"Here Today, Hair Tomorrow"

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"Councilman De Fazio"

"Councilman De Fazio"
May 3, 1983
C

What it says on the tin: Frank runs for City Council and, after seeming to lose badly, wins.  And Laverne spends most of the episode home with mono, so she's not involved much.  However, it's nice to see Squiggy get the girl for an entire episode and perhaps beyond.  And Mary the waitress gets at least her second line of the series.  (She had to say something the time Mr. DeFazio accidentally locked her in the restroom overnight.)

Dottie Archibald plays Reporter Karen and was Mrs. Swisher last season, and in fact co-wrote this episode with Francis T. Perry Williams, who had played a Policeman earlier in this season; and Phil Foster, who'd written another episode about his character in '78.  TV Anchorman Wayne Powers had three previous minor roles on this series.

"Do the Carmine"

"Do the Carmine"
March 15, 1983
C

If you can get past all the anachronisms in this episode, the only one written by Jay Grossman (don't get me started on how backmasking was more of an '80s thing than '60s), this isn't bad, especially for Season Eight.  I do want to note that Rhonda is definitely nicer this season than she was in Season Six, here even offering to help Laverne make dozens of sandwiches.  And there are some nice Carmine moments, with Squiggy and Laverne.  Also, this is at least the third California episode with a Bob Dylan reference.

Oh, and while the previous episode had a couple Shirley references, this one has an exchange where Squiggy tries to hit a jukebox like "that kid we knew back in Milwaukee," and Carmine says, "Arthur?"  Not only that, but Laverne says that dancing with a broom as a teenager made her have a thing for "tall, skinny blond guys"!

Jay Leno's role as Bobby Bitts (sort of a West Coast Dick Clark) is less memorable than his appearance four years earlier as Laverne's boyfriend Joey Mitchell.

"How's Your Sister?"

"How's Your Sister?"
March 1, 1983
C-

In Roger Garrett's last L & S story, Squiggy's younger sister Squendelyn (yes, Lander in drag) visits from New Jersey, after her marriage to a man named Arnie ends, so Squiggy fixes her up with Carmine, for $200.  Carmine reluctantly takes Squendelyn to a Hollywood party, where he's hit on by a succession of very '80s-looking beautiful women.  The episode of course isn't particularly funny, and it wants to have it both ways, with Squen mocked for her looks but then in the end admired for her "inner beauty."  Still, it's interesting from a biographical standpoint I guess, and both Squigman siblings gets the best of the dialogue, like that she's on the Pill!

"Please Don't Feed the Buzzards"

"Please Don't Feed the Buzzards"
February 22, 1983
B-

 “Hey everybody, I found a new script! And this one’s funny!”— Tom Servo talking about a treasure map on the Catalina Caper episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000

Lenny is back and we can laugh again!  (Then we can cry because it's McKean's last appearance as Lenny until reunion shows and such.)  In Andy Goldberg's only and Cheryl Alu's second of two L & S scripts, Lenny and Squiggy find a treasure map and soon they and Carmine and Frank are wandering aimlessly in the desert, fighting, drinking, and bonding.  The episode doesn't make a lot of sense, although by Season Eight standards this is icily logical, and the chemistry is good.  I laughed a few times and smiled a lot, and that heavy weight lifted off my chest for twenty minutes.

Shipping notes, a mirage of Rhonda as a harem girl makes Lenny drool, but he does say goodbye to Laverne before returning to the desert, presumably for the next forty days and nights.  Also, it felt completely in character for Squiggy to use Lenny as a pack-mule and drink all the water when he lets Lenny have all the peanut butter.  Family notes, a drunk Frank says Squiggy is the son he never wanted, which Squiggy says is what his own father said, while Carmine's anecdote about his dad makes him sound poor but joking.

Wayne Powers has his third of four L & S roles as Gus.

"The Ghost Story"

Remember Laverne & Shirley?

"The Ghost Story"
February 15, 1983
C-

Kenny Wolin & Barry Bleach's only L & S script makes no attempt, as just about every other episode has, to pretend to have any connection to reality.  As such, it's somewhat interesting, and it does offer what feels like a lot of the remaining regulars (five!), but yeah, it doesn't work.  Laverne's apartment is haunted by an Olympic-losing ghost (Richard Karron, who was Robert A. Markland in '77), therfore, the only solution is to recreate the 1932 Olympics in her living room so that the ghost can stop possessing her.

Note that Suzi must be even more "frigid" than Shirley, since Carmine gets excited about holding hands with both Rhonda and Laverne during a seance.

Jeannetta Arnette, who plays Marianne Vimvoli, the actress that Squiggy tries to give the casting couch treatment to (on Laverne's couch), would get her long-running gig on Head of the Class three years later.

"Short on Time"

"Short on Time"
February 8, 1983
C-

Frank DeFazio confides his marital woes to a chimp, as Laverne realizes the importance of family while singing with the Spinners.

Oh, you want me to go on?  OK, in Jack Lukes's last L & S story, Laverne has three different demands on her night, none of them romantic for a change: an invitation from Rhonda passing on a chance to sing with the Spinners, a request to baby-sit "Chucky, Jr." (and if you didn't guess that the presumably single Chuck* was talking about a "monkey," then you've probably never watched a slapstick sitcom in your life), and a chance to finally talk to her father about why he's recently decided he hates women.  So her solution is to have her father chimp-sit while she goes to the concert.  Then when she gets home, she finds Frank's conveniently dropped "Dear John" letter from Edna and discovers what her pop has already confided in Chucky, Jr.: Edna has left him for a jockey.

Quite frankly, the writing is a mess.  You've got three threads that might've worked individually but don't work together here, comedically or logically.  Even a detail like Laverne inexplicably being in her Cowboy Bill's waitress uniform (when we last saw her in the padded red gown she sang in, and before that it looked like the the costumer character ripped the blouse off her so that she's probably missing buttons) shows that no one really cared anymore.  And what about the thing with Carmine's girlfriend Suzi (the same Suzi as on the Jim Belushi episode?) being offstage and stupid?  What's that about?  I'd guess it might be in service to Lavmine, but on this episode and the "ulcer" one, Laverne and Carmine bicker more in a sibling kind of way than a romcom "They are obviously meant for each other" kind of way.

And, oy, really, show?  That's how you're gonna belatedly deal with the "absent Betty Garrett" situation.  I understand that due to Cindy W's unexpected early departure, this plot had to be pushed back, but with only six episodes to go, why tarnish Edna's image like this?  She deserts Frank and it has to be treated like a joke, because you know, jockeys are funny, amirite?

Anyway, the Spinners are pretty good of course, and this is far from the worst episode, but it is a mess.

Oh, calendar note, I almost forgot.  I couldn't see the month or year, but I did get a look at the calendar in the kitchen that has the 24th and the 31st on Sundays.  In 1967, this only fit December.  Awww, Edna left right before Christmas! 


*This is the last Chuck episode, so maybe he got beamed up at the Star Trek convention.  And don't ask me why there are already Trekkies in '67, when that show didn't become a cult until after it was cancelled.

"The Gymnast Show"

"The Gymnast Show"*
December 14, 1982
C

Monica Johnson, who contributed the classic "Honeymoon Hotel" episode and a couple others, here bows out with a not very original but not terrible story.  Laverne dates a gymnast, really a trapeze-artist, played by 54-year-old Adam West, which made me sort of wish the episode had been about Laverne on a Batman episode.  Instead, Edgar Garibaldi is obsessed with his dead ex, who looks like Laverne.  But it's OK, because he's not actually a killer.  Whew!  Oh well, the costumes and sets are good and I was mildly amused.

Note that in the tag, Rhonda fixes up the not-yet-abandoned-by-Edna-according-to-airdates-rather-than-production-order Frank.  DeVera Marcus, who previously was a Reception Nurse, here is Esmerelda the bearded lady.


*IMDB has this as just "The Gymnast," but in this form it marks the second Season Eight episode, after "The Playboy Show," of several with this title format.

"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.

"The Playboy Show"

"The Playboy Show"
November 9, 1982
C+

Laverne, who lost her Bardwell's job after turning into a chicken in the store window and who is already bored with her aerospace job, applies to be a Playboy bunny, befriending fellow applicant Cathy (Penny M's real-life friend Carrie Fisher).  Squiggy is part of the audition process, having to harass the women, although he's unable to harass Laverne under pressure.  (He's apparently licked her arm multiple times when she's asleep!)  Hugh Hefner plays himself.  The episode isn't hilarious, but it has cheesecake and Fisher sings "My Guy."  (I guess it was worth paying for music rights to keep a plot-related song on the DVD.)

Ed Solomon would write two more episodes, but Joan Marks was done after this.  And Michael McKean directs his only episode for the series, although Lenny does not appear.

"Lost in Spacesuits"

"Lost in Spacesuits"
October 26, 1982
C-

I don't know that this unfunny and uninteresting episode, Barry Rubinowitz's last, would've been better with Shirley, but maybe she would've perked up the Laverne's birthday party scene.  At least the wire-work is decent for its time.  This episode introduces Laverne's spacy (pun intended) coworker Chuck (Charles Fleischer, post-Welcome-Back-Kotter, pre-Roger-Rabbit), who'd be back three times.

"The Note"

I'd bet $100 that this was part of the one of the school sets for The Brady Bunch.

"The Note"
October 19, 1982
B-

I like this episode, too, the penultimate one written by Judy Ervin Pioli.  It offers a nice blend of humor and sentiment, with a sense of history that a writer less familiar with these characters probably couldn't have managed.  That said, it is the first episode without Shirley, so it's got a bittersweet feeling.

I literally got chills watching the opening credits, like I'd been slapped across the face with a time machine.  When the multi-ethnic group of children marched across the screen chanting the girls' rhyme, it all came back to me, that initial jolt of What??? in October of '82.  Then Laverne was dancing by herself, doing a bunch of stuff from earlier seasons by herself, while the lyrics were still in the plural, while Shirley was still in the title.  The rest of the cast do appear later, with and without her, but it was a shock to the system, then and now.

And there were lines I remembered, like Squiggy's tasteless one about "incense."  I vaguely remember the plot that Shirley's left, with a short, impersonal goodbye note.  Laverne is hurt and angry.  Her friends, who are apparently of the "if your dog dies, get a puppy" school of mourning, send over potential roommates.  But only when Laverne finds the rest of the note, a couple pages' worth, can she move on, honoring nineteen years of best-friendship, ten years of living together.

And the episode sends out random romantic signals like ships that are lost at sea.  Squiggy pursues Rhonda (of course), Lenny pursues Rhonda (more surprising, but not totally new), Frank doesn't pursue Rhonda (thank God).  Lenny wants to dance with Laverne but she chooses Carmine.  Squiggy suggests (with Lenny's full approval naturally) that Laverne move in across the hall.  And the Lavmine ship is teased but more subtly than when Shirley was actually around.  Yet, Shirley wrote about Carmine in her P.S., something Laverne couldn't share with her father, the boys, or Rhonda.

Not shippy per se, but the reveal that Lenny has been telling Squiggy an installment of a bedtime story every night for eight years certainly shows some devotion.  (Note that Lenny has broken out the Bullwinkle pajamas from "Road to Burbank," so he does actually own them and they weren't just a product of Squiggy's imagination.)

The casting of Laverne's potential roommates is interesting.  Julie Brown returns, this time as Patti.  Penny's sister, Ronny Hallin, plays the Laverne-like Maxine.  (Yes, there's an Andrews Sisters joke.)  Bag Lady Kathryn Fuller was Ernestine at the Vegas wedding chapel.  And frequent director Tom Trbovich plays Tom.  (This episode's director, Gabrielle Alice James, wouldn't do any other directing.)

"Window on Main Street"

Reality TV prototype

"Window on Main Street"
October 12, 1982
C+


Al Aidekman wrote this story where the girls' boss, Mr. Hildebrand (Norman Barthold for the last time), makes them "live" in the Bardwell's store window or else they'll get fired.  Unfortunately, Laverne, who seems to have even more phobias than we realized, has claustrophobia.  So she sees a hypnotist, Hal Dawson (Charles Thomas Murphy, bearded and not immediately recognizable as Dr. Mathew Gentry).  He unfortunately hypnotizes both girls into thinking they're chickens when a bell rings.  The result isn't hilarious but it's not painful.  And the episode ends with Shirley finding out that the rabbit died* and she's pregnant.  Laverne is happy for her, but this will be the last we'll see of Shirley, although I don't think they knew that when this was shot.

Larry Breeding, who plays Mike, the man Laverne flirts with through the window, and who would return in the role, was the married man Hank a few months earlier.

Note that in the opening and closing credits, here and on the previous episode, it's New Year's 1967, but Shirley is in the closing but not the opening.  I have not yet spotted that Monday-the-first kitchen calendar yet, but I'll keep an eye out for clues.  And the "home of the future" is designed for the Year 2000, when we will eat red pills and fried chicken.


*The rabbit always died.  The Billy Crystal movie Rabbit Test came out in 1978 but even by then it was an outdated reference.

"The Mummy's Bride"

"The Mummy's Bride"
September 28, 1982
B-

By the Fall of 1982, my loyalties to ABC sitcoms were wavering.  The network had sent Mork & Mindy off into the ether and killed off Bosom Buddies far too soon.  (Although not before we got the irony-rich moment of Tom Hanks as Kip asking guest star Penny Marshall, as herself, if it's true that "she and Shirley hate each other.")  There was still the ol' Tuesday night line-up, but I wasn't nearly as invested in Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, or Three's Company as I'd been five years earlier.  I was actually equally into other long-running sitcoms over on CBS: The Jeffersons, Alice, and M*A*S*H.  

And there were some promising new sitcoms on both CBS and NBC: Cheers, Newhart, and a little show called Square Pegs.  I was a high school freshman and it was about high school freshmen.  The main "pegs" were Lauren, who was socially ambitious and wanted to befriend "the cool kids," and Patty (a young Sarah Jessica Parker), her taller friend who had lower, more realistic expectations.  The girls were followed around by two weird new friends, Marshall, an aspiring stand-up comic who had a huge crush on Lauren, and Johnny.  Ah, yes, Johnny.  He was tall, blond, musical, Polish, sentimental, and probably from a broken home.  (He was raised by his grandparents.)  I was a Lauren/Johnny shipper of course.  And the parallels to Laverne & Shirley may've been accidental, but considering how deeply pop-cultural SP was, I have to wonder.

Which brings us to the Final Season of L & S.  This is the season that wasn't supposed to happen, that many people wish hadn't happened.  But Cindy Williams wanted to come back, and she did, and so did everyone else, except that she married Bill Hudson and got pregnant.  And this is a very physical show, and Mr. Hudson didn't want his wife doing stunts, or even working a full schedule.  Which maybe was chivalry, but check out the Youtube interviews with Penny and Cindy for a take on the impact of a marriage that broke up after eighteen years, and two children.  (And, yes, he was already the ex-husband of Goldie Hawn by '82, father of two children by Goldie, including the lovely Kate.)

But that last week of September, I didn't know how high school would go for me or the pegs, or how much television would change by the time I'd graduate in 1986.  (Surprise, in '84 I had a boyfriend/future-ex-husband who'd make Laverne & Shirley references, and my new favorite ABC sitcom was Who's the Boss?, which was all about the central ship.)  I was just tuning in to see one of the Milwaukee girls yet again almost get married, but surely Shirley wouldn't go through with this, right?  (I would be more heartbroken over Janet's marriage on Three's Company in 1984, even though we did in fact see her bland fiance's face and hear his voice.  Vive le Jack/Janet!)

This is, perhaps even more than the California move, which I still have mixed feelings about, seen as the Universal Shark Jump, Shirley becoming "the mummy's bride."  Perhaps if they had carried through with their plan, hinted at here, that Shirley would still live with Laverne while Army medic Walter Meeney is away for a year, there wouldn't be such resentment in the fandom.  But Cindy W. and the producers quarreled, leaving a bad taste for decades, including for Cindy & Penny's rocky but close friendship.  (Not on the level of Suzanne Somers vs. Joyce DeWitt, but still notorious.)

Would it have helped if we actually got to know Walter, or even heard about him before this episode?  I mean, Laverne's live-in (for a few hours) boyfriend David at least got lines, a job, and a hobby, and he was played by a then very recognizable actor.  Walter, due to a skin rash, is bandaged from head to toe at the rushed hospital wedding, but he appears to be short and thin.

(When Margaret married Lt. Colonel Donald Penobscott on M*A*S*H, we'd been hearing about him for months, and we did actually see him in two episodes, although played by two different actors.  He was in a half-body cast at the wedding, but due to Hawkeye and BJ's prank.  In both cases, you've got to wonder why the brides are looking forward to the honeymoon.)

As with David, Sabrina, and others, Shirley's husband (and, yes, she goes through with it) turns out to be yet another McGuffin of Romance.  No one cares about him (not even Shirley it feels like at times), and he's just there to throw light onto Shirley & Laverne, Shirley & Carmine, and Laverne's fears, exacerbated by Lenny & Squiggy (who have funny reactions throughout the episode, like to "Shirley Feeney Meeney"), that she is or will be an old maid.

I have to note that this episode is supposed to have Lenny proposing to Laverne to try to win a bet from 17 years ago (when the girls were 12 I think) about who would get married first, but either it flew right by me or it got edited out of the DVD copy for some reason.

Shirley doesn't want to tell Carmine she's getting married, and she tries to get Laverne to do it, but Carmine takes it very well, since he's conveniently also fallen in love offscreen.  (He half-jokes that he and Shirley can still make out.)  They promise to always be there for each other, which would be sweet if she weren't going to vanish in a couple episodes.

As for Shirley and Laverne, Laverne is happy for Shirley and very supportive of the wedding, although she faints at least three times over it.  Laverne always seems to take Shirley's engagements better than Shirley takes hers, for whatever reason.  The wedding teases Lavley, with Laverne helping Walter give Shirley the ring and all.

Everyone is at this wedding, including, yes, Boo Boo Kitty.  Mr. DeFazio gives Shirley away and her friends and the other patients do the wedding march on kazoos.  It's not Shirley's dream wedding, but at least she's marrying a doctor.

I like this episode, the penultimate one written by Roger Garrett.  I've seen worse season-openers (like for Season Seven).  By itself, it's perfectly fine.  But if you want to call it a shark jump in hindsight, I understand.

Chaplain Richard Stahl had two earlier roles on this series, including the premiere.

"Perfidy in Blue"

"Perfidy in Blue"
May 11, 1982
B+

The only L & S story written by Laurie Gelman shocked me as being not only one of the funniest of the series, but one of the most outrageous, yes, here at the end of Season Seven.  It starts mundanely enough with Shirley feeling guilty for having "borrowed" and lost Laverne's favorite blue purse.  (She pretends that she's talking to Carmine on the phone about "the situation in Southeast Asia," i.e. the Vietnam War.)  The purse has a snake on it that's like the tattoo of Laverne's latest boyfriend, who said he won't show her his "snake" unless she shows him her "purse."  This is just a hint of the innuendos that are about to fly like Squiggy's moths.

Laverne goes out on her date and Shirley falls asleep while watching Twin Kitchens, a soap opera, on the bedroom TV set, and of course she has a soap-operatic dream, about the Baublenik family.  Frank plays billionaire Fritz Baublenik, while Squiggy is his son, Sqven, and Shirley is his daughter-in-law, Sharlene.  Already, we see that Shirley's subconscious is shuffling around reality, and we're only getting started here.

Sqven and Sharlene are, the persistent narrator tells us, celebrating "their fifth and deliriously happy wedding anniversary."  Before you go, So, wait, Shirley is secretly a Squigley shipper?!, things get shaken up further.  Laverne slinks in as Lu Ann Del Duit, Sqven's "very personal secretary."  She pushes Sharlene into I presume the soup course and plants one on Sqven.  (If there are previous scenes where Laverne initiates a kiss with Squiggy, I'm blanking out on them.)

"Then there was Leonardo de Chevy," which I almost thought was going to be a time-traveler's Leonardo DiCaprio joke.  He's the "family's loyal if clumsy chauffeur."  He sits down at the dinner table and spills a drink, so Sharlene dries him off, and he says, "Thank you, Missy."

And lastly, there's Rhoda the Maid, "Fritz's favorite handy-person."  (If you're wondering where Carmine is, be patient.)  She is of course Rhonda in a French maid's uniform, and she offers "a nice, young Beaujolais," but Fritz tells her, "Later.  Right now I'd like some wine."  So Fronda is a thing after all, at least in characters' subconsciouses.

Lu Ann proposes a toast to "the happy couple," who pretend to bill and coo.  Fritz thinks "the lovebirds need a little time to themselves," so Sqven and Lu Ann make out, at the table (!), and Sharlene and Leonardo look like they're about to do the same.  Fritz explains he means Sqven and Sharlene, so they go back to pretending to bill and coo.

SHARLENE: Oh, My Darling, I've never known such happiness.  Have you ever known such happiness?
SQVEN: Only once, My Dear.  And that was in an airport in Tacoma.

(Michael McKean can be spotted trying not to laugh as Leonardo hides behind a potted palm, so either this was an ad-lib by Lander, or the delivery got to his long-time comedy partner.  I found it hilarious myself, but then I've been to SeaTac.)

As Sqven heads upstairs, he and Sharlene exchange endearments, but as soon as he's gone, she calls him a doorknob, declares her unhappiness, and starts making out with Leonardo.  He even makes out with her hand when she says she can't go on like this, "under Sqven's watchful eye."  He suggests, "How about under the piano?"  And they kiss passionately.

She tells him that the only way they can live happily ever after is if she dies.  He asks if a divorce wouldn't be easier, but she says that Sqven would never agree to a divorce because it would "smear the good name of Baublenik."  She suspects that her husband has been sharing his "honor" with "that hussy secretary of his."  Lu Ann enters unseen and starts taking down notes of Sharlene's plot.

Leonardo worries that Sharlene passing away would put a crimp in their relationship, but she tells her "little jellybean" how she's going to fake her death.  She'll get a drug from Carlisle the pharmacist (guess who) that will put her out for two or three days.  She and Leonardo kiss again and then she tells him to bury her with all her jewelry, so they can live off of it when they run away together.  She asks him if he's ever known such happiness, and he replies, "Just once.  In a bus station in Tacoma."  She remembers it well and they leave to "go relive it."

Sqven emerges from upstairs and he and Lu Ann call each other Darling and Dear several times.  Then he jumps on her with his legs wrapped around her, which Laverne sometimes does to guys.  (Marshall must be pretty strong, because she holds Lander a good 25 seconds.)  And they kiss passionately.

LU ANN: Ah, alone at last!
SQVEN: What are you talking about?  I'm here.

She sets him down and tells him that she just overheard his wife planning to run off with his chauffeur.  Even though you can see the line coming, Lander sells "Oh, no, this is terrible!  Good chauffeurs are so hard to find."  (And I'm pretty sure he cracks up Marshall, too, although she's able to play off her amused smile as affection.)

Lu Ann tells Sqven that she'll drive him anywhere he wants to go.  He says she really understands him, and they kiss again.  He says he loves her and she calls him her "little sugar tart."  She says they need a plan, and she kisses him again.  He says he "can't come up with a thing," and then, ahem, the organ plays a note, and he reacts like something has indeed come up.  She says she has a plan, but kisses him instead of telling him what it is.  (The communication in their relationship is apparently not as strong as in Sharlene & Leonardo's.)  The narrator, who's been quiet for awhile, wonders, "What evil lurks behind Lu Ann's lips?"

The scene with Carlisle is the weakest part of the episode, although it's not bad.  Lu Ann manages to order a more lethal drug, and Carlisle refers to a lot of what I suspect are '60s-era commercials.  At least Laverne wears a stunning leopard-print outfit.  (And poor Carmine wears a hairnet.  Sometimes you have to wonder why Mekka stuck around.)

We return to Twin Kitchens Manor.  (The interior is the girls' apartment, the exterior is some white building in what I'm guessing is the Hollywood Hills.)  Sharlene reminds Leonardo of their plan and slips the drugs she's had delivered into her own drink.  Lu Ann enters and Sharlene tells her she's certainly dressed to kill.  She also says that Lu Ann's "unusual" earrings are very her.  Lu Ann tells her, "I used to have a purse just like that.  How very me also."  (It is in fact the blue purse that Shirley has lost, resurfacing in her dream.)

Lu Ann spills Sharlene's drink, and then, as Sharlene and Leonardo talk in whispers, Lu Ann doses another glass.  Sqven enters and almost drinks from that glass, so Lu Ann spills that glass, too.  As Sharlene and Leonardo again talk in whispers, Lu Ann does yet another glass, as Sqven watches closely.

The more traditional pairs, but that's not what Shirley dreams about.

Lu Ann tries to serve that drink to Sharlene, but Sharlene excuses herself and Leonardo so she can speak to him about "motor mountings."  They step aside and he watches as she doses her drink.  Then she drinks her drink and collapses to the floor.  Lu Ann yells, "There'll be one less for dinner tonight, Rhoda!"

In the next scene, Sharlene is lying on a chaise longue.  Sqven enters and seems genuinely upset, although as soon as he says, "To see you lying there, not moving," you know he's going to say it reminds him of their honeymoon.  Lu Ann enters and tells him to stop kissing up to Sharlene, "kiss up to me."  He obliges.  An angered and conscious Sharlene pushes on Lu Ann's head, and then Lu Ann tells Sqven, "I love it when you're rough."  He replies, "So do I."  She reminds him of when he danced on her back with his golf shoes and then we get a few double entendres about golf: "tee off," "stuck in the sand trap," and his "putter."

They exit behind the curtain and we cut to the funeral.  (Eulogist Paul Barselou previously was a Mailman, while Narrator Harvey L. Kahn was Dickie.)  We hear Sqven making sounds of pleasure, and it turns out he again jumped onto Lu Ann with his legs around her.  They enter from behind the curtain and it looks like either she gave him hickeys, or her lipstick is really dark.

The Eulogist rhetorically asks, "What can you say about Sharlene Baublenik?"  Squiggy eagerly answers, "She's dead!" and the other "mourners" tell him, "Good answer!", like this is Family Feud.  (McKean can again be spotted breaking character, a character he's been playing with serious intensity almost throughout, because his buddy amuses him.)  The Eulogist gives up, says, "Amen," and leaves.

Rhoda wants to go play "Attila the Hun and the slave girl" with Fritz.  He tells her that first they have to pay their last respects, which he does literally, by dropping money onto the "corpse," to bribe St. Peter with.

Leonardo tells "Missy" he enjoyed driving her around, and she says she wants her money back from Carlisle the pharmacist.  She tells him to gas up the Edsel so they can "blow this jerkwater town."  He objects that he's already put gas in the Cadillac, but she says she's died for him and the least he can do is "suck a little gas" for her.  He irritably says, "Yes, Missy!"

Then it's the grieving husband's turn.  He calls her his "little swan song" and confides that he was only unfaithful "once.  A week.  For five years."  Then Lu Ann and Rhoda fight over Sharlene's jewelry.

Fritz breaks up the fight and says that the family has been living a lie.  Rhoda thinks this is about them "seeing each other."  Sqven asks if his father knows about him and Lu Ann.  Fritz doesn't mean that either.

LU ANN: You mean you know that I poisoned Sharlene?
FRITZ: You what??
LU ANN: (quietly) I guess not.
SHARLENE: (sitting up) You mean you know I'm not dead?

Everyone is shocked, even Leonardo.  Sqven says, "Oh, no!  Oh, no!  Oh, it's good to see you up and around again, Darling."  (Marshall almost breaks character again, darting her tongue out to keep from laughing.)

Fritz says that these are the wrong lies.  He reveals, "You are all my children," obviously a reference to the famous soap, but with a very twisted application here.  The two young couples part in shock and disgust.  At least they didn't know they were committing incest, but what are we to make of Fritz when Rhoda wails, "Oh, Papa!  Oh, Papa!"

LEONARDO: You mean to say that we've all...?
SHARLENE: With each other?
FRITZ: (cheerfully) Yeah!
LU ANN: More than once?
FRITZ: Sure.
SQVEN: (putting his arms around his wife and mistress) Hey, lighten up, Sisters.  We had a good time.

Now of course this is disgusting, but it's also funny, and sort of in character.  Leonardo is implying that they've all been together (homosexually as well?), because Lenny is (at least in Shirley's subconscious) both awkward about sex and surprisingly open-minded.  (When Helmut called him a "fruitcake" for wanting to hug Squiggy's long-lost father, Lenny just reacted to the rudeness, not the homophobia.)  Shirley, who usually can't accept the idea of Lenny and Squiggy paired with either her or Laverne, concentrates on the "each other" part.  Laverne, who's always been ambivalent about her "bimbo-ness," emphasizes the "more than once," like it's the frequency that matters.   (Once, a week, for five years.)  And Squiggy, who is obviously the biggest pervert on the show, literally embraces the idea.

Sharlene pushes Sqven away and says that her own sister tried to kill her.  Lu Ann says sisters are always doing "petty" little things to each other.  She points out that Sharlene stole her blue purse, and then the other characters take up the accusation.

Shirley awakens from her nightmare and it turns out that Laverne found the purse on the floor after rolling off the couch during her date.  It's got Shirley's "lucky Bible" and her "figure enhancers" (socks) inside.  Shirley fervently apologizes and Laverne says it's OK.  Shirley says that borrowing leads to lying, which leads to poisoning, which leads to murder.  So Laverne calls her a "baublenik," meaning "an airhead, a silly person."  Shirley asks if Laverne has been eavesdropping on her dreams.  And thus ends the episode and the season.

I don't know if this was the last episode shot, but it should've been, offering as it does a topsy-turvy view of the relationships we've come to know over seven years.  (Well, two for anything to do with Rhonda.)  The ships are shuffled and somehow plausible.  And whatever offscreen rivalry Penny M. and Cindy W. felt is dealt with onscreen in the exaggerated world of a soap opera.

I haven't talked about physical comedy much on this blog, which I realize is odd, considering that that's what this series is best known for.  It's partly that slapstick doesn't appeal to me much compared to verbal humor, and partly that I think a lot of the physical humor hasn't aged well.  I can still appreciate the skill with which it's done, and there are some good sight gags here, especially with Leonardo's clumsiness.

I feel like the main foursome are very strong in this episode, as individuals and as a group.  (How Williams kept from cracking up at Lander, I'll never know.)  That they had to essentially form a brand-new dynamic and sustain it for approximately fifteen minutes is impressive.  Foster is probably the weakest actor on the episode (Mekka has weaker material), although making Frank an amiable billionaire is certainly casting against type.

Everyone, cast and crew, originally agreed that Season Seven would be their last, so this would've been a strange but satisfying episode to go out on.  Laverne & Shirley was a respectable #20 in the ratings that year.  (Happy Days was somehow #18, while nurse Terri brought Three's Company back up to #4.)

My grades for the season range from C- to this surprising B+, and for the first time this series averages a C+ rather than a B-, although it's a high C+.  An episode like "Perfidy" reminds me how good the show can be when it gives us farce, and a chance for L, L, S, and S to cut loose.  At the same time, there is definitely a conflict this season, I'd almost call it growing pains (no, not Growing Pains), with the "girls" and "boys" growing older, dealing with the past, not sure how to move on into the future.  It would've been interesting if they had pursued either path, or both, in Season Eight.

But, as we all know, Cindy Williams fell for the Bill Hudson razzle-dazzle show, and nothing was ever the same again....