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| Shirley Kirkes, Henry Winkler, and Ron Howard on Happy Days. |
We're back, baby! That's right. Our magnificent Happy Days podcast, These Days Are Ours, has returned for 2022. We took a few weeks off for the holidays, but now we're recording again. If you remember, we were in the middle of covering Season 7. That's when the show's ratings were tanking, and Ron Howard had one foot out the door. Fun times, fun times...
Actually, the episode we're covering this week, "Ah, Wilderness!," is a lot of fun. It was the first Happy Days episode to premiere during the 1980s. That decade would not be particularly kind to the long-running sitcom, but at least Happy Days started on a good note. The plot is fairly standard. Richie (Ron Howard) insists on taking his friends, Ralph (Don Most) and Potsie (Anson Williams), on a camping trip so he can prove that he has "leadership potential." Naturally, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) tags along, too, and all four young men bring their current girlfriends. Richie worries that Fonzie will try to take over the whole trip. As it happens, Fonzie turns out to be Richie's only advocate when the other campers threaten to mutiny.
What makes "Ah, Wilderness!" extra special is that one of the girlfriends is played by a very young Julie Brown, the singer-songwriter from Van Nuys who lit up MTV in the mid-1980s with songs like "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun." Just like Cassandra Peterson, who appeared in the episode "Burlesque," Julie was just a few years away from her breakthrough when she guested on Happy Days.
But what else did we have to say about this memorable episode? Find out by downloading the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.