February 8, 1977
C

This Deborah Leschin story feels like filler.  The girls try to get ready for a big date but things keep going wrong, including a fire breaking out in the neighborhood.  Not that they're terribly concerned about their neighbor, but the water being shut off in their building does affect their grooming.

Not shipping notes per se, but both Lenny and Squiggy leer at Laverne when they see her in her slip, and Squiggy asks if Shirley is "naked, too."  Oh, and Carmine is still seeing "that divorcy" Lucille.  (I'm assuming they never went to Europe, or that's just not going to be mentioned again.)

"It's the Water"

"It's the Water"
April 6, 1976
C+

Greg Strangis's only L & S script is uneven and handles the issue of sexual harassment clumsily, although that of course was typical of the time.  (Three's Company would be worse, repeatedly.)  Shirley gets an "executive position" as a beer-taster, which makes Laverne jealous and causes the guys (including Carmine) to tease Shirley about slumming.  It turns out that the head of the tasting department, Wolfgang Gessler, is interested in more than Shirley's "taste buds," and Lenny and Squiggy are amused at the idea of Gessler planning to get her drunk and "have his way with her."  Carmine is more protective of course.  (I'm guessing the episodes again aired out of order, because Shirley has Lenny and Squiggy go get Carmine from "the gym," although in the previous episode he had quit the gym to work in a dance studio.)

Other than possibly being pushed down the stairs by Carmine, there are no consequences for Gessler.  It's the '50s and there's no reporting him to HR or anything.  In fact, Shirley forgives him when he sends flowers and an apologetic note.  She doesn't even think other women at the brewery should be warned, because some of them might want to have sex with Gessler in order to keep the job, although it's not phrased this way of course.  (The series, thus far anyway, doesn't really say "sex" or words to that effect.  A lot is implied, which I'm sure sailed right over my ponytailed eight-year-old head.)

Other than the Shirmine of Carmine's protectiveness, which again, could be big-brotherly, the main shipping note is that Lenny invites Laverne and the absent Shirley to go to the Tunnel of Love with him and Squiggy.  Later Laverne says defending Shirley "beats being in a swan with Lenny and Squiggy," which Shirley doesn't even blink at.  In any case, I'm sure Lenny was thinking of himself paired off with Laverne, Squiggy with Shirley, but he takes it well when Laverne says she isn't "that hard up."

Note that the timing of the "hello" entrance is off, although the audience does applaud when Squiggy & Lenny enter.  I recalled these entrances as having brilliant timing, but this may be a case where it's not as good before it's established shtick.

Dennis Klein would direct three more episodes.