 |
| Lynda Goodfriend joins the cast of Happy Days in Season 5. She'd previously played another character. |
When Ron Howard agreed to do Happy Days as a weekly series in 1974, one of his stipulations was that his character, average Wisconsin teenager Richie Cunningham, would grow up and eventually graduate from high school. Ron had previously played young Opie Taylor for eight highly rated seasons on The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), not to mention kid characters in films like The Music Man (1962) and Village of the Giants (1965). He did not want to be thought of as a child star for the rest of his life. Significantly, his character in American Graffiti (1973) is a recent high school graduate on the eve of starting college.
And so, during Happy Days' fourth season, Richie Cunningham finally graduated from Jefferson High, alongside his pals Fonzie (Henry Winkler), Ralph (Don Most), and Potsie (Anson Williams). Richie was allowed to make another step toward maturity in season five's "Hard Cover" when he met Lori Beth Allen (Lynda Goodfriend). This sensible but fun-loving brunette soon became his steady girlfriend and eventually his wife and the mother of his kids. Keep in mind, though, this is still Happy Days, i.e. a wacky prime time ABC sitcom. "Hard Cover" therefore ends up in cross-dressing shenanigans, with Fonzie and Richie in nightgowns, trying to escape Lori Beth's dorm. So Richie didn't exactly mature overnight.
Nevertheless, this episode marks a major change in course for Happy Days. For the first few seasons, Richie relentlessly pursues girls who are all wrong for him. Either they aren't interested in him at all (see: "In the Name of Love") or they're using him for ulterior motives (see: "Cruising"). This fits with the original conception of the character as a sympathetic Charlie Brown-esque loser who can never seem to catch a break. In "Hard Cover," things finally start going Richie's way.
We talk about "Hard Cover" in this week's episode of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, which you can find right here: