"Dear Future Model"

"Dear Future Model"

Lucille/Carmine.  (Lucmine?  Carmille?)

November 23, 1976
C+

In this story by Barbara Robles (her only credit at IMDB) and Judy Skelton, Shirley's latest scheme to make her dreams come true is mail-order modeling lessons.  Lucille (Sandy Wirth) now runs some sort of Tupperware-like lingerie company and agrees to have the girls model for Rosie Greenbaum and Rosie's friends, oddly enough in Laverne & Shirley's apartment.  This allows Shirley to be annoyed with Lucille, while Laverne is annoyed by Rosie, although there's not much of a pay-off to either.  Then the girls go to a real modeling agency but get overlooked.

It's kind of weird to have the girls so insecure about their looks and weight, although I guess they're Hollywood-average.  Lenny scoffs at the idea that a book can teach them how to be sexy.  And I couldn't help wondering how exactly the Tarzan rope that Laverne uses would work in a basement apartment.

Photographer Michael Mann would play a Lackey the next year.  Receptionist Deborah Harmon would star as a mother of eight a dozen years later on ABC's Just the Ten of Us.  Billy Sands, who's Holms here and would be Waldo later, would probably at that time have been most recognizable as either Private Dino Papparelli on Sgt. Bilko or "Tinker" Bell on McHale's Navy.

"The Bridal Shower"

"The Bridal Shower"
November 9, 1976
B-

This story, written by two women— Paula A. Roth (her first of thirteen) and Judy Skelton (her first of two)— is about Laverne and Shirley going to the title event, even though it's being hosted by their frenemy Rosie Greenbaum.  White gives a swaggering, memorable performance as Rosie and understandably became a recurring character.  The script isn't hilarious but it has its moments.  Note that their friend Anne Marie being a nun is mentioned, when the girls try to think of who else in their high school social club, the Angora Debs, is still single.

Although the show is set in the '50s, when "the girls" can be seen as old maids at 21ish, it was made in the '70s, so L & S get revenge by making their single life sound more exciting than their friends' married life.  (I kept expecting Rosie being married to a proctologist to lead to tasteless or at least censor-baiting jokes, but it's just thrown in there a couple times, and this isn't M*A*S*H.)  Their friend Elinor, whose shower it is, says that neither married nor single life is perfect.

I can't think of any shipping notes, other than Squiggy suggesting that Laverne and Shirley pretend to be on a double date with him and Lenny for Couples' Night at the Pizza Bowl to get half-price pizza.  It is notable that Mrs. Babish is more clearly the landlady here and even has a line that sounds looped in later about not understanding her tenants.

Valorie Armstrong, who plays Cookie here, would be Bernice later.