On Thursdays, I take a critical look at a TV show by season. Here's a look at Season 10 (Part 2) of Happy Days! For Part 1, click here!
Ashley attends her parents' 30th anniversary party in an attempt to reconcile with them but ends up getting drunk and making a fool of herself.
This episode is sort of a successor to the Christmas episode as it focuses more specifically on Ashley's fractured relationship with her parents. The show was definitely trying to give Ashley more depth as a character and while Linda Purl is better than Ted McGinley, she's not that strong of a comic actress. So when the show is requiring her to be drunk at the wedding reception, she can't really pull it off with the comic timing necessary. It's not horribly bad but it just doesn't stick the landing. This is probably Heather O'Rourke's best episode to date though.
RATING: 5/10
224. I Drink, Therefore I Am (1/11/83)
Flip starts drinking despite Roger's warnings and ends up in a car that hits Heather. Jenny, K.C., Melvin and Bobby plan for a winter carnival.
Oof. This is a terrible episode. First of all, it has a very healthy dose of the new characters. But it also veers pretty hard into the "very special episode" territory. While it doesn't make light of drinking and driving, it really doesn't have major consequences for Flip and his friends HITTING A CHILD WITH THEIR CAR WHILE DRINKING AND DRIVING. Like that's a really serious offense and yet the show treats it a little bit like it was just a dumb mistake by Flip and then everything is fine at the end of the 22 minutes, including in the eyes of Fonzie and Ashley, the girl's MOTHER. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
RATING: 0/10
225. Prisoner of Love (1/18/83)
A convict on a work release program with Fonzie starts to date K.C. and that upsets Howard and Marion.
This is another preachy episode but it's not nearly as horrific as the previous one. It's still pretty silly especially when the convict gets angry and decides to try to rob Fonzie. The show just doesn't know how to do episodes like this. They can't do serious stuff well at all, the show has never been good at that. But it also isn't funny enough which used to salvage the times the show veered into this kind of stuff. The only saving grace is Howard and Marion have a couple funny moments. It's also interesting to see Officer Kirk still pop up from time to time all these years later.
RATING: 2.5/10
Fonzie arranges for Joanie and Chachi to audition for a record company but he only wants them and not their band. Howard and Marion work on home renovations.
I don't really understand how this show integrated with Joanie Loves Chachi. It feels like a couple major milestones that should be related to the plot of the spinoff turn out to be episodes of Happy Days instead. Maybe the team knew the writing was on the wall for the spinoff so they wanted to integrate the characters back in slowly. Or maybe they just realized that Happy Days was better anytime Joanie and Chachi were in the episode. That being said, this isn't all that strong an episode even with the addition of better characters.
RATING: 4/10
227. Nervous Romance (2/1/83)
On their six month anniversary, Fonzie and Ashley recall the details of their first date.
This is an odd episode because it is a little bit of a flashback episode with scenes from the episode "A Woman Not Under the Influence" but most of the "flashbacks" are actually new scenes depicting Fonzie and Ashley's first date. The episode was fine but I'm not sure we needed a flashback to a first date when the show needed to do a better job developing their relationship in general. The show focused more on developing a relationship between Fonzie and Heather than Fonzie and Ashley, which is maybe why they abandoned that story after one season.
RATING: 3/10
228. I'm Not at Liberty (2/8/83)
After a clerical error, Fonzie ends up having to join an Army reserves training camp just before Heather's birthday.
This is an Officer Kirk heavy episode just a couple episodes after another return to the show. It also calls to mind previous episodes like "R.O.T.C." and "Tell It to the Marines." This is definitely an episode that could have aired way back in the Happy Days run with Richie taking the place of Roger. It's also the only the fourth appearance from Anson Williams in the entire season (not counting flashback moments from the previous episode). And once again, the show seems to pay a premium on Fonzie's relationship with Heather, not Ashley.
RATING: 4/10
229. Wild Blue Yonder (2/15/83)
Fonzie and Roger take a plane to a teachers' convention but end up crashing after the pilot parachutes away.
This is a callback to old Happy Days episodes, but not the good ones. The absurd ones that were based on a ridiculous premise. Here, we literally have two characters in a plane crash because they have to try to pilot a plane themselves over mountains in the snow. What would the first season of Happy Days think watching this episode? This entire episode is just too ridiculous to enjoy and it doesn't help matters that no-fun Roger is one of the characters involved in the crash. I wish his character had died in the plane crash. Is that too rude to say?
RATING: 1/10
An old friend of Fonzie's asks him to be the best man at his wedding, but trouble arises when the bride turns out to be an old flame of Fonzie's. K.C. practices for her audition for the school play.
The late Peter Scolari guest stars in this episode shortly after he ended his run in Bosom Buddies and before he joined the cast of Newhart. Scolari is game and this episode features the return of Al Molinaro as Father Delvecchio, but it's not all that strong. It's certainly better than the previous episode and at least speaks to Fonzie's character now as opposed to an old version of Fonzie that the show often tries to cling to. But like most episodes in this season, it's just another misfire of an episode. There's different reasons why these episodes fail. This is just a lack of good writing for a solid concept and solid performances.
RATING: 5/10
231. Babysitting (3/1/83)
Fonzie runs into trouble while babysitting Heather for the weekend. Joanie and Chachi visit because Joanie comes down with the Canadian flu while touring.
Poor Heather always seems to have some catastrophe happening and is the Canadian flu a thing? Those are the two thoughts I had while watching this episode of Happy Days. This was a better episode than the last several though. Heather O'Rourke is a little bit of a one-note actress as young Heather but this was in an era where a child actor was more likely than not to be not great. The Joanie and Chachi appearance certainly helps, as usual, and the episode ends with a cliffhanger designed to bring those two character back full time after the quick demise of Joanie Loves Chachi.
RATING: 6/10
232. Turn Around... and You're Home (3/15/83)
Chachi struggles in his relationship with Joanie after she tells him and her parents that she wants to quit the band.
This episode is sort of a "course correction" for the show as Joanie and Chachi officially return following the ill-fated Joanie Loves Chachi and the show gears up for its final season. I'm not sure at what point it was determined that Happy Days was going to end in Season Eleven, but these episodes do seem to understand that there needs to be an "endgame" for the show. Of course it's not a full course correction because the episode still acts like characters like Ashley & Heather, K.C. and Flip matter but I'll take what I can get.
RATING: 6.5/10
Jenny starts dating a famous swimmer and can't see his true intentions. Fonzie wants to build a pool in the Cunninghams' backyard.
I really don't understand episode order from this era of TV. I know season finales didn't mean all that much at the time but the previous episode is quite obviously a season finale and this one is just a throwaway episode. Was it because it takes place during the summer that the network thought this should be the finale or did it get pushed at some point? I'm not sure. Either way, this episode, which marks the final episode for Crystal Bernard and Billy Warlock, really upends the "course correction" I talked about in the previous episode. I have to think someone watching in 1983 would be confused after just watching the previous episode the week before. The episode itself is just fine, not as bad as it could be for a Jenny-fronted episode.
RATING: 5/10
AVERAGE RATING FOR SEASON TEN:
4.5/10
The Top Episodes
1. "Empty Nest" (#214) - 9/10
2. "All I Want for Christmas" (#221) - 8/10
3. "Letting Go" (#213) - 7.5/10
4. "There's No Business Like No Business" (#220) - 6.5/10
5. "Turn Around... and You're Home" (#232) - 6.5/10
The Bottom Episodes
1. "I Drink, Therefore I Am" (#224) - 0/10
2. "Wild Blue Yonder" (#229) - 1/10
3. "Since I Don't Have You" (#222) - 2/10
4. "A Little Case of Revenge" (#216) - 2/10
5. "A Night at the Circus" (#215) - 2.5/10
Tomorrow: The Friday Five - Top 5 TV News Stories of the Week!
Next Thursday: A look at Season 11 (Part 1) of Happy Days!
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