"The Baby Show"

Just a thought: couldn't Laverne have claimed to
be, say, three months pregnant?  Who would know?

"The Baby Show"
January 18, 1983
C

Judy Pioli's last L & S script is OK I guess, especially for Season Eight, but when it gets to the point of a divorced Sgt. Plout giving birth on top of a coffin, you know that any resemblance to reality (even sitcom reality) has long been abandoned.  Still, any episode that jokes that a baby looks like Squiggy is going to make me smile.  Oh, and I'm not sure if Alvinia having to bathe a pig doll is a reference to the L & S cartoon, but I'm going to assume it is.

Besides Lawrence's farewell to L & S, this is the last bow for other repeat guest stars.  Timothy Blake's third and final role on the show is Gail, Neil Thompson's fourth and final is the Funeral Director, William Sumper's fifth and final is Morry, and Lynne Marie Stewart's seventh and final is Marsha.

"Out, Out Damn Plout"

"Out, Out Damn Plout"
May 5, 1981
C+

As "Plout" episodes go, this one written by Paula A. Roth isn't bad, and it does give Vicki Lawrence a chance to sing*.  However, I kept thinking I knew where things were going to go and it turned out that these were just filler subplots.  First I thought Rhonda was going to give her a makeover and/or fix her up with someone, not that that necessarily would've been funnier, but I could picture it.  And I thought that when Squiggy gives himself a makeover as a blond Preppie, Plout would fall for him, which could've been hilarious.  Instead we're supposed to believe that Laverne and Shirley could find wigs and costumes that fit them so they can provide back-up at the nightclub and somehow distract the MPs.  (And they wear the outfits home!)

Marlene Laird didn't direct any other L & S episodes.

*One of her first episodes had Plout refer to "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," while here Shirley makes a Carol Burnett reference.

"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.

"We're in the Army Now"

She'll be back, yay?

"We're in the Army Now"
November 15, 1979
C

This Franklin & Ervin story shows that the series was trying to mix things up in the sense of keeping them fresh, but I'm afraid that this one-hour special mixes them up in the sense of not getting what makes the series work.  The girls have been at Shotz for five years with no promotion, a company record, while the boys have been promoted from truck drivers to semi-truck drivers, because they're "semi good."  The girls decide to join the Army, even though Shirley describes herself as nonviolent.  (We even see her with a daisy in her gun barrel, like it's the late '60s rather than the early '60s.)  They screw things up and then succeed too well, so that they have to try for a Section Eight to get out.  Luckily, they can now go into the Reserves (like Lenny, although it's not mentioned).

They at first have a pushover sergeant, but then they meet Sgt. Alvinia T. Plout.  I generally like Vicki Lawrence and she's certainly giving it her all.  Unfortunately, she hasn't really been given anything funny to do.  The highlight of the episode is of course when the boys, eager to help get the girls out of their uniforms (cue the leering and hand-biting), bring in a "Trojan Horse" that looks like a Shetland pony.  I just don't understand why, even for a one-hour special, the girls would be taken away from their able supporting cast, and into a hackneyed situation. 

Now, I can take or leave Army comedies.  I enjoyed the sitcoms Bilko and of course M*A*S*H, and I recently found Biloxi Blues better than expected, but I don't feel like Franklin & Ervin do anything fresh here.  It's as if just putting Laverne & Shirley in the Army is supposed to automatically make us laugh, but it didn't work for me then or now.  In fact, I remember being less than thrilled at 13 to see that this episode inspired the Laverne & Shirley cartoon, although there their sergeant was a pig.  (OK, voiced by Ron "Horshack" Palillo, but even so.)  I guess I can just be glad that the regular series didn't stay in the Army.



The Blue Team contains, among others, Susan Barnes, Joie Magidow and Ruth Silveira, who previously were Adele Harrison, Fish Trainer, and Karen respectively, while Frances Peach of the Red Team was Mary before.  Doris Hess was Dolores and is Sgt. Shannon here, while Julia Payne was Charmayne and is Colonel Turner here.