"Playing Hooky"

"Playing Hooky"

January 11, 1977

C+

The title turns out to be a pun in this Barry Rubinowitz story, as the girls call in sick to work but end up being mistaken for hookers by two vice cops.  Maybe Shirley would've been better off accepting Squiggy's offer to spend the day with him, watching TV and frying fish.  And it turns out that Laverne's father is using their apartment during the daytime as his love nest.  (I think it's safe to say that he and Edna are not an item yet.)

Archie Hahn, who was on what feels like half of the '70s sitcoms and would be one of the worst players on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, plays Bob here and would later be a nameless Worker.

"Anniversary Show"

Oh no, a clip show!

"Anniversary Show"
January 10, 1977
C+

Ah, yes, a dreaded clip show.  This isn't bad as such shows go, although obviously they're harder to sit through on DVD.  The screen during the opening credits says "Laverne & Shirley Birthday Show," but IMDB says "Anniversary Show,"* and the framing story is that the girls' friends, including Rosie, are throwing a party because they won a big bowling tournament.  The girls mistakenly take a train to Canada, so everyone sits around and reminisces about them, including moments that none of the people at the party were present for, like Shirley wooing Richie.  Still, it is nice to see scenes from that episode again, as well as Lenny's proposal, plus a thirty-second montage of some of Lenny & Squiggy's entrances.  And we hear that Mrs. Babish's second husband (of how many I don't know) was named Lloyd.

Paula A. Roth and Roger Garrett wrote the frame story, and he'd write ten more episodes.  I'm mostly just tagging the people listed on IMDB, which means leaving out the various writers and directors of the episodes we see clips from, but I'm also including Winkler and Howard of course.


*The actual anniversary would've been closer to January 27th, but I guess the middle episode of Season Two is close enough.

"Excuse Me, May I Cut In?"

"Excuse Me, May I Cut In?"

October 26, 1976

B

This is what a crossover episode should be, taking established characters and seeing how they interact together, figuring out how to make their worlds collide.  Although, yes, it does have the obligatory hyped-up-mid-1970s studio audience cheering madly at entrances.  It's the only L & S story written by Fred Fox, Jr., who did do twenty-nine for Happy Days, but he gets L & S enough that he can make a joke about the absent Lenny & Squiggy.*  The main oddity is that Betty Garrett just shows up as Edna Babish, the new landlady, without explanation, but that may be a production-order vs. airdate issue.

The girls are still having problems with their TV set, but then Shirley hears about a dance contest at Jefferson High, where his & hers TVs are first prize, so she comes up with a scheme to go on a double date with Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard of course) and Potsie Weber (Anson Williams in his only appearance on this show, and no relation to Cindy W.).  Laverne was the best female dancer at their high school, and Potsie is the best male dancer at Jefferson.  Shirley thinks Richie is crazy about her, so she decides to use sex appeal to set up the date, without mentioning the TVs.

I'll paraphrase the exchange since I didn't write it down, but when Shirley suggests following up on their date from eleven and a half months ago (the HD episode "A Date with Fonzie" indeed aired November 11, 1975), Richie thinks that's a great idea.

RICHIE: What would you like to do?

SHIRLEY: (seductively) Anything but murder, Mister.

Williams's delivery on this is wonderful and she had me in hysterics, but I also want to say that I'd forgotten how funny Ron Howard can (or at least could) be.  Richie is a senior at this point and trying to seem mature but he's still naive, so some of the humor comes out of that.  Potsie pretends to be more experienced than he is, claiming to have been with nine or ten women, but one big smooch from Laverne stuns him.  Richie is so thrown off by Shirley's kiss that he tries to exit through the closet, and Howard and Williams have a nice chemistry together (going back to American Graffiti of course), if you can get past the age difference and the fact that, as Shirley realizes in the tag, her character is using his.

Carmine is hosting the dance and sings "At the Hop," but mostly it's generic instrumentals.  We do get to see Potsie and Laverne dance a little, until the girl he promised to go to the dance with kicks him in both shins.  (Stephanie Faracy, then 24, plays the girl Potsie dumped for Laverne, and she would later star in the early '90s sitcom True Colors.)  Laverne makes Richie her dance partner and guides him all the way through.  (Penny M. learned to dance at her mother's studio, but this is the first episode that really showcases that talent.)  He sounds sincere later when he tells Shirley he had a fun time, if not the one he hoped for when he showed up at her door twice singing his signature tune, "Blueberry Hill."  So then she gives him the big kiss, telling him it's because she wanted to, not because she had to.

The previous episode mentioned that Carmine had a date with Lucille, and here we find out her full name is Lucille Lockwash, and the actress who plays her is Sandy Wirth.  She's referred to as Mrs., presumably divorced or widowed, and she was in the backseat with Carmine before Shirley interrupted them.  Not only that, she's taking Carmine to Europe!  It's funny that, on a very shippy episode, this is the relationship that's, well, going on a cruise.

*And he'd write the first part of the "Shotgun Wedding" crossover night for Happy Days, more on that later.

"How Do You Say 'Are You Dead' in German?"

"How Do You Say 'Are You Dead' in German?"
May 4, 1976
C+

Bob Brunner wrote this episode where a German named Eric (Harold Oblong, who under his real name of Peter Elbling would have three other roles) faints from hunger in the girls' living room while delivering dry-cleaning.  Shirley wants to give him money but Laverne gets him a job as a busboy at the Pizza Bowl.  There is of course the farcical moment of Lenny and Squiggy walking in on Shirley giving mouth-to-mouth to Eric, and then after it's explained, Lenny jokingly invites Laverne to do the same for him. 

The whole thing about the Harlem Globetrotters feels like filler, although there is a pay-off in mime for the tag.  Note the casting of a black actress as the waitress who speaks German, Brenda Verrett's only screen credit.  John Thomas Lenox would direct three more episodes.