Happy Days

What days are worth living, if they are not all happy days?  Lucy and Corbett get to talk about the The Happy Days television show and a little bit of what the impact it had on TV.  We will certainly all remember where we were when they "jumped the shark".

Transcript

unknown 0:12

Don't intention different method names for the mention.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to What You Missed When You Didn't Exist. I'm Corbett, and I am 54.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

And I'm Lucy, and I'm twenty-five.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

So exciting. I know. Great times to be alive. These are happy days indeed.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Three, four happy days. That's all I remember from friends.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

This is where you get to learn about something you learn from something else. This is fun. We are talking about happy days this time around. Happy days being the TV sitcom, not just random days that were happy. Because again, we're back in the 70s talking about greater days back in the 50s.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah. Metracks. When happier days were happening, because apparently the 70s were not happy.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I sure. Yeah, the 50s were all happy.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

And your reference from Friends was the guy who the Doctor Who really loves Fonzi, right? Or was it something else?

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Well, there was a couple of different things because there was the Happy Days. I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking of Cheers. I'm thinking of Cheers. Because I was thinking of when Joey was excited for Happy Days in London, but he couldn't find Happy Days, so he was watching Cheers instead. And that's what he was watching in London. But the episode where Phoebe has her triplets and the doctor is obsessed with the Vons is Happy Days.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Who isn't obsessed with the Vaughns? Um that's just weird.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

The young people that have not watched Happy Days.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Okay, so to sum it up, really, really, really simply, uh Happy Days is based around it's based around teenagers in the 50s growing up. It's really kind of the quick nostalgia. I really want to say Gary Marshall just borrowed from American Graffiti, which was done by George Lucas just a like a year or so before. Gary Marshall being the producer of Happy Days went, hey, we could do that, and followed up and and took the exact actor. Ron Howard was the primary key character one of the key characters from American Graffiti, and brought him over to do to basically do Happy Days in a different version of it. But it spells around the American family of the Cunningham family. If I remember right, the first episode involves him getting bullied by a guy named Fonzie or the Fonz. I think they called him just the Fonz in the first episode, and later on he became Fonzie. But he was this thug who did not wear a leather jacket in the first episode. Actually, the first season, I want to say he didn't wear a leather jacket.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, it was right. I know. Sorry, that's funny because I've been re-watching it, and and when you're like, whoa, that's that's a normal saying in happy days.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

How very un 50s and sit on it.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Two classic insults. And of course Fonsey's classic, ayy, which did kind of set off the he's cool. He was, as far as Fonzie was concerned, he became the coolest guy of the 70s from the 50s. And a lot of that was Henry Winkler just portrayed the character really well. But he was going to be beating up Richie, how Ron Howard's character, who's a teenager who stands up for himself, and the bully decides that maybe him standing up for himself is okay, and he has some respect for this kid. So he decides to kind of take him under his wing and is there for him for most of the other parts of the show and and more or less becomes a main cast member. I think he wasn't intended to be a full cast member at the time.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Also, Richie, Ron Howard's character, Richie Cunningham, had a brother who disappeared after the first season. The first season kind of like stripped away everything and started over a little well, a lot because they changed the way the set was, they changed the way everything was kind of thrown in.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Was there a reason for that? Or it just happened.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Happy Days itself was built around a one-shot episode, uh, which was a s the spin-off that kind of made it launch from a television show called Love American style. Like every episode was a short little vignette of whatever the love story was that week. And they were cute, and it was all about Richie and Potse trying to get a date in the 50s. That, with the combination of American graffiti, really pushed the happy days itself to exist. And then Fonsey cemented it once he became established as a sort of brotherly character. And I think that's why they dropped the character the brother in the first season, because he wanted him to focus on always going to Fonzie for actual brotherly advice. Because then it just became him and his little sister, you know, Richie and and uh Joni. Uh and of course, then they gave once Fonzie became a little more established, they decided he'd be better with his own version of a little brother, and he got Chachi, an adopted child that he took care of, which kind of went off on his own too, which is sort of weird.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

A little, a little. It was just a bit odd. As a kid, the cool thing about Fonzie was he didn't have to do anything, and he was cool.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

That was it. Just cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

That's really the no literally, that was it. That was one of his cool features. I think it was it was kind of a Spock thing, because that's that's my Star Trek reference there. When they got into fist fights in Star Trek, Spock, uh Leonard Nimoy's character, was like, I my character's cerebral, so I wouldn't get into a fist fight. I would just pinch their their neck and they would pass out because I'm my race does this.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

That's the sci-fi, so it doesn't matter. But with Fonzi, they did kind of the same thing. He would always raise his fist or act like he's about to hit somebody, and then he wouldn't, even in a fight, he would go off camera. And usually the way they would do it, almost repetitively, if you watch the show enough, you'll see it where the other guy comes back in and looks like he's like, Yeah, I won't without saying anything, and then he would pass out and fall face first on the floor, and then the Fonz would walk in and like blow on his fist or something. So you never ever had to see him actually fight. In fact, I think one of the more well-known episodes, oh, Tom Hanks was in it. Young Tom Hanks. He's a martial arts guy who apparently Fonzie beat up a long time ago or threatened or something when he was a kid. And so he learns all these martial arts and became like this super martial artist. And the Fonz has to kind of talk him down from wanting to fight him. He apologizes and, like, I was a different person, things are different, and it's all about him not fighting, basically. It was really interesting, and that was something that Henry Winkler kind of put into the character. The one of his caveats for playing the character was I don't want to be the greasy-haired guy from the 50s who's always combing his hair because of the they would use like a palmade in their hair, the the greasers is what they were commonly called. And you had to always be combing your hair to keep the grease from dripping down in your face.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Ew, it was liquid.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Oh, it's a it's a palmade. Have you ever seen have you never seen a pomade before?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

I've seen a pomade, but it's like a wax and it just like it's a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of waxy, but if it's in your hair and it's warm, guess what happens to wax when it's warm? But if you keep brushing it or combing it, for one thing you get the cool factor of, you know, combing your hair. Look how cool I am combing my hair. But you keep the grease from coming down. My grandfather used real cream all the time, and it was the same kind of thing. It was a cream, but he was always combing his hair. It was just something of the time. It really wasn't even a cool guy thing, it was just the thing, the way that men took care of their hair at that time.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

It was just the maintenance.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Probably yeah, you you got a palmade to hold back your hair.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Weird.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Most men just went with short hair because then you didn't have to deal with it. Nowadays you got a bunch of hippie straggly type people who don't even do anything with their hair.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Uh no, people are treating wavy hair as a thing. It's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Well, the 70s became a whole different thing about treating hair, but that's another show. This one's about happy days, and ultimately the thing that made Fonzi cool was one one of the first things he did was not comb his hair. If you watch the introductory credits, well, at least after season two, he like looks in the mirror, he raises his comb to his hair like he's about to do it, and instead he just kind of holds up his hands like why change perfection and puts his comb away. He never ever combs his hair because that was his requirement was I don't want to be the greaser guy who's always combing his hair. That was like a staple for that type of character. Yeah. That was just the the criminal underbelly type character, the rebel without a cause character. That's what they do. And he didn't want to do that. So and it carries through with a lot of his other stuff where he doesn't actually fight anybody. He literally either acts strong enough that they back down, or he goes off camera and they always come in and act like they won, then fall down, and he comes in, blows his fists, and he's cool. And the the of course, the other thing that he is known for, another key thing is for hitting the jukebox and making it play. Without putting money in it.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

So cool.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

That's like a magic power. And that was that's the kind of a staple he would do with other things too later on. He would just like a car doesn't start and he hits it just right and it starts, and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Or the TV isn't getting good reception, Fonz does the tap, it works. There were a lot of spin-offs that were projected that didn't totally happen. There were some that did happen that weren't very good and didn't last very long. But ultimately, Happy Days ran from 1974 to 1984, so a good 10-year run. I think that was about the same. No, I think we talked about MASH previously, and I think MASH ran almost 10 years. I know it ran 10 years, I think it ran 12.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

It ran at least 10 years, and that was considered like golden staple. Most shows weren't gonna make it past five years. So to go 10 is absolutely unheard of. And again, characters would come and go, but Fonzi and Mr. Cunningham, Bosley, uh Tom Bosley, the father, had to pretty much always be there because they were they were big staples for the show. I think also what's makes Happy Days kind of a big one as far as like iconic for television, uh because it also made this the standard of the saying jump the shark. When when a series jumps the shark, it's considered it's gone too far. It's no longer good enough.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Like when a show's just been going on for too long?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, it or it tries to do something it's just not really ready to do. Right about the time that uh Ron Howard left the show is when they literally jump the shark. There was a very literal episode where he jumps the shark, and honestly, it's still kind of a good episode. I I enjoyed it. But they go to Hawaii, I want to say it's like season five, but it might be like season, uh, I guess it was around season five or six. The the whole thing is almost every season, Fonzie would have to jump something because it was the Daredevil storyline that they always liked. Fonzi jumps over some number of cars, and that's like in the first season to save Arnold's restaurant. And then Fonsey jumps over this or that. Fonzi's always jumping over something to show, you know, he's a daredevil and he's willing to do it. And of course, when they go to Hawaii, there's a shark pinned up out in the bay, and they're like, Well, we'll just jump over the shark and show you how cool we are. And Fonzie agrees to jump over the shark even though he has no idea how to ski. The guy who is supposed to go before Fonzie chickens out and doesn't do it, and of course, Fonzie does it anyway, and he's cool because he's the Fonz, and he wins. It was considered a moment where they should have just like, okay, we're done with this. We're we're we're done. We're just done. There's nothing more to show. So jumping the shark was created its own moniker in the TV world. It's just it's just a thing, you know. And when a when a series jumps the shark, it's gone too far. I don't know if that's really true because honestly, I enjoyed the show. But we'll admit the oh, the last few seasons were pretty weak. They had retooled Arnold's from the the diner. Arnold's was always the 50s diner.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Which was it looks just like any 50s diner until the last few seasons when they change it to look like a pub.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Ah yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Yeah. Yeah, it was just awkward. But Fonzie was always there. Actually, you know what? Looking at the list of characters, there's yeah, Potsy, Potsy, Marion, and Howard were in every single episode from beginning to end. All the time. Even Fonzie wasn't all the time in the first season. Or even sorry, Potse. I said Pozi, didn't I?

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Fonzy.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Okay, even Fonzie wasn't like consistent in the first season. They were really not sure if they were gonna keep him.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yeah. But all the rest of them started kind of popping in, becoming a thing. But yeah, show wise, it was basically supposed to focus around Richie Cunningham, you know, teenage boy trying to figure out his life, even though he was probably in his twenties when that was really going on. But that's a very normal TV trope of Yeah. Sure, they're teenagers, even though they all have like five o'clock shadow.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Okay, I do have to ask, because I watched a clip, well, I guess it was like 10 minutes, of an episode of Happy Days, and it was the Fonz with Robin Williams playing this character Mork. So how is this based on the 50s if there are aliens?

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Well, the 50s is when the alien scare started. So it was kind of an easy like when people started spotting aliens. I think 46 was the Roswell crash, or was it 48?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah, there was a crash in Roswell, New Mexico, and that kind of spawned off. Ooh, there's aliens out there. There's things we can't know about, things that we could know about. Aliens were a possibility to always throw in, though it was never considered until that episode was because and actually I think Mort came back twice, if I remember right.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Robin Williams and Robin Williams was cast at the last minute. There's like a whole story. If you feel free to dig around on YouTube for it, it's kind of interesting. This was originally Gary, uh Gary Marshall was the producer, and his kids or his grandkids had seen this show that came out about that time that was called Star Wars, which was kind of cool and talked about space stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Only kind of cool. I'm gonna tell your friends.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

I'm being facetious. Anyway, but no, the it was the thing that, like, oh, space stuff is really cool. We want to do want to see more space stuff, and how do you put space stuff into the 50s? The fonts. And it's really awkward, but they they were like, what if an alien showed up? I think the first time he shows up, it's a dream sequence. I'm very certain it is. And actually, I think both times was a dream sequence. Oh, maybe I'd have to go rewatch them to be sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

I don't think it was because he was trying to like wake himself up, and then one of his old girls comes over and he's trying to set her up with Mork, and it's like a whole weird dating sequence. So I don't know. But I didn't watch the end, so it could be a dream, and I just didn't see the end.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Well, the first time he shows up, it's Mork is there to take Richie away because he's he's he's gonna abduct him in in the family home, and he keeps freezing people and doing weird Mork from Ork stuff, which of course Mork from Orc was popular enough because Robin Williams really overplayed the character well, and they were like, We should we should do a spin-off of this. So they did, and he came back to modern day Denver and hung out with Pam Dauber uh to do the Morc and Mindy season, which was a pretty I think that was a pretty popular spin-off. But that was in the 80s and a whole other show. But the episode itself, Robin Williams was I think second or third choice. He was not up there, they randomly came across him.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

But Robin Williams is so good.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Oh, he is so good, but they were he was just some random comedian at the time, and they actually prepared for another comedian to be the one, and he fell through for some reason. Either he couldn't do it or he wouldn't do it, or there was an argument about one thing or another, and they were set to film like the day after, and they're just like, Well, just bring this guy in and see what he can do. And he came in and and was Robin Williams and did a few alien-y things on his own, and it stuck. Everybody was like, This guy is hilarious. So if you go through the series, you would probably see a lot, and I mean a lot, of people who got their start, their first show or their first guest shot or whatever on Happy Days. Laverne and Shirley was another spin-off that came off of Happy Days. Joni Loves Chachi was, of course, one of the ending spin-offs because they wanted to keep that series going. It it didn't quite sync the way it should have. There was even a cartoon, there's two cartoons. There was Happy Days Cartoon Series, which is Saturday morning cartoon, and then there was another one which was I think it was Fonzie and Friends or something along those lines. And it was all about a time traveler who picks up Fonzie and the Happy Days gang and they time travel around and solve mysteries.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

It was typical Saturday morning fair that showed that there was enough interest in having Fonzie around that was cool. I think another thing that's probably a neat little side note, and I only know this because I've watched enough interviews with Henry Winkler, he really developed Fonzie the way he was, also because he had uh a stutter. He couldn't always talk the way he wanted to, even though he was an actor, which is a big deal. You know, James Earl Jones had the same kind of problem. He had a stutter too.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

And he's known for his voice. If you ever see an interview with Henry Winkler or watch him in another show where he's not the Fonz, you're like, wow, that guy has some way different range going on than with the Fonz character.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

That's because he's a good actor. But it was because of this stutter or speech impediment that he was too afraid to go into big long speeches. So instead he just started like holding up his thumbs and like, hey, I think one of one of my favorite, uh, what was it? They they invite the Fonz over for family dinner, and he's asked to say a prayer, and he has they have a scripted out prayer for him. It's really thoughtful and talks about all these moments, and he just says, Well, let me try it this way. And he says, you know, dear God, whoa. Amen. And that was it. And it summed up everything, and they're like, That's that's the Fonz talking. And so, but because of the way he wanted to play the character and the way it came across, he nailed it by doing a lot with very little. I think that was a lot of cool stuff. I feel like I'm just doting on the Fonz. And I will say, without the Fons, I don't know how well Happy Days would have pulled off. It probably would have just been another family sitcom that just came and went. But the Fonz nailed it.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

He was the Fonz.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

He was the Fons, he was the coolest. There then there were a lot of good actors. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of good actors on the show. It's just that Henry Winkler really picked it up and carried it. And because everybody attached to that character so quickly, he just became a staple for the 70s. You know, we talked about oh, was it the MASH in the Hawkeye being the cool guy in the 70s? The other cool guy in the 70s was the Fonz. And Fonz was legitimately the cool guy. Even people in the 70s who were disco in it up would still go, hey, because it was corny, but cool. Because you knew what it referenced.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

See, to me, that's so Jersey in New York, though, because no one else does that normally. It's purely New York, New Jersey. Hey, how you doing kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

A little bit, yeah. Well, Milwaukee. They were all the Milwaukee sitcoms. That was Gary Marshall's shtick. Like Laverne and Shirley was set in Milwaukee. Morgan Mindy was set in Denver, so that one was different. Yeah. But almost everything was set around Milwaukee or in the general vicinity of the Great Lakes. And that was just, I guess it was where Gary Marshall grew up, probably.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Meh. So what's better? MASH or happy days?

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Ooh, that's a tough one. I would probably go with MASH. I I hate to say that, but I think MASH had the better long-term hit.

unknown 21:14

Mmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Because you get the comedy, but you got the real drama. And they would have real dramas happen in happy days, but nothing as real as the way it was in MASH, because the MA MASH dealt with people in dire situations, you know, in a war zone versus happy days where they they would deal with some real stuff. I thought it was kind of cool. There was an episode where they dealt with racism or bigotry or I think a lot of it was just bullies. It was always some bully versus somebody else. And how do you deal with a bully? You stand up to them, which was the go to. I don't think that's really true for everything, but it's nice to know that you got somebody to go, yeah. Hey You're gonna get some haters hating unhappy days.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Howdy.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I didn't hate well, apparently. You're just trying to turn the world against me. What's up with that?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

I don't know. I thought it would be fun.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Oh my gosh. This is what happens when you don't grow up with happy days.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Well, I grew up with friends. It was the same.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

With friends, you get dessert that tastes like feet. See what happens?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Yep. It's a trifle.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Anyway, for for watching Miss When You Didn't Exist, I hope you have happy days.