 |
| Henry Winkler and Ron Howard on Happy Days. |
What do you think of when you picture Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler)? Even if you've only seen a few episodes of Happy Days, you probably know the basic facts about this iconic TV character. He wears a leather jacket. He rides a motorcycle. He's cool. He's an ace mechanic, able to fix anything on wheels. And he dates every attractive, unattached lady in Milwaukee.
One common way of generating stories for television shows is to identify a character's most essential traits and then take one or more of them away for a week to see what would happen. For instance, I remember hearing a writer for The Simpsons say that the episode "Duffless" -- in which Homer has to give up drinking for a month -- was inspired by simply erasing the omnipresent beer can in Homer's hand from a drawing. It's a simple equation: Homer minus beer equals conflict. In 1993, the same exact year as "Duffless," Beavis and Butt-head did an episode called "No Laughing" in which the title characters have to curtail their trademark inane chuckling for an entire school day. (It's torture; they barely make it.)
Happy Days, too, delighted in taking Fonzie's essential traits away from him. His motorcycle was destroyed in "The Motorcycle." Officer Kirk (Ed Peck) forbade him from wearing his leather jacket in "A.K.A. The Fonz." He worried he was losing his cool in "Fearless Fonzarelli." He temporarily lost his mechanic job in "Fonzie the Salesman." A Season 6 episode called "The Fonz is Allergic to Girls," however, threatened to deprive him of the one thing he can't live without. A celibate Fonzie? Say it ain't so!
Does this make for a good or even great episode? Find out when we review "The Fonz is Allergic to Girls" in the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.