I worked with a guy–Polish-Canadian–who really reminded me of the Fonz. Not exactly handsome, but aggressive and cocky as hell. Not all the girls dug him, but the ones who did really did and would have taken a bullet for him.
That sounds like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon on the surface of it, and I think they made a couple out of the Happy Days franchise…
Henry Winkler may not be the “best actor of All-Time”, but I feel that in the History of the World no actor albeit stage, film, nor in the movies had ever played a role AS WELL as Henry Winkler played the nuanced role of Arthur Fonzarelli!
I really should dare go on a time-consuming adventure and actually binge all ‘Happy Days’ episodes from the very first to the very last episode. But sure enough I’ll get quite bored by the ‘80s if not even before that. Until I actually decide to embark such a thing, if I ever actually bother to at all, I’ll just for now assume that from what I gather by simple recollection, that though there were already signs that the show was going south beforehand, ‘Happy Days’ should have ended after the ‘79/’80 season which, of course, was Richie & Ralph’s last. A college graduation ceremony/party and end it right there.
The series came off its most successful season, #1 in the ratings, when this very '77/'78 season-premier “shark” three-parter first aired. Though no longer being as solid and single-camera/laugh-track-‘quiet’ as the first couple of seasons that were true to the heart of the initially intended ‘50s-nostalgia, there was still plenty of enthusiasm about the series at this point here at the beginning of Season 5 - with some more to follow despite ‘Mork’ and ‘Random the Angel’ showing up.
I may be in the minority here, and I’ll always feel that the ‘quieter’ initial seasons were ‘Happy Days’ at its very best, but I also feel that the show couldn’t stay with that same formula. It had to evolve into that ‘louder’, fanfare-inviting, “in front of a studio-audience” vibe which it ended up doing while - again - me wishing that it simply would have gone off the air upon Richie & Ralph exiting stage left. Just like ‘Clerks II’ had to be ‘mainstream’ as opposed to repeating the ‘indie’-vibe of the original. A nice divide, distinction between those ‘innocent’ beginnings and the ‘noisier’ yet still enthusiastic remainder of the series.
Perhaps this is coming from a nostalgic child-of-the-'70s point of view. Maybe if I were an adult at the time, I’d be rolling my eyes at all the, now, “noise”. But simply remembering a character making an appearance and you being excited by it, or thinking that a joke was funny, etc; and then you hear everyone in the live audience echoing that reaction. It felt like you and the whole world at the same time were taking it in, in real-time. It simply, in-retrospect, captured the “spirit” (and still does watching reruns decades later) of how Iconic the show was then; capturing the spirit better than some fake, lifeless laugh-track.
What made ‘Happy Days’ last as long as it did was basically sheer momentum off just how BIG it was in it’s earlier years, thus creating a ‘BIG Bang’-effect thus HD still ‘moving’ forward into the early-’80s off that very initial momentum; if however real slowly by then. It also helped that there never would be any real competition from NBC or CBS for that very Tuesday 8PM EST timeslot (that, of course, would be until four Vietnam Vets/vigilantes, one of them wearing a mohawk and gold chains, passed them in their black van, pulled over just up the road, got out onto the road in front of slow-moving HD, and gently very respectfully pushed the former-Great, already a Legend now past its prime, off the road to a permanent halt onto a beautiful pasture before getting back into their black van and driving on).
But more importantly, it was the writers and actors that did bring the characters of ‘Happy Days’ into our living room, making us glad we got to know them (and it felt as we DID “know” them), and despite the show going in the direction it did (neglecting ‘50s/’60s styles for ‘70s/’80s, of course, being the greatest offense along with…‘Joannie Loves Chachi’) we all still wanted to continue to see what they were up to every Tuesday night even into that infamous ‘80s nadir. We all still ‘attended’ Joannie & Chachi’s wedding on that May night in ‘84 and had no dry eyes upon Mr C’s toast through the fourth wall.
PS - yes, if I do, indeed, get around to watching all of ‘Happy Days’ from beginning-to-end, I’m very sure upon finishing all three parts of ‘Hollywood’, I’ll laugh at any “Jump the Shark”-notion and quickly, enthusiastically, go on to the very next episode!
PPS - despite what I said about the “nadir” ‘80s seasons, that two-part ‘81/’82 series-opener chronicling Joannie’s summer at the beach beginning with her talking into the mic over a reel-to-reel film, about to be sent to Richie, does retroactively standout with me. Not a bad two-parter at all. And Ted McGinley…poor guy getting the historic gruff being “accused” of “ruining” every show he appears on! HD was already well-past-prime by the time he arrived, so it’s not his fault. He did a good job as ‘Rog’. And did an even-BETTER job as Jefferson D’Arcy on ‘Married With Children’, being to David Garrison what Kirsty Alley was to Shelley Long (two great, but quite different, actors/characters thus adding ‘texture’ to the entire series at-hand). Wanted to strangle him in ‘Revenege of the Nerds’ which means…he did his JOB (although I wanted to strangle Bradley Whitford EVEN MORE in ‘RotN II, Nerds in Paradise’ as well as in ‘Billy Madison’)! Ted is simply the Adrian Belew of TV series! Never an original cast (band) member when a TV series (band) was at its prime (though it could be argued that ‘Married’ never passed its peak during its entire run), but still a good actor (musician). And, yes, I did have a crush on her, but Crystal Bernard being on as K.C. was all right!
As I understand it, Winkler was a great water-skier (an instructor, in fact) and his parents, apparently worried that his job might go away if the producers got bored with him, nagged Winkler into repeatedly mentioning to Garry Marshall that he could water-ski. So the worked it into the series.