"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.

"The Monastery Show"

"The Monastery Show"
 January 4, 1983
D-

Damn.  This episode.

Deep breath, I'll try to unpack this without going into great detail.  (I don't know if I can sit through it again for actual quotes.)  The episode begins with Laverne going to Confession for the first time in fifteen years, which is nonsense.  Are we supposed to believe she hasn't gone since she was 13 or 14?*  Without Frank noticing?  What about the time she was going to have a church wedding to Sal Molina and it was Lenny who hadn't been to Confession in three years?

Wait, forget continuity.  Let us talk about the Queen of Flanderization.  Laverne has run to church from the pier, in a torn outfit, after waking up on an aircraft carrier, which was after getting blackout drunk.  And all the sailors saluted her and said, "Oh, Baby!" as she left.  If this was "consensual," this goes well beyond her kissing 2000 sailors goodbye when Bobby Feeney shipped out.  And if it wasn't consensual, oh God!

No one in the entire episode, which admittedly includes a lot of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, ever suggests that maybe, perhaps Laverne is a victim of gang rape.  Instead it's a question of whether she's a "good girl" who made a mistake or an irredeemable "bad girl."  Laverne herself wants redemption, so, on the priest's advice, she checks into a convent.  (Not a monastery, which would be an even stranger episode.)

The nuns play football (offscreen), some of them roller-skate and sing (the St. Andrews Sisters, ha ha, no, that's really a joke in the script by people I'm not going to let get away with just a parenthetical mention), and they all do pottery.  But they mostly don't talk, except when the plot calls for it.  Laverne, who somewhere took on the trait of klutziness**, makes a shambles of things of course, including when she decides to turn bell-ringing into an excuse to do a Quasimodo imitation (comedy gold, I'm tellin' ya) to the tune of "Frere Jacques," causing the far too obedient nuns to randomly wash, eat, sleep, and make pottery.

I mostly watched with my jaw dropped, but when Sister Margaret (Louise Lasser, post-Mary-Hartman and even post-Alex's-wife-on-Taxi) got a spotlight for her speech to Laverne, and then Laverne got one for her speech to God, I snapped, "What is this, Our Town?"***

Mother Superior Fran Ryan was on a lot of shows, but is probably best known as Arnold the Pig's "mother" on Green Acres.  That series looks like Shakespeare compared to this episode, with its story by Ken Sagoes (first of two), Nick LeRose (who also co-wrote "Death Row: Part 2"), and teleplay by Jill Gordon (middle of three) and Ed Solomon (last of three).  Ken, Nick, Jill, and Ed, I'm sure you're not bad people.  You're just good people who wrote something really bad.  And Brother Garry, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to direct your kid sister's humiliation.


*On the Adam West episode, she was suddenly 28 again, although she must be 29 by now.

**Remember in Season One when Shirley was Klutzy, while Laverne was Gutsy and their future nun friend Anne Marie was Nutsy?

***For the record, I've never seen a production of Our Town, but throwing in this bit of staginess somehow took me even further out of the episode.

"Oh Hear the Angels' Voices"

"Oh Hear the Angels' Voices"
December 21, 1976
C+

The gang puts on a Christmas show at a mental hospital, which is as odd as it sounds.  I might've gone with a B-, but I didn't feel like the acts were that memorable, even the McKean-and-Lander-penned "The Jolliest Fat Man" song.  Note that it's now a month until the Lucille & Carmine trip to Europe.

Garry Marshall makes another uncredited onscreen appearance as a Drummer, while David W. Duclon, who wrote this episode and others, plays Vincent Van Eagle.  And the one and only Howard Hesseman is Dr. Grayson, around the time he had a recurring role as Craig Plager on The Bob Newhart Show and almost two years before he became Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati.

"From Suds to Stardom"

"From Suds to Stardom"
May 11, 1976
B-


This first of I think at least three Shotz Showcase episodes is a little weak, and yet it does feature the debut of the marvelous Lenny & the Squigtones.  ("I'm Lenny."  "And I'm the Squigtones.")  They here sing the McKean-penned "Starcrossed," which is a '50s parody played straight, including apparently one of those "Tell Laura I Love Her" tragic endings of the late '50s and early '60s.  The girls' attempt at Calypso is much less memorable, although Carmine does ask them to put "sex" into it.  (Mekka did the episodes' choreography.)  The tag even offers L, L, S, and S doing distracting backup (especially Squiggy) to Carmine's "Rags to Riches."  But the sum of all these parts isn't as good as I suspect it would've been a year or two later.  Still, as with so much of Season One, there is potential.

Garry Marshall is onscreen as the Drummer, while Ogden Talbot's first of three roles on the show is as Wilbur.

"The Society Party"

Fonzie approves.

The Society Party
January 27, 1976
B-

Creator Garry Marshall (yes, Penny's older brother) directed this episode, while Bob Brunner would write one more episode and here plays the Foreman.  It's a good introduction to the characters and basic premise of the show, if at times a shade awkward and/or forced.  I was worried about the Fonzie cameo, since he comes in late and then appears in the "next week" sequence before the closing credits, but Winkler underplays more than I expected, which was refreshing.  This is a spin-off, but it can stand on its own, even if he saves them from being arrested for stealing dresses that Squiggy got them.

Yes, Lenny & Squiggy are there and pretty much as we know them, down to the "hello" entrance (solo for Squiggy this time).  We learn that they went to school with "the girls" and they hang out at the Pizza Bowl.  (There's as yet no mention of Laverne's father, or for that matter Carmine.)  And, yes, there's a bit of Squigley and Lavenny, although in the former case it's Shirley trying to manipulate Squiggy by acting coyly flirtatious with him, while Laverne is just going through the motions.  That it would always be these couples, usually but not always played for laughs, is clear from the first, with Lenny saying, "I guess I get you, Laverne."  Maybe it's because of height or initials, but you rarely saw a Squiggy & Laverne pairing or a Lenny & Shirley.  It'll be interesting to see what exceptions come along.

Initial shipping fodder

As for the relationship of the girls, G. Marshall as you know also did the Odd Couple series, and Laverne and Shirley are presented as very different, although with things in common.  The song goes, "...We're gonna make our dreams come true," but Shirley is very definitely the dreamer of the two, and I did get the feels when she said, "I dream for you, too, Laverne."  Laverne will have her own dreams later, but she is definitely the tougher and more realistic friend.

I was surprised how much of this episode was both about and not about the brewery.  We first see Laverne & Shirley, and Lenny & Squiggy, there, and the party of the title is being thrown by a relative of the Mr. Shotz who owns the brewery.  Much of the credits also take place in and around the brewery.  So while I visualize the girls at home, their workplace is important, even if we don't see much of them actually working yet.

Their economic class matters, but more in relation to the (not really that rich if you think about it) snobs than as a political thing.  We're told they can't afford to buy new dresses, but I don't think that stayed true.  Other than Laverne's speech telling off the snobs (while in her slip!), it can't be described as a political episode.  As for feminism, I wouldn't call this anti-feminist, but it's not The Mary Tyler Moore Show either.  Shirley wants to meet a "nice gentleman" and we don't yet know what Laverne wants, other than a date with Fonzie.  They are "sisters" in the sense that they bicker and are devoted to each other

How '50s is it?  Well, other than fashion and a reference to The Robe (1953), the main '50sness comes through in the background music, although only Fats Domino survived music rights issues for this copy.  I read before ordering the DVD collection that these are the syndicated copies, but I figured that was better than nothing.  I don't remember any L & S episodes from the time in any great detail-- although the lyrics to "Rubber Tree Plant" of course came back to me-- so I won't be able to tell you how these versions compare to the originals, in the way I still can recite chopped-out lines from Bosom Buddies.  But I'll address this if there seem to be any glaring cuts, like lost plot threads or unexplained callbacks.

Richard Stahl makes his first of three appearances on the show, here as Mr. Marshall Stewart, while his real-life wife Kathryn Ish plays Vivien Stewart.

Re the B-, I chuckled a few times and found that reassuring.  L & S in my memory was at least a funny show, whatever else it was.