A Grateful Nation Honors Laverne and Shirley for their Distinguished Military Service

Please tell me I’m not crazy.

A cloudy corner of my memory tells me there was a brief string of military-themed episodes of Laverne and Shirley- with the girls in uniform even. What I remember most distinctly was a “drill instructor” woman who really disliked Laverne and Shirley.

Now, it can’t have been that they up and joined the army because that would have drastically changed the entire premise of the show. My cloudy memory makes it out to be more like, hmmmm, ROTC maybe? But the girls were never in school during the run of the show so it couldn’t have been ROTC, could it?

I remember what, in my memory, plays as a talent show- I think the drill instructor, or maybe L&S sang “I Know You Don’t Want Me No More”. Maybe what I’m remembering as a “talent show” was actually a USO Show and a performance for the show was the full extent of L&S’s involvement in anything military.

Did my memory invent all this out of thin air?
Is my memory at least partly correct? If so, what exactly were L&S doing- what was their military involvement?
ETA: Point of Reference- this would have been in Milwaukee, not California.

I vaguely remember that, too, now you mention it.

From the L&S Wiki page:
During the season [season 5] the girls went into the army, and they contended with a mean drill sergeant named Alvinia T. Plout (Vicki Lawrence). In the next season, she visited the girls.

Also, there was a Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon spin-off called Laverne & Shirley in the Army.

Dear Lord, Hanna-Barbera did some awful things to children over the years.

Ahhh, IMDB shows Vicki Lawrence on 5 episodes as Sgt. Alvinia T. Plout.

The synopsis for “You’re in the Army, Now (Part 1)” and “(Part 2)” says:

So, apparently, they actually did join the army- and were somehow in and out in 2 episodes. No doubt the explanation was entirely realistic. Seems for the other appearances of Sgt. Alvinia T. Plout, the Sgt. was showing up in Laverne & Shirley’s turf rather than them having additional army experiences.

The season 6 episode “Out, Out Damned Plout” gives the synopsis “The roommates AWOL drill instructor, Ms. Plout, arrives and discovers her hidden talent.” Maybe that’s where I remember the music routine from (though it’s a California episode contrary to my memory).

Hmmm, for me this is just a bit of interesting trivia. I definitely don’t remember that.

This opening may jar your memory.

During the run of Dobie Gillis, Dobie and Maynard joined the Army, then quit a few episodes later. Yet for some reason, the idea of “if you don’t like it, you can always quit” never caught on with the real armed forces.

They took Maynard?

For a three hour tour.

The cartoon versions of the ladies are a bit more…shapely than the originals.

Twice.

In season 1, Bob Denver got drafted so they wrote him out of the show by explaining that he joined the army, and in a sitcom twist, made a model soldier. But Denver never really went anywhere because they discovered a medical problem. Two or three episodes later Maynard was discharged because he was allergic to khaki (honest!) and everybody pretended that it never happened.

So much so that in season 3, after he and Dobie graduated high school and they were running out of plots, they had both of them enlist in the Army, where they were horrible soldiers. So much so that on the first episode of season 4, the Army threw them out - with honorable discharges of course - even though they didn’t want to leave the security of the Army for the real world. Armed guards prevented them from re-entering the base.

Dobie Gillis is running on MeTV so I just resaw some of these episodes. That show holds every record for pretending its past never happened. Yvonne Craig, of later Batgirl fame, played five different Dobie love interests. Jean Byron played at least three different professors. Dobie started as an only child, got a brother, and later became an only child again. It was like watching an animated comic book.

I believe in the cartoon, the drill instructor was a talking dog.

There was also a Happy Days cartoon.

A “commanding pig,” to be precise.

Yeah, it made that much sense.

It did, slightly, because that pig was voiced by a Hog.

I had no idea.

Was that on before or after The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang animated show.

I had no idea about that one either.

ETA: Oh lord! Mork and Mindy too!

I think it’d be interesting if they still did this with primetime shows.

LAW AND ORDER:SVU- Meloni and Hargitay could lend voices and be teamed with a crime solving man-chimp named Orbie (as an homage to Jerry Orbach), then at the end they could do live video cameos to teach kids valuable moral lessons.

BREAKING BAD- Flunking student Jessie accidentally eats his brilliant teacher Mr. White’s new invention- “Blue Sky Doggie Treats”- which makes dogs smarter. It also makes Jessie really smart, but unfortunately turns him into a cute little bulldog, who grows big and kills bad guys when he goes too long without his blue sky.

SHAMELESS- the Gallagher clan form a rock band and travel through the solar system in a suped up VW Bug along with their agoraphobic manager Sheila (who goes “Gulp!” whenever she has to leave the bus) and their pet moon-money Uranus. (Unfortunately Frank kidnaps the moon monkey to commit welfare fraud, books the band through 2013 at a German brothel with payment up front, then spends the money on an underaged hooker and some Blue Sky doggie treats that turn out to be painted rocks.)

What the hell?

With space aliens, no less. Truly, they captured the zeitgeist of an era with that show.

The zeitgeist of how many different drugs were being used by TV execs in the 70s, you mean.