Podcast Tuesday: "This Strange and Mournful Day"

Henry Winkler and Jains Paige on Happy Days.

Some TV producers plan entire seasons of their shows in advance. They have grand, long-term plans in mind for their characters from the moment they dream those characters up. I don't think Garry Marshall was ever that way with his sitcoms. Especially with Happy Days (1974-84), he and his writers seem to be winging it completely, making it up week by week with very little thought toward the future. 

As a result, the show has a reckless, haphazard quality to it as it lurches through 11 seasons of stories. Yes, there are long-term developments in the characters' lives, but these changes happen largely by accident. Continuity is wobbly at best. (Chuck Cunningham, anyone?) Serialization is not really a priority here, except for the occasional two-parter or three-parter. Generally, Happy Days is meant to be enjoyed in individual, half-hour chunks. The episodes are self-contained. You don't really have to watch them in any particular order. ABC often showed them out of production order.

Let us consider the the fraught emotional background of the show's (eventual) main character, Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler). Over the course of several seasons, we ultimately learn that Fonzie was abandoned by both his mother and his father at an early age and was basically raised by his grandmother. But the details of this story keep shifting around, as if the writers never found a version that suited them. 

So why was this "orphan" element added to the character in the first place? I think it was to make him more sympathetic. Fonzie is depicted on Happy Days as being a more-or-less invulnerable tough guy with quasi-supernatural powers, so this tragic backstory gives him some much-needed vulnerability. He's a tough guy, sure, but he has some weaknesses, too.

A crucial episode in the series is "Mother and Child Reunion" from Season 8. As the title suggests, Fonzie meets his long-lost mother Angela (showbiz veteran Janis Paige), now a world-weary waitress at a disreputable diner. He doesn't set out to meet Angela; it just sort of happens by chance. And Angela might not even be Fonzie's mom. The script leaves this open to interpretation. And even this story is self-contained: Angela is never seen or heard from again.

So what did we think of "Mother and Child Reunion"? Find out by downloading the latest installment of These Days are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.