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| Alexa Hamilton and Henry Winkler on Happy Days. |
Happy Days got pretty decent ratings when it debuted in January 1974. Its status as a nostalgia-driven show set in the 1950s made it something of a novelty and helped it stand out from its competitors in the crowded prime time TV landscape. As Fonzie (Henry Winkler) himself said in an early promo: "Hey, I'm Fonzie. I'm on that new show about the '50s called Happy Days. It'll take you back to some really cool times! Now how does that grab you?" And it must have grabbed people pretty well, since the freshman sitcom made the Top 20 against CBS' Maude and NBC's Adam-12.
Unfortunately, the novelty appeal of Happy Days wore off during the second season, and the show's ratings started to suffer. At ABC's insistence, the struggling sitcom was heavily retooled, with Fonzie becoming a more central character and the entire show being filmed in front of a rowdy studio audience. Miraculously, this revamped version of Happy Days caught on and managed to last another decade, becoming the cornerstone of the network's Tuesday night lineup.
Over the course of that long (and highly-rated) run, the makers of Happy Days gradually played down the nostalgia gimmick until it was barely part of the show at all. Oh, you'd hear golden oldies on the soundtrack occasionally, and the characters would make some references to TV shows and movies from the past, but Happy Days was otherwise a normal sitcom that could have been set in any era.
In its final season in 1984, Happy Days did the unthinkable: an anti-nostalgia episode! In "The Spirit is Willing," Fonzie falls for a mysterious woman named Nancy (Alexa Hamilton) who shares his love of the past -- the cars, the clothes, the music, all of it. She tries to lure him into a world where it's 1955 forever and nothing ever changes. Fonzie is tempted but ultimately realizes that Nancy is not what she seems and may have a deeply sinister agenda. In short, "The Spirit is Willing," written by Larry Strawther, is a bold repudiation of everything that Happy Days spent 11 seasons building up.
But does that make it a good episode? Find out by listening to These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.
I appreciate your commentary on Happy Days episodes, I just stumbled upon this and I plan on listening to some more of them! The reason I wanted to search for info on “The Spirit Is Willing” is, in addition to it being very “anti-nostalgia”, the fact that this was supposed to be the next-to-penultimate episode of the entire series (were it not for the Olympics preemption) has me thinking that there was some meta-commentary going on about the show’s run ending very soon. Of course the show was more popular - and better - before the “new Arnold’s” years, and I think that idea is reflected in Fonzie considering 1955 the best year ever. I’m wondering if the producers/writers were trying to just say, “the show was whatever it was, and served its purpose, and whether you liked the recent seasons or not, it’s time to wrap it up and move on”. The fact that Nancy Haley (same last name as Bob Haley, the performer, along with the Comets, of Rock Around The Clock, the original Happy Days theme song) died 10 years earlier - the same amount of time Happy Days had been on the air (1974-1984) - seems to me like it can’t be a coincidence. And of course, the early seasons, as you state in your commentary, were definitely more about nostalgia for the 50s than the later seasons, which was a big thing around the early-to-mid-seventies, after the social upheavals of the 60s. Maybe the happy Days crew was saying, “nostalgia has served its purpose, but we can’t wallow in it forever”, or something like that. I could be wrong, and I’m probably reading too much into it, but I believe those things are very possible, as far as the producers’ intentions and inspirations for the episode. Looking forward to checking more of your commentaries out, thanks for doing it! I was and remain a huge Happy Days fan, this was one of the comforting things that got me through my childhood. I can actually recall watching the original broadcast of the “Fearless Fonzarelli” episodes with my mother in our old apartment back when I was 6 (speaking of nostalgia!), and I was hooked after that!
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