"Schlemiel, Schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!" - "Laverne &" Shirley opening credits
Laverne & Shirley: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Christopher W. Czajka
Late in 1975, Happy Days' Richie Cunningham and the Fonz went out on a double date with two salt-of-the-earth Milwaukee girls. By the following spring, these two women - Laverne DeFazio (Penny Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams) - had spun off into their own sitcom, an immediate ratings juggernaut that established ABC's Tuesday night line-up as the "must-see TV" of the mid 1970s. Premiering as a mid-season replacement in January 1976, Laverne & Shirley shot to the top of the ratings, beating out Happy Days and becoming the third highest-rated show of the 1975-1976 season. Cyndi Grecco's infectiously optimistic theme song, "Making Our Dreams Come True," rocketed onto the music charts. In the years since its premiere, the show's opening sequence has entered the cultural lexicon. Laverne & Shirley became one of the most successful - and beloved - sitcoms of the 1970s.
Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney are two young working-class women in late 1950s Milwaukee. To put it bluntly, their jobs are a joke, they're broke, and their love lives are DOA. The girls work on the bottlecapping assembly line in the Shotz Brewery, and live in a cheap-o basement apartment at 730 Kanap Street. Laverne is street-smart, short-tempered, and cynical, while Shirley is naive, idealistic, and sentimental. The girls live just down the street from the Pizza Bowl, a combination restaurant/bowling alley run by Laverne's bombastic father, Frank (Phil Foster). Their oddball, dimwitted greaser friends, Leonard "Lenny" Kolowski (Michael McKean) and Andrew "Squiggy" Squiggman (David L. Lander) are the ultimate bad penny neighbors, consistently turning up with the worst possible timing. Carmine Ragusa (Eddie Mekka), aka "The Big Ragu," Shirley's on-again, off-again boyfriend, rounds out the cast.
Relying heavily on broad physical and slapstick comedy, the series focuses on Laverne and Shirley's nonstop misadventures as they navigate being young, single, and "on their own." More than Happy Days, Three's Company, All in the Family, and other '70s comedies, Laverne & Shirley is the direct descendent of classic sitcoms like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. The series doesn't play up nostalgia, revel in sexual innuendo (sex is obliquely referred to as "vo-de-o-do-do"), or confront controversial political issues; instead, it relies on Marshall and Williams' impeccable comic timing and goofy physicality for laughs. Whether it's Laverne competing in a bowling tournament while heavily sedated on cold medicine ("Bowling for Razzberries"), the girls tending to a passed out deliveryman ("How Do You Say `Are You Dead' in German?"), or tracking down "the Milwaukee Masher" ("Fakeout at the Stakeout"), it's easy to see direct parallels between Laverne and Shirley and Lucy and Ethel. Like The Honeymooners, many of the episodes ultimately serve up a simple message or moral after all of the mayhem. Laverne and Shirley are constantly growing up and growing wiser. . .but rather than it being forced or trite, it comes across as sweet and endearing. Watching the first season, you realize how appropriate the catchy theme song is...no matter how wacky the hijinks, Laverne and Shirley are determined to make it...and you want them to do just that.
The series is made even more fun and enjoyable by some carefully constructed, expertly executed running gags. Every time there is a knock at the door, the girls dash to it, arm themselves with baseball bats, and Shirley hisses out, "Who is it?" The amount of comedy derived from the apartment door and the adjacent coat closet is mind-boggling. Like The Honeymooners, the series relies on the stars working with their simple physical environment for laughs. Simultaneously, the constant impromptu entrances of Lenny and Squiggy - always immediately preceded by a cheeky lead-in ("Nothing more awful could possibly happen today". . ."Hello!" ) - never fail to elicit chortles. It ain't Shakespeare, but it sure makes you laugh.
Lenny and Squiggy, as portrayed by Michael McKean and David Lander, are low comedy masterpieces. They are achingly stupid, lovable doofuses. Their deadpan delivery of random non sequiturs, mangled pronunciation, facial twitches, and dumb antics are a constant hoot.
Viewers who haven't seen the series in a while will be amazed by how much penny-pinching and budgeting Laverne and Shirley do. . .in the first season, you are consistently reminded that these women are poor. When they are invited to a fancy dinner party, they are forced to borrow dresses. . .which turn out to be stolen from their hosts ("The Society Party"). Shirley feels guilty after she spends money on her pet canary, Duane ("One Flew Over Milwaukee"). And when Shirley's domineering mother (Pat Carrol) comes for a visit, she scathingly reminds her daughter that she's in a dead-end job, in a crummy apartment, with no prospects for marriage or even a boyfriend ("Mother Knows Worst"). The girls' longing for the finer things is also highlighted when Laverne dates dashing, well-to-do Charlie (Fred Willard), who turns out to be a thief intent on blowing up the Pizza Bowl's men's room to gain access to the bank next door ("Dog Day Blind Dates"). Despite their dire financial straits, however, the girls are unfailingly ethical, moral and honest (and the audience is usually reminded of this at the cap of each episode). There's no vo-de-o-do-do going on here.
The series is definitely finding its footing in the first season, particularly in the early episodes. It's hinted that Laverne and Shirley grew up together, and that the DeFazios moved to Milwaukee from the Bronx. However, in the early episodes, pretty much everyone - Shirley included - speaks with a "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" Brooklyn accent. Shirley loses hers after about six episodes and she morphs into a predecessor of Shelley Long's character on Cheers; Lenny's and Squiggy's accents transmogrify into just plain weird. It also is never quite clear when exactly the series is taking place. . .there are poodle skirts and doo-wop songs, yet Laverne refers to things as happening "back in `57." It also feels as though producers weren't quite sure what to do with Eddie Mekka's Carmine character. . .in early episodes he is seemingly dating Shirley while simultaneously belting out songs, boxing, and getting a job as a dance instructor from his new girlfriend. And it isn't until the eleventh episode of the season that Boo-Boo Kitty makes her first appearance, amidst Shirley's addled (and hysterical) coos.
Laverne and Shirley's characters are also greatly enhanced and filled out by an unlikely source: the set of their apartment. Did Jack, Chrissy, and Janet's apartment on Three's Company reveal all that much about its inhabitants? Not really. But Laverne and Shirley's apartment is an extension of their characters. . .decorated with posters, family photographs, stuffed animals, souvenir pillows, a doll collection. . .it is very believable as the "first apartment" of two young women striking out on their own.
Sharp-eyed viewers will spot a number of guest stars who went on to later fame and fortune, including Harry Shearer (The Simpsons, A Mighty Wind), Fred Willard (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman), Mark Harmon (St. Elsewhere), Robert Hays (The Airplane movies), and Al Molinaro (who went on to become Milwaukee's favorite soda shop owner on Happy Days). Henry Winkler also appears as Fonzie in the first two episodes of the series.
The fifteen episodes that comprise the first season are divided onto three DVDs. The DVDs are housed in slim plastic keepcases, which slide into a cardboard slipcover. The design of the packaging uses a bowling motif. . .episodes on each disc are listed on a bowling scoresheet, and each case features two publicity shots of Marshall and Williams.
The menu designs on the DVDs are simple and functional. Episodes on each disc are listed, beside a publicity shot of Marshall and Williams.
