"Candy Is Dandy"

"Candy Is Dandy"
December 16, 1980
C+

Joanne Pagliaro's first of two L & S stories has the girls landing jobs at Bardwell's Department Store, jobs they'd keep for awhile, although not as long as their Shotz jobs of course.   The girls are gift-wrappers, and they wrap some candy that turns out to be full of rum, although Laverne doesn't realize this when she starts eating it.  The audience is clued in because the high school boy that Shirley is attracted to (Laverne points out he's "jailbait") knows French and can read the label.  He and his buddy plan to roofy their dates with a few pieces of the candy!  (Not that it's called that, but this is what passed for wholesome entertainment in the late Carter era.)  The girls are almost fired by their new boss, Mr. Hildebrand (Norman Bartold in his first of four appearances), but then he's grateful to them for pointing out the dangers of this product.  And Lenny and Squiggy bring four or five of their clients into their apartment through the "doggy door" under the girls' staircase.

"Grand Opening"

"Grand Opening"
December 9, 1980
B-

Ruth Bennett's first of two L & S stories has a few overlapping threads.  Although Frank and Edna said in the season premiere that they were opening their new restaurant in a couple weeks, it's not until this episode that they, yes, have their grand opening.  (Maybe there was a soft opening earlier.)  Enough time has passed that Shirley has found a job and collected her first Californian paycheck.  Laverne hasn't had any luck in her job search, although she had fun exploring Disneyland with the boys after she applied there.  (Marshall, McKean, and Lander are freaking adorable singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme.)  Shirley is trying to be patient, but it's tough when Laverne won't clean the apartment and she keeps spending money, including on calls to Milwaukee.  (Terry Buttafucco is name-checked and apparently still working at Shotz, but I guess the loading dock didn't have lay-offs.)  Also meanwhile, Carmine is going to visit and he ends up deciding to move to Burbank, in with Sonny, who he's just met.  (No word on the dance studio, but he could've sold that in '63 for all we know.)

Sonny offers Laverne $10 to be part of his knife-throwing act, and she agrees to do it for $20, thinking that she's in real danger.  He doesn't explain then or later the trick in the act, so when Shirley takes over for Sonny, after he's hurt doing a stunt, Laverne thinks Shirl must really be mad at her.  She offers Lenny and Squiggy "anything" if they'll free her, and Lenny looks at Squiggy hopefully, but Squiggy says that's not much of an offer from a dead woman.  Everything works out OK of course, and Sonny apologizes to Laverne and asks her out on what I presume is their first date, although it becomes a double date with Shirley and Carmine when an "unplanned pregnancy" leads to Shirley being fired.  (The pregnancy of her boss's sister, who has a husband who needs a job.)

So now the core cast of seven are all out in California, plus the two newbies, but the show is going to throw in a waitress in law school as well.  (Becky Gonzalez would play Rosita once more.  At least she gets lines, unlike poor Mary at the Pizza Bowl, whoever that actress was.)

"Studio City"

"Studio City"
December 2, 1980
C+

We now get completely Californized credits, both opening and closing, and I do remember being incredibly confused at the time by the New Year's 1965 sign in both.  Was it already '65 or would it be when 1980 turned?  Since the girls are mostly supposed to have graduated in '56, wouldn't that make them 27 in '65?  And wasn't Troy Donahue a has-been by '65?  Well, maybe that's why he's starring in a cheap caveman picture.

Yes, Donahue plays himself in this episode (written by Richard Rosenstock), wearing a very early-'80s-looking mustache, although no one notices of course.  The girls get jobs as stuntwomen, not through Sonny, although he does show up on set.  They are playing the "village virgins," and Laverne says it's a little late.  (So she stopped saving herself during the time-skip?)  Rhonda annoys Laverne and me.  And that's about all I have to say, except that the Squignowski Talent Agency of Burbank (STAB) is now a thing and would continue to be for awhile.  I guess Lenny & Squiggy had to earn money somehow after running out of ice cream.

Doug Cox, who was the Birthday Boy on the "beatnik" episode, here plays the director Zwick, an obvious shout-out to Joel Zwick (who had moved on to Bosom Buddies and It's a Living).  Frank and Edna are absent, as is of course Carmine (for now).

"Welcome to Burbank"

"Welcome to Burbank"
November 25, 1980
B-

Jeff Franklin also wrote the first episode set completely in California, with stereotypical establishing shots of the L.A. area (including of course an ABC sign).  The opening credits are the same except for the last shot, of the "California or bust" sign on the ice cream truck.  And after the views of L.A., we see the boys drop the girls and their furniture off in a still-dialogue-less scene.  The actual before-a-studio-audience part starts with the girls arriving in their new apartment, which Frank has found for them.  (Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume he coughed up first month's rent, deposit, etc., especially since the girls are unemployed and made only $18 from selling their stuff last episode.)

Frank and Edna come in soon after, in shorts, which apparently turns Edna on.  (Laverne shares your discomfort.)  They brought the girls gifts back from their recent trip to Mexico: castanets for Shirley and a guitar for Laverne.  (The guitar would return in at least one episode.)  The girls love the apartment, including that it has an upstairs bedroom.*

They soon meet their neighbors, hunky manager Sonny St. Jacques (Ed Marinaro with less curly hair than as Laverne's cousin a few months earlier) and busty actress Rhonda Lee (Leslie Easterbrook, who I remember a lot better than Marinaro from the California years, but she would do a lot more episodes).  Lenny and Squiggy, who are hanging around selling what's left of the ice cream at the beach, immediately lust after Rhonda, but then Laverne and Shirley lust after Sonny.  (As I recall, Squiggy would have quite a thing for Rhonda, Lenny not so much.)

Things seem to be going well and Shirley even adopts a plant, a Wandering Jew named Stanley.  (By the way, I could've sworn that Shirley was Catholic as well as Laverne, but maybe I just assumed that because Shirley is Irish.  It turns out she's Protestant, and a Democrat.)  But then a massive earthquake, like I don't know, a 10.7**, strikes and the girls start rethinking California.  Finding out that Lenny and Squiggy have just signed a three-year lease on the apartment next door doesn't help.  (The boys think that their "male prowess" after scoring with a couple women they picked up is what made the earth move.  Unless they're lying, this is the first definite indication we've gotten that Lenny and Squiggy are sexually active.)

Laverne doesn't want to leave their garbage disposal and she convinces Shirley to give California another chance.  The promise of breakfast with Sonny, who worried about them, helps.  (And there is no sign of Carmine, except in the revised closing credits, which have all been Californized.)


*I don't, at least at this point, understand the layout of the building.  The exteriors don't match the interiors, and somehow there's the girls' apartment between two other apartments, with only one apartment upstairs, making four total.  I mean, it's not Brady-Bunch-house level mind-warping, but it did take me out of an episode that is in part about the building.

**I mean, I've lived in California a total of almost 40 years, and I have never been in a quake that throws beds around the room like that!

"Not Quite New York"

No wonder the lifeguard is tan.

"Not Quite New York"
November 18, 1980
B

So this was the Fall that everything changed.  Ronald Reagan won the presidency in a landslide and I started junior high.  I needed my shows to get me through difficult times.  But, while Mork & Mindy was working on "Putting the Ork Back into Mork," Richie left Happy Days and Chrissy would soon leave Three's Company.  (The Ropers had already been spun-off, and Welcome Back, Kotter and What's Happening!! had both graduated into syndication.)  A bunch of other ABC sitcoms had bitten or would bite the dust before Reagan's inauguration.  Even over on CBS, Alice had spun off Flo, M*A*S*H had lost Radar and a bunch of other folks I now caught in syndication, and Mike and Gloria Stivic had moved to California a couple years ago.

Maybe it was time for Meathead's real-life wife to move to California.  Or not.  Here we have what is widely regarded as Shark-Jump #1 for L & S (with Shirley's departure of course #2, chronologically at least).  But the season premiere (written by Jeff Franklin, although he'd soon be busy with Bosom Buddies) in itself is perfectly fine.  I mean, any episode where Lenny says that they'll narrowly avoid violating the Mann Act by taking a frog across state lines is going to make me laugh.  (The studio audience barely registers it, and I'm sure I hadn't a clue at the age of twelve.)

The boys are sitting in the break room, planning their vacation with the help of a Viewmaster (including slides of Snow White and the Seven Prisoners!).  But the girls kick them out because there's going to be a bottle-cappers' only meeting.  The girls hope for a promotion because they have seniority, but in fact Shotz is automating bottle-capping and the best the girls can hope for is jobs as truck-washers, with a cut in pay.  In this scene, we find out that Laverne and Shirley are now both 27, and if you're going, "What???", you're not alone.

"The last two or three years are a blur."

The opening credits and opening scene provide few clues.  The credits look just like Season Five's, down to Carmine spilling a submarine sandwich on himself at the girls' kitchen table.  Shirley looks just the same in her pajamas, although Laverne's skirt is shorter and her hair is fluffier when she comes in making out with a guy named Ray (Mitchell Laurance, who would play a Director later).  But, what's this, Frank and Edna are opening a restaurant called Cowboy Bill's, in California??

OK, OK, you're not shocked at this point, but were you 39 years ago?  (If you were alive and watching 39 years ago that is.)  Was I?  I honestly don't remember.  I mean, even over at NBC on Diff'rent Strokes, they had managed to spin off Mrs. Garrett in less than a season, and Facts of Life had already by November of '80 dumped Molly Ringwald et al.  I probably took L & S's transplant in stride, and I was a Southern Californian, so that made it nicer.  (Besides, I soon had a new favorite ABC sitcom, the aforementioned Bosom Buddies, which was definitely set in New York and which made fun of California.)

Anyway, Shirley luckily doesn't decide to re-enlist in the Army, and our girls don't get sent to Nam.  She suggests that she and Laverne join Frank and Edna in California, which leads to a shared-fantasy sequence set on a beach (or rather what is very obviously a stage set of a beach), where they reject the "evil things" a Big Movie Producer offers and instead meet their Mr. Rights, a Fish Doctor and a Tan Lifeguard (the latter played by a pre-Hunter Fred Dryer).  This is enough to convince Laverne, who wants Lenny and Squiggy to drive them to California on the boys' vacation.  Shirley wonders if this will be safe, but Laverne says it's safer than kissing them goodbye.  ("The Road to Burbank" would beg to differ, but we'll get to that.)

Carmine gives Shirley a lot of what she calls "fantastic" goodbye smooches, hoping to change her mind but he doesn't.  He says he'll save up to move to California to be with his Angel Face.  They kiss some more.  Poor Laverne has to carry out the last of the heavy luggage by herself, but I guess this is payback for Shirley covering for her on the phone when she got home very late with Ray.  (Who presumably wasn't a serious boyfriend, since Laverne wasn't completely honest with him about her job.)

This looks like during a break in filming, with Marshall whispering to Williams.

Carmine carries out Boo Boo Kitty and the girls have a moment looking back on their memories in the apartment, to the tune of "Yesterday."  Except not on the DVD release because of that ol' music rights issue.  (I won't penalize the episode for that, and there is currently an intact if wobbly version on Youtube if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk7s9IHo9nI&t=49s.)  Marshall and Williams are embracing before and after the clips and it's surprisingly moving.  And then we get a visual joke as they shut the door on that apartment for the last time, since Laverne has painted a big L on it.

They wait outside, with a Beatles standee that would soon grace their new apartment, and the opening credits (the main thing I remember about the California seasons).  If this is '65 (it isn't, but we'll get to that), then it makes sense that the girls would be Beatles fans and "Yesterday" did come out in the U.S. that September.  But it is one of many signs that the times they are a-changin'.

Carmine gives Shirley some more goodbye kisses.  Laverne gives a complete stranger a kiss and introduces herself after.  She's going to miss Milwaukee in general, more than the people, although she doesn't yet realize how few of her friends are going to be left behind.  It turns out that the boys have bought a used ice cream truck.  (Lenny wanted a garbage truck but it wouldn't come with garbage.)  And so it's a sweet ending to the Milwaukee days, and the start of a brand-new life, making their dreams come true, as Shirley reminds us in the beach fantasy scene.  But of course, this is Laverne and Shirley, and nothing goes smoothly for them, on or off screen.

John Tracy would direct only four more L & S episodes that Fall.