"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....

"Crime Isn't Pretty"

"Crime Isn't Pretty"
May 4, 1982
C+

For a few weeks, Joanie Loves Chachi was the Happy Days spin-off in the 8:30 Tuesday slot.  (It would return to the air for a half season in the Fall.)  When Laverne & Shirley came back, we got this episode that feels like an unconscious preview of the cast of much of Season Eight, with the girls only at the beginning and end, and Lenny completely absent, although referred to.  It's not a bad episode, and I was amused by Carmine reading Shirley's diary only to find romantic passages about himself, as well as, again, some of Squiggy's lines.  Note that Frank served in Italy in World War II, when Laverne would've been a little girl.  And Squiggy is still lusting after Rhonda, kissing her to the shock of policemen.

One of the Policemen, Bob McClurg, had an unknown role on "The Horse Show."  Alan Aidekman wrote this episode with newbie Nick LeRose, who'd do three scripts for the final season.

"Lightning Man"

"Lightning Man"
March 16, 1982
C+

Despite a somewhat stupid premise (it barely worked on Gilligan's Island in the actual 1967), I sort of like this episode where Carmine is struck by lightning and becomes convinced, by Squiggy, that he's invincible.  Even after Frank talks sense to him, it takes awhile for him to, well, see the light.  Still, I like some of Squiggy's lines, and Laverne finding Carmine's "tingling, vibrating" charm too irresistible, so that she has to kiss him after Shirley gets a try.  It's too bad that the girls disappear after that first scene, so we never get Shirley's reaction to Carmine's vanity and greed.  At least we get some insight into the Carmine & Squiggy friendship.

Note that Lenny is only in the tag, wearing a different Lightning Man costume.  Murphy Dunne, who was a nameless Reporter four years earlier, is Del Diamond here.  Dottie Archibald, who's Mrs. Swisher, would be "Reporter Karen" the next year.  And Noah Hathaway, who's Kevin Swisher, would play Harry Potter, Jr. in Troll (1986), and this episode not only contains references to lightning, but the newscaster predicts that Carmine might turn into a wizard!

"That's Entertainment"

"That's Entertainment"
March 9, 1982
B

This episode is definitely less notable for the only L & S script by either Etan McElroy or Larry Strawther than for the musical performances and of course shipping fodder up the wazoo.

We start with the unusual spectacle of Carmine singing "It's Not Unusual," very Vegasly, as sort of an audition for Frank, in the girls' apartment, while they're working late.  This is odd because, one, Frank, looks visibly uncomfortable; two, they could've held the audition at Cowboy Bill's; three, the audition is for the "second anniversary" of Frank managing Cowboy Bill's, which muddies an already sticky tar-pit of a timeline; and four, Carmine has no reason to audition when he used to sing regularly at the Pizza Bowl. However, it does prepare us for more bizarre even by early '80s standards "entertainment" that is, in spite of itself, entertaining.  (OK, there is one genuinely marvelous scene, in or out of context, but I'll get to that.)

Frank and Carmine argue about new and old entertainment for most of the rest of the episode, a lame frame, but I'll take it in the absence of a Shotz Talent Show or any more plausible device.  It does bring up the question of whose fantasy sequences these are: Frank's? Carmine's? Both?  Neither?  In some cases we can guess, in some it doesn't matter, and in others, well, I'm going to go with the collective consciousness of the L & S fandom.

Season Seven has mostly been a blur in checking it against my memories of the time, but I do kinda sorta remember Rhonda's version(s) of "Blue Moon."*  Frank says "Something like," as the lead-in, but the "doot doot doo" version is presumably Carmine's part of the fantasy.

Frank is the one to rave over the Dr. Kronkite comedy routine, which is gender-flipped with Shirley as the leering doctor and Carmine as her sex-object nurse.  So Frank ships Shirmine, and in a somewhat smutty way?  Note that this is not played as sexual harassment, since when the doctor wants to take the patient's blood pressure, Carmine tells her to take anything she wants, and it's clear he's a willing participant throughout, even when she has him bend over, twice.

I suppose that I should mention that there's an impatient customer that Carmine has to wait on.  I'm not clear why he's working as a waiter, but like I said, the frame is weak.

The next sequence I guess belongs to Mr. DeFazio, too, since he raves about Eleanor Powell and then his daughter shows off her dancing skills with Carmine.  If dancing is symbolic of sex and/or love, then Mr. DeFazio does not ship Carverne.  Laverne and Carmine dance parallel more than together in the sense of touch-dancing, and there's a set of shots that, if I recall correctly, would pop up in the next year's opening credits, which at the time I called Laverne & Laverne (which we'll get to).  I'm not saying Marshall & Mekka have no chemistry together, but I mean it seems to be more about the joy of dancing with another highly skilled dancer than about flirting, especially after the doctor sketch.

The dance is the first sequence that really clicks and then it's followed by one of my favorite Lenny & Squiggy numbers, although an atypical one for them.  To begin with, "Call the Police" is a cover song, and they are not playing as Lenny & the Squigtones (if such a band still exists after the California move).  Not only that, but they are actually outshone by their (very early-1980s-looking) back-up band, especially on that exquisite opening, where the drums, sax, bass, and piano tease the listener, and the boys seem perfectly happy to be "taken home" and made to "feel good" by their band.  They get more and more into the song, going from professorial instruction** to sheer release, only to be arrested at the end, with Squiggy closing out with "Call the police?"

Pics are below, but this is still really easy to find on Youtube if you don't own the episode.  (I've had days where I just play it a half dozen times in a row.)

The last number is a six-and-a-half-minute opera, or I guess operetta.  By any objective standard, it's pretty bad, and even at fourteen I probably cringed.  But as a shipping smorgasbord, it's hard to beat.  The "plot," which I guess could be a collaboration of opera-hating Frank and opera-singing Carmine, is that sisters Mimi and Brunhilda will be evicted if they don't either come up with the rent or agree to marry their evil landlord, the Baron Squigliacci, and his not as evil assistant, Leonard Feather.  You know how the pairings go by now, and you probably know that Mimi (Shirley) believes, "We surely know that if we married you, the day would come when we would rue it."  This is similar to Laverne's dream in "2001: A Comedy Odyssey," but Laverne (at least in whoever's fantasy this is) has had enough of package deals.  A little wooing from Mr. Feather, and Brunhilda tells Mimi to sing for herself. 

Then Carmine shows up as a clown, Mimi's "beloved Carmine," and the fencing champion of France.  He fights and kills Squigliacci, and Leonard says, "I never cared much for him anyway." The surviving six pair off-- including Frank & Rhonda!-- and they go into the finale.  One censor-bait line, when they sing of having to go, is "We have to pull out, quit, retire, withdraw."  (Opera interruptus?)  And Squigliacci comes back from the dead.

Now, as much as I can remember after almost 38 years, I think I knew that there was this weird opera in the episode, but I couldn't catch the lines at the time (unfortunately lip-synched by the cast, although they do their own dialogue, including Laverne's not-even-trying-not-to-sound-Brooklyn "Squigliacci's dead").  Even today I had to turn on the subtitles to get them.  But this is an opera to watch more than to listen to, so here you go, Pic Spam City!

Taking the ships in reverse order of interest:

• Um, Fronda?  Not gonna happen, even after Edna officially leaves him.  Besides the age difference (and Frank is a very old 56), they have nothing in common and normally hardly interact.  If this is Frank's fantasy, then he wants to cheat on Edna, and if it's Carmine's fantasy, I don't know where he's going with this.
• Squiggy appears to be the last Squigley shipper standing, with Lenny here almost as eager as Laverne to break out of the package deal.
• If this is Carmine's fantasy, then of course the forces of good and Shirmine must defeat the wicked Squigliacci, even if the "dead man" manages to hold hands with the prospective bride.  Carmine and Shirley smooch, but they got more action (and more focus) in the doctor sketch.
• It is not just shipper's bias that makes Lavenny reign supreme, in a season with sadly too many episodes that can't even put Lenny and Laverne in the same room.  Only McKean and Marshall could wear ridiculous costumes and somehow come across as not only "adorable and sweet," but, well, pretty sexy, like they can't wait to take advantage of each other.  (Note that in the opening, Brunhilda comes home from a date where her boyfriend "sat on her horn," more of that reverse Freudianism that we get sometimes with Laverne.)  Leonard seems to blow in her ear, and soon they progress to nose-rubs.  Then his boss dies and, instead of mourning, he caresses her face, a little like on "I Do, I Do."  They embrace and kiss for at least twenty seconds, and unlike the Mimi/Carmine (Carmimi ship?) kiss over the "corpse," we can see their faces and his hands.  They are also more scantily clad than anyone else onstage, which includes Rhonda for a change.  After their kiss, with her trying to spit out one of his feathers, they sing of their future.

BRUNHILDA: I know that we will have a happy life.
LEONARD: You'll make a very fine and feathered wife.
BOTH: We'll have a child or two or three or four.  And when we've had our fourth, we'll try for more.

Sounds like she's going to be covered with a lot of feathers.

And the episode ends with Frank declaring that "old food" is better than new, because this is Season Seven and the normal rules don't apply.


*I just checked, and the Three's Company episode that night, "Critic's Choice," is hardly one of my favorites, even for that season, while I seem to have blessedly blocked out most of the ninth season of Happy Days, to the point that an episode from two weeks earlier, "Hello, Flip," in which "Roger's irresponsible, younger brother comes to town to straighten out his life," is a complete blank to me.  (I can tell you that Roger was played by Ted "You know your show is on its last legs when you hire this guy" McGinley, so if they were already throwing in his brother, Season Nine must've been truly pathetic.)  I digress, but so does this episode.

**We're informed that Nat King Cole released the song in October of 1941, when "little Chuck Berry" was only 10 years old, and thirteen years before the invention of rock & roll.  Well, an online discography has the song on a December 1940 NKC album, although I guess it could've been a single the next year.  Oh, and Chuck Berry was a not so little 15 in 1941.  As for the invention of rock & roll, yeah, I guess if you want to say "Sh Boom" or whatever kicked things off, but isn't '55 or even '56 the more standard launch into the mainstream?  Is this Carmine's error or Lenny & Squiggy's?  And, OK, these are hardly the biggest timeline mistakes in this series.  Perhaps I shouldn't care about "such distinguishments."