Podcast Tuesday: "How I Learned to Start Worrying and Leave the Prom"

Dick Van Patten ruins the prom on Happy Days.

It's inevitable that viewers will bring their own personal baggage with them whenever they consume any kind of media. When we watch a TV show, for instance, we may ask ourselves how the experiences of the characters onscreen compare with our own experiences. Unfortunately, if there's a huge disconnect between what's onscreen and what we have experienced in real life, we may have trouble suspending our disbelief. Think of real-world cops or doctors watching prime time shows about their professions. The scripts may be so far removed from reality that these viewers will become alienated, unable to relate to what they're seeing.

I try not to be this way. I understand that TV is TV and life is life and never the twain shall meet. I don't expect sitcoms to be realistic. That's how I was able to watch and enjoy The Office, even though it was very much unlike any real office where I'd ever worked. I spent years toiling in cubicles -- first for an auto manufacturer in Flint, then for a market research company in Chicago -- and if anyone there had acted like the employees at Dunder-Mifflin, they would have been fired immediately and possibly led away in handcuffs. But what does it matter? This is just a television show. Its only purpose is to entertain. Why bring dreary reality into it?

Michael Scott: Like no boss I've ever had.

Recently, though, I had trouble accepting a major plot twist on an episode of Happy Days that I was reviewing for my podcast, These Days Are Ours.  Specifically, I was screening "Graduation (Part 1)" from February 8, 1977. The plot of this episode has Milwaukee teenager Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) attending his senior prom at Jefferson High School. Also in attendance are Richie's pals, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), Ralph (Donny Most), and Potsie (Anson Williams), and their respective dates. Things are going great until Vice Principal Conners (Dick Van Patten) shows up and announces that everyone in the senior class has flunked the hygiene exam. Students will not be allowed to graduate, he says, unless they pass a make-up exam scheduled for the morning after the prom. Everyone leaves the dance to go home and study.

This was more than I could take. It was too ridiculous even for Happy Days.

I mentioned earlier that I had worked a few office jobs, which is true. But between those Flint and Chicago assignments, I spent a few years teaching high school and junior high school. My parents were both teachers, too, and I'm the product of a public school education myself. Based on all this experience, I can say that this "hygiene exam" story could never, ever happen in real life. There would be too much of an uproar from the students, their parents, the faculty, and possibly even the local media. Vice Principal Conners would be (symbolically) strung up by his thumbs for this. He is, to paraphrase Dr. Strangelove, exceeding his authority.

Did this little snafu prevent me from enjoying the episode? You can find out by listening to Episode 79 of our show. And here, conveniently enough, it is: