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| Ted McGinley and Ken Osmond on Happy Days. |
During its final season, Happy Days was getting trounced in the ratings just about every week. The main problem was that the veteran sitcom was scheduled opposite NBC's The A-Team, which was siphoning off millions of young viewers. Making matters worse, though, was the fact that Happy Days followed the phenomenally unpopular Just Our Luck, a gimmicky sitcom about a wisecracking genie named Shabu (T.K. Carter) and his uninspiring master Keith (Richard Gilliland). To put it mildly, America was not interested in watching this embarrassing show. It was ratings Kryptonite.
These must have been gloomy times at ABC. Their once-proud Tuesday night lineup was falling apart quickly. Things got so bad that, by December 1983, the 8:00 Just Our Luck/Happy Days hour was getting beaten not only by The A-Team but even by CBS' now-forgotten legal drama The Mississippi. Yes, there was a time when Ralph Waite of The Waltons as a lawyer turned riverboat captain was a bigger draw than Fonzie (Henry Winkler). It was clear that Happy Days had overstayed its welcome.
Despite all that, the show's final, little-watched season has its share of hidden gems. In fact, overall, it's a marked improvement over the rather snoozy, underwhelming Season 10. I think the cast and crew knew Happy Days was on its last legs and decided to put a little extra effort into this final batch of stories. A good example of this is "Vocational Education," in which preppie dork Roger (Ted McGinley) becomes the principal of the rough-and-tumble George S. Patton Vocational School. This one is especially fun because of its guest stars, including Leave it to Beaver's Ken Osmond as a sleazy shop teacher and Back to the Future (1985) star Crispin Glover as a juvenile delinquent named Roach.
We have a lot to say about "Vocational Education," and you can hear all of it in the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.