"Death Row: Part 2"

"Death Row: Part 2"
November 23, 1982
D

Well.  This episode.

This is simultaneously worse than Part 1 and capable of more entertainment than its predecessor.  And Lenny and Squiggy are somehow the best and worst aspects of the episode.

In Nick LeRose's second of four L & S stories, Laverne and Sheba are now on Death Row and going to be executed at midnight of the following day.  They aren't allowed last phone calls because "Smith and Jones" already had their phone calls.  Luckily, sort of, Lenny and Squiggy like to visit women's prisons.  (If I recall correctly, this was actually a hobby of theirs in at least one early episode.)

Newman as a Valley Girl in '75

They are very surprised to see her and she's so happy that she tries to hug them through the bars, causing them to accidentally kiss.  (Lenny remarks, "See, I told you she was a good kisser.")  Laverne wants them to deliver a note to her father, and they're reluctant!  Squiggy fears Mr. DeFazio's violent temper and won't touch the note with a ten-foot pole.  Lenny says he's just "a six-foot Pole" so he can deliver it.  (OK, I laughed at that line.)

Still, even when the guys are sitting at Cowboy Bill's, they hesitate, so of course Mr. DeFazio gets understandably violent with Squiggy when he finally finds out.  He goes and gets a judge, who suggests running a match on the fingerprints.  Laverne is released and (Lavmine shippers take note) carried from the car all the way up to her bedroom when she's sleepy.  Why is she sleepy after almost dying?  Who knows?

At least it makes more sense than her joining in the gospel number with the black priest and the black prisoners.  Not that the song is "bad," I mean, it's well sung (except by Laverne and the monstrous Anne Ramsey, who was a nameless Lady in '79 and here plays Killer), but this isn't like the song at Frank & Edna's wedding, which worked surprisingly well.  This musical number actually made me cringe more than Laverne teaching the other inmates the "Schlimiel!  Schlimazel!" song and dance.

Screw Lavenny!  Fourteen-year-old Rebio had a new ship!

The episode ends with Lenny and Squiggy, who had raided Laverne's refrigerator and assumed she was dead even when Carmine carried her in, wondering what her still being alive will do to "the funeral."

No wonder I have much fonder memories of the Square Pegs episode that week, where Johnny's New Wave band, Open 24 Hours, debuted.

"Death Row: Part 1"

"Death Row: Part 1"
November 16, 1982
D+

Sigh.  This episode.

When I thought of Season Eight before this project, this was one of the episodes I thought of, although my main thoughts were "Laraine Newman" and "anachronisms."  Well, yes, this episode has both, but I can see why I blocked the rest out. 

At fourteen, I had the feeling that the whole "RALPH" (Radical Action for Love, Peace, and Happiness) thing was at least five years off, feeling like a satire of the Symbionese Liberation Army.  Like Patty Hearst in 1974, Laverne joins a radical group, but she's not kidnapped but is instead hungry for friendship and male companionship.  Even more than joining the Playboy Club, this episode shows how lost Laverne is becoming without Shirley as her conscience.  At a certain point, I had to question her intelligence, and her street-smartness, especially when, even in the midst of a bank robbery, she doesn't get that these people are not her friends.

The comedy, such as it is, becomes unsettling, even when Laverne is again imitating Marlon Brando and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Even a slapstick armed robbery is an armed robbery.  Still, I was willing to just say that this was one of the worst episodes ever, not the absolute worst, until we got to "Smith and Jones."

Ben Powers on Good Times

Laraine Newman (who I usually liked and still like) has been playing her character throughout the episode as some sort of hippie Valley Girl.  (She says "gross me out" at one point.)  Then we get to the police station and, even though Sheba has betrayed Laverne and never seemed that bright to begin with, Laverne follows her example by giving a false last name.  (They, or at least writers Braunstein & Perlow, are so lazy they don't even bother with first names.)  These just happen to be the names of two female prisoners who are about to go to Death Row.  So let's not bother with fingerprints or paperwork, OK?

All that said, I didn't hate the episode.  It has a certain surrealness to it, in all its details, and it puts Carmine in a corncob costume and Rhonda in a "Mexican bride" costume (and has her speak in a Swedish accent).  But I can't say I waited with bated breath to find out Laverne's fate the next week, and I'm not now racing to watch Part 2.  But I'll get it over with, I promise.

Bank Manager Garry Goodrow previously played Mr. Caulley.  Doris Hess, who was Dolores and Sgt. Shannon before, would return in Part 2 as Kluger.  Ben Powers, who's Aaron, the leader who does celebrity impressions, would play Rick West in the final episode.