"Blansky's Beauties," Episode Number Eight

"Nancy Meets Laverne" aired on April 9th and here's a running commentary (time-marks may be approximate):

00:17 "I'm Laverne DeFazio and tonight I'm one of the Blansky [sic] Beauties."

02:00 Written by Roger Garrett and directed by (once again) Jerry Paris.

02:18 Scott Baio hits on Lynda Goodfriend again, with his character being twelve as a selling point.

04:14 Marvin the Bellhop returns.

04:46 Shirtless Eddie

05:25 Flashback begins with the "Welcome Milwaukee Visitors" tower.

05:31 "1957" appears on the screen!  So Laverne is nineteenish, right?

05:47 Nancy, with a '50s hairstyle but otherwise not de-aged is greeted in her hotel room by Frank DeFazio.

06:00 Frank is smoking a cigar!  Also, he's running the benefit that she's in town for.

06:30 "Incidentally, my daughter, Laverne, is a good dancer, you know."

07:38 Laverne walks in and of course the crowd goes crazy.

08:10 Laverne is starstruck, by Nancy.

08:50 Nancy was a big Broadway star?  How did I miss that earlier?

09:35 Laverne wants an autograph for her "best friend, Shirley Feeney."

10:10 Laverne is imitating Señor Wences.

10:44 "I just got my first part-time job, down at the brewery."  So it was only part-time then?

10:50 They started her off as a barrel-roller, but she hopes to be promoted to either bottle-capper or labeller.  Also, she's taking a stenography class.

11:02 Nancy offers her a job as secretary.

13:00 Penny and Nancy have decent comic chemistry together and I wonder what they could've done with stronger material.

13:43 Laverne offers to drive Nancy to the rehearsal hall, although she admits she drives "not real good."  Canonically, Laverne at this point is afraid to drive and does not yet have her license in '57.

13:46 Laverne admits she can't drive at all.

14:40 "Pfister Convention Center Sons of Sicily Benefit for Underprivileged Children"

14:43 Frank is hosting.

16:16 Nancy's dance partner, a male butcher, can't go on because his shop caught on fire, so it'll have to be Laverne.

16:57 When Laverne reluctantly agrees, she asks if she can sew an L on the costume.

17:27 Fortunately, the costume fits perfectly.

17:33 "Nancy Blansky and my little muffin."

17:44 "Fit as a Fiddle" from Singin' in the Rain

19:32 Nancy invites Laverne to Vegas, which of course would've eliminated Laverne & Shirley.

21:05 Laverne doesn't want to go to Vegas.  She's going to stay in Milwaukee and work in the brewery.

21:34 Laverne plans to get a roommate and move out and then meet a fella and move out to get married and have a family life.  But by this point, more than six months after graduation, Laverne should be living with Shirley already, according to not-yet-aired canon.  And we know it would actually be "...Get fired from the brewery, move with my roommate and our best friends to California.  And then she'll marry a guy completely covered in bandages, get pregnant, and she'll move out."

22:51 Back to the present.

23:14 Joey has to decide if he wants Cochise more than dancing.

23:33 Joey bites his hand!

23:50 Nancy encourages him to take a break from dedication.

24:42 Nancy gets eaten by an inflatable raft.

Maybe a C+, I don't know.  Not bad for this series, but not on the level of Season Two of LAS.

"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!

"The Fashion Show"

"The Fashion Show"
February 1, 1983
C+

The last L & S episode written by Al Aidekman and Marc Sotkin, and the next to last written by Roger Garrett, has potential it doesn't live up to but, yes, it's not bad for Season Eight.  Laverne's fashion photographer boyfriend, Mike Bailey (Larry Breeding, as presumably the same character he was on "Window on Main Street," although this Mike has been dating Laverne only four weeks), has to flatter and flirt with his models, so Laverne gets very jealous, despite his reassurances.  Inevitably, she has to cover for the model she makes quit, and it goes disastrously, or does it?  Note that Mike likes Laverne because she's "real," and yet she never confesses that the chicken dinner came out of a fast-food bucket.

Speaker Kit McDonough, with her distinctive voice, was Julie the Stewardess in "Airport '59."  Guard Robert Arcaro was a nameless Man the season before.  This time Anjelica Houston plays Miss Paris, although I didn't recognize her.  And Joanna Kerns is unmistakable, if miscast, as spoiled model Monique, a couple years before Growing Pains.

"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.

"Helmut Weekend"

"Helmut Weekend"
March 2, 1982
B-

This Roger-Garrett-written story is better than the Joey Heatherton episode, although similar in that much of it is set in the boys' apartment and focuses on them.  It is also more serious than usual, especially for Season Seven, and gives Lander more to work with than usual.  However, I don't think Laverne and Shirley, or for that matter Rhonda, are integrated well into the episode, although we do get Rhonda giving Lenny a huge kiss (Lenda?) to prove she's not "cold."

Squiggy's father, Helmut, shows up after abandoning him twenty years ago, when Squiggy was nine.  I don't know if this has been addressed before (in the way that we've heard more than once about Lenny's mother's abandonment), but I do recall that Squiggy was living with his mother and stepfather in the early episodes, before getting a place with Lenny.  I think I had assumed that Squiggy's dad was dead.  It turns out that he looks, and dresses, much like Squiggy, but he's a con artist, without Squiggy's conscience.  Lenny tells us that Squiggy's grandfather was a bootlegger and his great-grandfather a pirate, so I guess each generation of Squigman is an improvement.

Squiggy hopes to finally do something with his father, but he's torn when his father wants to kick Lenny out of the talent agency and team up with him instead.  It turns out that his dad just wants to "borrow" money from the latest client.  Squiggy, as painful as it is, says goodbye to his father.  McKean, by the way, has less to do, but he has some dramatic moments as well.  I don't think the tonal mix is as good as it is on some of the more serious episodes, like "Why Did the Fireman?", but this is certainly one of the better episodes of Season Seven.

Mailman Paul Barselou would be a Eulogist later in the season.

"Love Is the Tar Pits"

"Love Is the Tar Pits"
January 12, 1982
B-

This episode, written by Roger Garrett, is better than most of Season Seven so far, although it's another one focused on Lenny and Squiggy.  Lenny meets and quickly falls in love with a graduate student named Karen.  She finds him sweet, funny, and special.  However, Squiggy is jealous and wishes Karen would go away.  She does, to Columbia University.  There are some more nice insights into Lenny & Squiggy's friendship.  And I feel like Lenny's relationship with Karen is better defined than, for instance, Laverne's was with David.  The rest of the cast is used fairly well, although the balance still isn't quite right.  But, yeah, not at all bad for Season Seven.

Robert Arcaro, who plays the Man (presumably the one that Lenny sends to Laverne's apartment), would play a Guard the next season.

"Night at the Awards"

"Night at the Awards"
November 24, 1981
C+

After hardly anything of Lenny and Squiggy in the last few episodes, we suddenly get too much of them in this Roger Garrett story.  Don't get me wrong, I liked finally seeing their Burbank apartment (#113 1/4, while the girls are in 113 1/2) and I liked the insights into their friendship, like how Lenny is grateful for Squiggy sticking around when Lenny's mother deserted him when he was five.  Even the stuff about Lenny and Squiggy trying to cast their movie, Blood Orgy of the Amazons, is interesting. 

But even 38 years ago, I couldn't work up any enthusiasm over the appearance of Joey Heatherton as herself, and I felt like the boys trying to meet her at the awards, and all the stuff about Squiggy stealing from Lenny and then trying to hide it, went on too long.  Also, compared to Lenny & Squiggy-filled episodes like "The Driving Test" and "You've Pushed Me Too Far," it's just not that funny.  It feels strange to say, but I sort of wanted Laverne and Shirley to burst in saying, "Hello," or at least participate more than very peripherally.  (Rhonda is in it more, although she's not bad here.)  Hopefully, the season will balance the cast better as we continue.

I'm assuming it's an in-joke that Kim Sudol, who plays Bridget, was a Dancer in Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1973).

"Born Too Late"

It takes two to Tango.

"Born Too Late"
January 27, 1981
C+

Roger Garrett wrote this episode that's mostly composed of Lenny & Squiggy imagining themselves into silent-movie vignettes, most of them on the existing California sets.  The episode isn't bad but it feels off to be so different even from the other California episodes.  Note that the boys wear their old jackets (Lone Wolf and leather) I think for the first time this season, maybe to contrast more with their movie costumes.

"The Survival Test"

"The Survival Test"
March 11, 1980
C

Richard Gurman's only L & S story, which inspired the Aidekman & Garrett teleplay, has Sgt. Plout return from Greenland and get the girls to agree to help her prove that WACs are capable soldiers, by dropping them into the snowy wilderness.  There were moments when I thought this was a shade better than the first Plout episode, including Lawrence's material (like her tale of a "brief and brutal affair"), but it was hard for me to get past the fact that L & S were in this situation only because of Plout, including her dropping the bag with their food into a river! 

Note that the rest of the regular cast doesn't appear in this episode, except for Laverne's hallucination of Lenny and Squiggy in shorts and offering her a fifteen-pound turkey.  Also, this is at least the fourth episode this season where Laverne refers to "monkey nerves," although this time Shirley cures them with a banana.  Freud would probably have more fun analyzing this episode than I did.

"Why Did the Fireman?"

"Why Did the Fireman?"
February 4, 1980
B

Roger Garrett wrote this episode where Laverne falls in love with a fireman named Randy Carpenter (32-year-old Ted Danson, still a few years away from Cheers).  The two are infatuated on their first date, and then we jump ahead a couple months and he's ready to propose.  But they keep being interrupted, and then he dies in a fire before he can keep their date.  So, while Danson is fine in the role, we don't really get to know much about him or their romance, and this is more about how Laverne and her friends react to his death.

It's an interesting touch having Lenny and Squiggy be the ones to break the news to Laverne.  We've seen on previous episodes that the boys love to play fireman, and here they're happy to tag along to the fire.  But they are broken by Randy's death, yes, even the usually less emotional Squiggy.  When Laverne cries, "I love you!", Lenny reacts as if she's talking to him, but he's actually not jealous of Randy, and in fact tells Laverne that they liked Randy.  She thinks it's a sick joke, and the boys have been established as having sick senses of humor, but she should realize that this isn't something they would joke about.  On some level, she does realize that, but she has trouble moving out of the denial stage of grief, even when Shirley tells her.

Edna, who I assume has just been divorced, never widowed, doesn't know what to say, but Frank does, because he has also asked why about the loss of a loved one.  He tells Laverne he's never lied to her, so when he says it, backed up by a newspaper story about Randy's heroic death, she has to believe it.  Penny M. of course does great with the range of emotions, but the supporting cast, well, supports her. 

My favorite scene is actually when Randy tells Carmine and Shirley about his plan to propose, swearing them to secrecy, and Shirley can hardly contain herself.  This is very different than "Falter at the Altar," where Shirley didn't approve of Laverne marrying Sal Malina after two months, although there the problem was that she knew that Laverne wasn't in love with Sal.  Here she is thrilled about Laverne's romance, although clearly jealous of the public displays of affection.

I don't know what, if any, fallout the loss of Randy will have on Laverne in the remaining three and a third seasons, but I do know that Laverne will fall in love again, but probably never with this much openness and trust.

"Fat City Holiday"

"Fat City Holiday"
September 27, 1979
C+

I'm not a fan of the two-friends-go-to-a-health-spa-run-by-psychos plot, as seen on Ellen in '95 and (much worse) Roseanne in '96.  In this case, in Roger Garrett's story, Laverne and Shirley aren't even customers, they're trainees, so they have even more reason to leave.  Still, the Lenny & Squiggy appearance helped, and I did smile at the sequence where the girls break into the locker filled with forbidden food.  Note that this episode is set over Columbus Day Weekend.

In the Three Degrees of Garry Marshall game, Donovan Scott, who's Rollo here, would the following year appear as Castor Oyl in Robin Williams's Popeye.

"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.