Podcast Tuesday: "Little Movie 'Bout Leo and Loree"

Don Most and Linda Purl in Leo and Loree (1980).

Doing a podcast about Happy Days involves many hours of writing, research, and editing, but the actual recording of a typical episode is a mere blip. Every other Sunday, my cohost and I spend about an hour or so chatting over Zoom. This gets edited down to about 30-40 minutes of usable audio, to which I will then add various clips from movies, TV shows, and pop records. These Days Are Ours is a show that is largely made in editing, each episode pieced together from lots of little scraps.

These nearly ruined the show.

Recording is, by far, my favorite part of the process. It just goes by so quickly that it feels like a barely-remembered dream. At least, it usually does. But something strange happened when it was time to record our review of Leo and Loree (1980), a romantic comedy starring Donny Most and Linda Purl as young Hollywood hopefuls. I had chosen this movie as a topic for review, so I felt responsible for this particular installment of the podcast. The onus was on me to make this one work.

I'd woken up a couple of hours before we were set to record. My sinuses were acting up that day, so I took some allergy medicine. For some reason, the little pink pills kicked in especially hard and started messing with my head. Maybe it was because I hadn't eaten anything. By the time we were supposed to record, I was dizzy and drowsy and barely coherent. I couldn't talk about a Don Most movie for an entire hour in this condition! What was I going to do?

Fortunately, I have very little to say in the first few minutes of our show. I just have to say my name and the title of the movie or TV show we're reviewing, then my cohost launches into a detailed plot summary. This always gives me about 5-10 minutes where I'm off-mic. So to combat the effects of the allergy medicine, I just started drinking anything caffeinated I could find. When it was time for me to speak, I was keyed-up and nervous. The caffeine and the allergy medicine interacted oddly, and I struggled mightily to stay on topic and express myself in a coherent way.

I knew this episode was going to be a mess to edit, and it was. Hopefully, though, you won't even be able to tell because I've cut all of my unexpected, weirdly-timed pauses and rambling, meaningless sentences out of the finished product. Just know that, as you listen to this installment of our podcast, one of the hosts is fighting the battle of his life just to keep from babbling like an idiot or falling asleep.

Podcast Tuesday: "You Wanna Get Jobs? Come On! Let's Get Jobs!"

Michael Keaton and Jim Belushi in the pilot for Working Stiffs.

What is it that makes one sitcom a hit and another one a flop? Why do some shows live on in reruns for decades while others simply evaporate from the prime time schedule without a trace? No one really knows. If there were a formula for this stuff, someone would have figured it out a long time ago and we'd have nothing but hits. And, as we all know, television history is littered with the corpses of unsuccessful programs.

Even with the best of planning, each new TV show is a gamble. You start with a premise that seems workable and could generate lots of compelling stories. Then you hire actors you think will connect with the audience, and you assemble a production team that can create a quality show while meeting strict deadlines. Once that's all in place, it's up to the marketing department to create promotions that will ignite the public's imagination and drive traffic to the show. Something could go wrong at any stage in this process, and it could be enough to sink the entire enterprise.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're covering the pilot for an extremely short-lived sitcom from 1979 called Working Stiffs. It was co-created by Happy Days showrunner Bob Brunner and tells the story of two bumbling brothers who convince their uncle to give them jobs as janitors in a Chicago office building. The brothers are played by two actors who went on to fame and fortune: Jim Belushi and Michael Keaton. The production team includes many sitcom veterans with long, successful careers in television. And CBS gave the show an enthusiastic promotional push. Working Stiffs was canceled after four weeks.

What went wrong? That's what we'll try to figure out as we review the show's pilot episode. Please do join us by clicking on the play button below.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Marshall-Belson Experiments"

Will Hutchins and Sandy Baron on Hey, Landlord!

One of the strangest major studio movies of the '90s was Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998), an extremely literal remake of the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic of the same name. If you've ever seen Van Sant's film, you know that it is a curiously empty, uninvolving experience. The actors are self-conscious and ill-at-ease, and scene after scene falls flat. But why doesn't it work? Van Sant's actors, including Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche, are faithfully reenacting the original. The cast and crew are certainly talented enough. Shouldn't it be just as good? There must be some intangible element that is missing from the remake.

A classic episode.

This phenomenon can work in reverse, too, when a remake outshines its predecessor. I'll give you an example. One of the most famous episodes of Garry Marshall's Laverne & Shirley is "Guinea Pigs" (original airdate: January 18, 1977), in which the title characters participate in kooky medical experiments in order to earn some money to attend a fancy cocktail party. The problem is, the girls are so zonked-out from the experiments (Laverne has been deprived of regular sleep, Shirley of normal food) that they struggle mightily to make it through the party once they get there. Like Hitchcock's Psycho, "Guinea Pigs" is considered a classic in its field.

What I didn't know until recently is that the plot of "Guinea Pigs" is recycled from a previous Garry Marshall sitcom, Hey, Landlord!, which ran from 1966 to 1967. This earlier show revolves around two roommates, Woody (Will Hutchins) and Chuck (Sandy Baron), sharing a bachelor pad in a New York brownstone. In "Testing... One, Two," the boys agree to take part in some medical experiments so they can have the money to rent tuxedos for a neighbor's photography exhibition. You can probably guess how it turns out. It's the same story that worked so well on Laverne & Shirley, but I'll bet you've never heard of, let alone seen, "Testing...One, Two." Why is that?

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, my cohost and I review the Hey, Landlord! episode and try to deconstruct why this series never caught on. We'd be most appreciative if you would join us. The podcast is available right here:

Podcast Tuesday: "The Young People of Today, Am I Right?"

Tom Bosley voices Harry Boyle (center), a harried suburban dad on Love, American Style.

There are two basic types of classic sitcom dads: the grouchy, cantankerous ones who yell at their kids and the calm, reasonable ones who say things like, "Gosh, I'm very disappointed in you." In the early days of TV, most sitcoms had the second type. Witness such series as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952-1966), Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), My Three Sons (1960-1972), and Father Knows Best (1954-1960), all of which had even-tempered patriarchs. Danny Thomas started to change that with Make Room for Daddy (1953-1964), and by the 1970s, we were finally ready for Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on All in the Family (1971-1979).

Meanwhile, over in the world of animation, Hanna-Barbera shows like The Flintstones (1960-1966) and The Jetsons (1962-1963). were allowed to have agitated, grousing husbands and fathers. You could say that Fred Flintstone and George Jetson made the world safe for Harry Boyle, an overworked, overstressed suburbanite voiced by Tom Bosley on Hanna-Barbera's syndicated series, Wait Till Your Father Gets Home (1972-1974).

As it happens, the pilot episode for Wait aired as a segment on ABC's comedy anthology Love, American Style (1969-1974). Yes, this was the same place where the Happy Days pilot had aired back in 1971! This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, my cohost and I give our opinions on that pilot. Click below to hear our take on "Love and the Old-Fashioned Father."

Podcast Tuesday: "The Genie and the Weenie"

David Hartman and Barbara Eden in The Feminist and the Fuzz.

Three-hundred episodes. It must mean something, but what? Hell if I know. When my cohost and I started These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast in 2018, I didn't even know if we'd make it though all 11 seasons of the sitcom. Well, we did... and then some. After we reviewed all 255 episodes of the original series (1974-1984), we covered its animated spinoff, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (1980-1981), and all the feature films directed by the show's creator, Garry Marshall. 

Lately, we've been exploring the vast world of Happy Days-adjacent media, i.e. projects involving the cast and crew of the show. Since many of these fine folks had long, varied careers in show business, we can never run out of material to cover. My first pick for this phase of the podcast was The Money Tree (1971), an educational film starring Anson Williams. This week, we get my cohost's first pick: an extremely of-its-time made-for-TV movie called The Feminist and the Fuzz, directed by Jerry Paris. The plot concerns a liberated San Francisco doctor (Barbara Eden) who, through wacky circumstances, ends up sharing an apartment with a chauvinist cop (David Hartman). 

Will these two mismatched roomies find love against all odds? There are literally only two ways to find out: either watch the movie yourself or listen to our review of it. I know which one I'd pick.

Podcast Tuesday: "Potsie Weber, Wanted Fugitive"

Margaret Willock and Anson Williams in The Money Tree.

I have surprisingly fond memories of corny, old-fashioned educational or "classroom" movies. My father was a high school teacher—his subjects were history and economics—during the primitive, pre-VCR days when you actually needed a projector and a screen to show a movie in class. I remember accompanying him several times to the Flint Public Library to procure these precious film reels that came in heavy, gray boxes that you needed to secure with luggage straps. For some reason, I found all of this to be unbearably exciting.

It was even better when one of my own teachers at Springview Elementary would show a movie in class. Again, I grew up in the movie projector era, before TVs strapped to wheeled carts became ubiquitous. What a thrill to hear that noisy projector whirring away as the images flickered on the screen. I think I liked the Disney nature movies best, but I generally enjoyed them all, even the really bad ones. It was a wonderful, much-needed break from the tedium of the school day.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we turn our attentions to a somewhat forgotten 1971 educational film called The Money Tree starring Anson "Potsie" Williams in one of his earliest roles. He plays a young married man who gets into major debt by renting furniture and buying a new Ford Mustang on credit. And he drags his poor wife (Margaret Willock) down with him. What did we learn from this film? Well, you can find out below.

So I was on TV, talking about Happy Days...

Adding some necessary labels to TV We Love.

It used to mean something to be on television, especially national television. When I was a kid, there were only three major networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC), plus PBS and a handful of independent stations that didn't always come in clearly. And that was your home entertainment, apart from books, magazines, newspapers, etc. The internet was still far in the future. There was no such thing as "streaming." Even cable and VCRs were but distant lights on the horizon back then. And so, my family and I would gather around the television set in our shag-carpeted, wood-paneled basement and watch shows like Alice, Fantasy Island, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Happy Days. Mainstream fare, in other words.

Many decades hence, long after television became irrelevant, I finally made it onto the boob tube. On Monday, November 10, 2025, my episode of the documentary series TV We Love aired on the CW. Had I not been on the show, I never would have heard of it. But I was, so I did. What can I say? It was still exciting to see myself on the screen, talking about Happy Days. My sister's family watched. Some of my internet pals and high school classmates tuned in. I tried to get some of my coworkers to watch, but I soon realized they had no idea what the CW even was.

Did you watch? If not, I have some good news: my entire episode is available for free right here. Enjoy! And if you want to know how I got involved in this project and what making the documentary was like, you can find out here.

Where is the 'Krapopolis' discourse?

The cast of the animated series Krapopolis.

The Fox animated series Krapopolis is currently in its third season. It has already been renewed for two more. Fifty episodes have already aired. The show's creator, Dan Harmon, is the man behind the cult classic NBC series Community and the co-creator of the pop culture juggernaut Rick & Morty. The voice cast includes Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry of The IT Crowd, as well as Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso. Numerous famous comedians and character actors have lent their voices to the show as well.

Fox has not been bashful in its promotion of Krapopolis, which currently airs in the 9:00 EST Sunday night timeslot as part of the Animation Domination block alongside such hits as The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers. The animation budget is obviously robust, and the stories are often quite ambitious, referencing both ancient history and Greek mythology while commenting slyly on the foibles of modern times.

So why is no one talking about this show?

Seemingly every aspect of The Simpsons has been scrutinized, parodied, analyzed, criticized, and recontextualized over the course of the last few decades. Similar attention has been paid to South Park, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, Beavis & Butt-head, and many other so-called "adult animation" shows. This genre tends to attract obsessives with strong opinions. But it's rare that I see anyone online discussing Krapopolis. Where are the video essays? Where are the think pieces? Where is the fan art? Where are the memes? Where are the tweets?

There should be plenty to discuss here. Krapopolis is set in Ancient Greece and centers around a family that contains gods, humans, and monsters. (Yes, all three in one family.) These characters have a lot to deal with, since they're always fighting among themselves and fending off attacks (often supernatural ones) from outsiders. And if that's not enough, the family is also attempting to get civilization off the ground and govern the first-ever city, despite the general public not understanding what a city is, what civilization is, or how government even works. Big things happen every week on Krapopolis. The characters embark upon quests, go to battle, cast spells, etc. Just this season, a major power shift has occurred within the family, with neurotic human Tyrannis (Ayoade) ceding the crown to his jovial, hard-partying father, Shlub (Berry), a combination centaur and manticore. And, again, this is all presented as satirical commentary on the modern world.

Somehow, despite its prominence on the Fox schedule, Krapopolis has managed to remain functionally invisible since it premiered in 2023. I think this is the first time I've written about it, and I've seen nearly every episode. That's the weirdest thing about this show. I generally find myself indifferent to it—not bored or irritated, necessarily, just strangely unmoved. In the abstract, I can appreciate the cleverness of the writing, but I can't honestly say the show has ever provoked me to genuine laughter. I'll never find myself thinking back on some joke from Krapopolis and snickering with delight.

My guess is that the rest of the world is as indifferent to the show as I am. And so, Krapopolis exists in an airless, soundless comedic vacuum. Fox will continue to produce and air episodes of it. The public will continue not to care. And the cycle will continue for, what, eight or nine more seasons? It's like this show is a "blockbuster" movie that plays to empty houses but continues to get sequels that no one asked for. I'm starting to suspect this entire enterprise is some sort of money laundering scheme or tax writeoff.

Am I wrong? Do you have strong opinions, positive or negative, about Krapopolis? Let me know.

Update regarding that 'Happy Days' documentary that I'm in!

Some promotional artwork for TV We Love.

In case you don't follow me on any of my social media accounts, I have some exciting news about the Happy Days documentary that includes an interview with me. The show will air on the CW on Monday, November 10, 2025 at 8:00 EST and 7:00 CST! The title of the series has changed from TV That Changed the World to TV We Love, and it has switched networks from CBS to the CW. That's showbiz, I guess. I'm just happy that it's finally going to air, and I hope you will watch it.

In the meantime, TV We Love will air every Monday night on the CW for the next eight weeks. The show premiered tonight with a look at I Love Lucy. Future episodes will cover Dynasty, Cheers, The Love Boat, The Brady Bunch, and more.

Podcast Tuesday: "Still the Beaver" or "The Myth of Sissy Foods"

The unsold 1983 pilot Herndon centers around a goofy tech genius.

You might assume that, when Garry Marshall started directing feature films in 1982, he'd let his TV career quietly die out. Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley would slowly but surely run out the clock, and Garry would concentrate on movies. And, for the most part, that's pretty much what happened. From the mid-1980s onward, Garry was a known as a movie guy, not a TV guy.

But he did make a few last attempts at getting another sitcom going in the 1980s. One of his most intriguing misfires is Herndon (1983), in which future Seinfeld star Michael Richards plays a clumsy tech genius named Dr. Herndon P. Poole and a mustachioed Ted McGinley plays a down-on-his-luck wheeler dealer type named Shack who finds much-needed employment at Herndon's Silicon Valley startup. Garry directed a half-hour pilot written by Happy Days veterans Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, but ABC didn't take the bait. The network aired the pilot just once, then forgot about the project. Garry and everyone else involved moved on to other things.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we take a good, long look at that unsold pilot and talk about whether or not Herndon should have become the first major sitcom to take place in the tech industry. We'd be tickled pink if you'd join us.

Podcast Tuesday: "Attractive Female"

Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

As my cohost and I have made our way through the films of Garry Marshall, I've been reminded time and again of just how different media consumption was in the 1980s and '90s. For one thing, I saw a lot more movies in the theater back then, at least three or four each month. These days, I'll see maybe two or three movies a year on the big screen.

Another big difference was that, in the days before streaming, we were reliant on VHS tapes if we wanted to screen a film at home. Most we rented, a few we owned. This system wasn't all bad. My sister and I had our own VHS copy of Garry Marshall's smash romcom Pretty Woman (1990) and watched it dozens of times. That film simply became part of our consciousness, and we quoted it frequently.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about Pretty Woman. The film was extremely popular in its own time, but how does it hold up in ours? Well, click below to find out.

Podcast Tuesday: "TRUE STORY: I'm in a Happy Days Documentary"

Am I an official Cunningham now? No, but I can dream.

I've been putting original content on the internet for over 30 years now, most of it totally for free. I started posting on Usenet newsgroups and AOL forums in the mid-1990s, and I've never stopped creating material (songs, scripts, stories, etc.)  and trying to get it out to the world somehow. It's really just an evolution of what I was doing in junior high and high school. In my pre-internet days, I made little hand-drawn comics and passed them around class. I also wrote for the school newspaper. You'd think the internet would connect me with a much larger audience than I had back then, but so far that's not really been the case. My appeal has always been extremely limited, bordering on nonexistent.

I suppose I hoped that, eventually, something I made would catch on and I'd garner some kind of following. It just never happened for me, though, at least not on any grand scale. Whatever the zeitgeist is, I've never captured it. About a decade ago, I briefly made an attempt at being a professional freelance writer. I got some things published, but again success eluded me. Then, the work dried up altogether and I had to give it up. Still in all, I've been doing this blog since 2009 and These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast since 2018, and I have no plans to stop either one of them any time soon. I'll keep creating and releasing this stuff for as long as I can, even if my only audience is myself.

These days, I'm always surprised and grateful when anyone reads anything I've written, listens to anything I've recorded, or watches anything I've filmed. It's not often that people find my work, but I'm happy when they do. Recently, I was contacted by a production company that was making a documentary about Happy Days for CBS. I'm not exactly sure how they found me, but they did, and they asked me to be a part of their show. This was pretty extraordinary. This week on the podcast, I talk about that experience and what I learned from it. If you're interested in hearing it, just press the play button on the episode below.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Teaches of Beaches"

Barbara Hershey and Bette Midler in Beaches.

Remember the so-called "monoculture"? If you grew up in the 1980s or earlier, you certainly do. Back then, due to the constraints of technology and commerce, we mostly consumed the same media at the same time as everyone else. Whatever the "big" movies and TV shows were, that's what we watched. Whatever was in the Top 40, that's what we listened to. This may not sound like an ideal system, but it gave us a common frame of reference. When we talked about "the media" in the abstract, we were referring to the same material. Cable and home video started to erode the monoculture just a bit in the '80s, but the '90s was when the entertainment world truly started splintering into a lot of little hyper-specific facets.

Nowadays, thanks to the internet and the rise of personal devices like smartphones and tablets (meant to be used by an individual rather than a group), the entertainment we consume is well-tailored to our various demographic groups and delivered to us by algorithms that know us better than we know ourselves. We stay in our lanes, culturally speaking, and it's considered "weird" (read; undesirable) to do otherwise. In 2025, it's very possible to have a supposed "hit" song that most of the country has never heard or a "hit" TV show that most of the country isn't even aware of. If it's not intended for you, it generally doesn't reach you. I suppose the last vestiges of the monoculture are the big franchise films that dominate the box office: the sequels, remakes, reboots, and adaptations of familiar intellectual properties.

Director Garry Marshall's fifth film, Beaches (1988)—a tearjerking melodrama starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as lifelong friends with clashing personalities—is a definite product of the monoculture. Produced by Walt Disney's Touchstone Pictures division, it's a film designed to appeal to the widest-possible audience. And it did just that! Not only was the film a hit in theaters and on video, it launched a massive hit single ("Wind Beneath My Wings") and led to one of its cast members (Mayim Bialik) getting her own prime time sitcom. I don't think any of this would be remotely possible in 2025. Today, a film like Beaches, if it got made at all, would be shuffled off to a streaming service and quickly forgotten. Indeed, a 2017 remake of the film went straight to cable and was largely ignored.

So Beaches is a reminder of who we once were and of what pop culture used to be. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? We'll try to figure all that out as we review it in the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Podcast Tuesday: "Stockholm Syndrome: The Romantic Comedy!"

Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn in Overboard.

Boy, were we obsessed with money in the 1980s! It was all we ever thought about, apart from sex, drugs, leg warmers, video games, and the music of Adam Ant. 

Admittedly, we humans have been obsessed with money ever since it was invented about five-thousand years ago, but our fixation on the topic hit a new high during the Reagan-Bush years. Or a new low, depending on your point of view. Either way, the subject dominated popular culture across all media in the '80s. On the radio, we'd hear "Money for Nothing," "Big Time," "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)," and "Material Girl." On television, we'd tune into capitalist fantasies like Dallas, Dynasty, Diff'rent Strokes, Silver Spoons, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. These shows taught us that, with enough cash in your bank account, you could live as you please and make your most vulgar consumerist dreams come true. And we bought into it!

But the movies outdid them all! Year after year, Hollywood gave us silly, over-the-top comedies about the extremely wealthy, often showcasing how they reacted to being around the extremely unwealthy.  Just off the top of my head, I remember Arthur (1981), Annie (1982), Trading Places (1983), Brewster's Millions (1985), Ruthless People (1986), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Big Business (1988), Coming to America (1988), and more. This was a time when it seemed like the characters in film comedies always had maids and butlers.

Somewhere in all this mess was Garry Marshall's fourth feature film, Overboard (1987) starring Goldie Hawn as a spoiled rich woman who loses her memory and Kurt Russell as an earthy carpenter who takes advantage of that situation. Edward Herrmann, Katherine Helmond, and Roddy McDowell come along for the ride. Have you already guessed that this is the film we're covering this week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast? Well, it is. You can hear what we thought of Overboard by clicking the play button below.

Podcast Tuesday: "Diabetic Neuropathy of a Salesman"

Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason square off in Nothing in Common.

Back in the 1980s, movies depended a lot more on star power than they do today. In the 2020s, some franchise or intellectual property is generally the "star" that sells a movie. But the way to market a film successfully forty years ago was to emphasize the big-name actors in it. If there were any major celebrities in a movie, the studio would make damned sure that their famous names and equally-famous faces appeared very prominently on the posters and in the trailers. 

Garry Marshall's comedy-drama Nothing in Common (1986) is a perfect example. The film is about a hotshot Chicago ad executive whose aging parents suddenly split up. What the ad campaign really wants you to know, however, is that the movie stars Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason. The one-sheet is literally a closeup of their faces, glaring at each other. Why should you go to the theater? To see these two guys that you already know from other stuff.

Whenever my parents asked my grandmother to accompany us to a new movie, she'd always ask, "Who's in it?" And if we couldn't supply any famous names in the cast, she wouldn't be interested. When Nothing in Common came out, I'm sure it was Jackie Gleason's presence that convinced Grandma to go with us to the theater that day. So we saw Garry Marshall's film as a family. I can't remember if any of us loved or hated it. In fact, there were only a few aspects of the film that stuck in my memory at all, namely Tom Hanks' answering machine message and Jackie Gleason's diabetes-ravaged foot.

Is there anything more to Nothing in Common worth remembering? This week on These Days Are Ours, my cohost and I review the film and give you our unvarnished opinions on it. Please do join us.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Devil's Cabana Boy"

Janet Jones, Matt Dillon, and Jessica Walter in The Flamingo Kid.

One of the common complaints about Happy Days in its later seasons is that the long-running sitcom gradually gave up on the nostalgia angle that had been so important to its initial success. Oh, sure, you'd still hear the occasional oldie on the soundtrack, and Fonzie (Henry Winkler) never stopped wearing that iconic leather jacket. But Happy Days didn't put much effort into this aspect of the show in its final years. It became just another generic sitcom that might as well have been set in the 1980s.

Had Happy Days creator Garry Marshall lost interest in recapturing the past? Not hardly! His second directorial effort, a coming-of-age film called The Flamingo Kid (1984), was awash in the cars, clothes, hairdos, and slang of the early 1960s. What's more, the film was set in Brooklyn, where Garry himself grew up. The film definitely evokes a time and a place, much more so than late-period Happy Days did. But does this mean The Flamingo Kid is a great film? Is it "better" than Happy Days? The only way you'll know is to listen to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours.

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 2)"

The Dialtones sing one of their many, many songs in Happy Days: A New Musical.

I watch a fair amount of product review videos on YouTube, and recently, a channel I follow called Freakin' 2 tested out some novelty Easter candies. Among the items being reviewed were those Dr. Pepper-flavored Peeps you may have seen at the supermarket. I was especially interested in these because I'd tried them myself a few weeks ago and found them to be a decent facsimile of the popular beverage. But I don't really drink a whole lot of Dr. Pepper, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

The host of the Freakin' 2 video reached this conclusion: "I think occasional fans of Dr. Pepper will probably like it, but purists may not be convinced."

Well, friends, that's exactly my reaction to Happy Days: A New Musical, the show we're reviewing this week on These Days Are Ours. If you've seen a handful of Happy Days episodes and have a basic grasp of the characters and their relationships, the 2007 stage musical will probably be satisfactory to you. It's pleasant enough and doesn't overstay its welcome. But if Happy Days is burned into your brain because you've reviewed all 255 episodes, plus the animated series, the stage version may seem slightly "off" to you.

In other words, Happy Days: A New Musical is the Dr. Pepper Peeps of musicals. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Listen to our review of Act 2 and find out!

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 1)"

The happy, happy cast of Happy Days: A New Musical.

When Howard Ashman and Alan Menken adapted Roger Corman's dark comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1960) as a stage musical in 1982, it was rather a novelty in the theater world. Stage shows based on movies weren't exactly unknown back then—think of Sondheim's A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)—but generally the adaptation process went the other direction. Stage musicals became movies, not the other way around.

Nowadays, due to the success of movie-based shows like The Producers (2001), Hairspray (2002), and Spamalot (2004), it seems like every fondly-remembered pop culture property gets its own theatrical musical eventually. It's not surprising at all that Happy Days (1974-1984) would also get this treatment, especially since the long-running sitcom was already heavily influenced by the stage show Grease (1971). And so, in 2007, Happy Days: A New Musical debuted to generally positive reviews. It never reached Broadway but has become a rather popular choice for high schools and community theater troupes.

A few years ago, my cohost suggested we cover the Happy Days musical on These Days Are Ours, but I've been putting it off for some reason. Now that we've finished all eleven seasons of the sitcom and both seasons of the cartoon, it feels like it's finally time to cover the stage show, which has a book by Garry Marshall and songs by Paul Williams. That's an impressive pedigree. Does the show live up to it? This week on the podcast, we try to answer that question as we review Act 1.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Top 5 Episodes of The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang"

Scenes from various episodes of the '80s animated series The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.

Rather like Joanie Loves Chachi, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang occupies a place of infamy in the Fonzieverse. Why did we even need an animated version of Happy Days? Why does it feature a talking dog and a "future chick" with magic powers? Why are the characters traveling through time in a flying saucer? The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang seems like another example of the Happy Days franchise completely selling out and betraying its own origins as a sweet, simple show about 1950s nostalgia. File it alongside that time Fonzie jumped over a shark in Season 5.

But, over the course of doing These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast since 2018, I've learned a few surprising things. Joanie Loves Chachi, though totally disposable, is a competent, occasionally amusing sitcom. The "jump the shark" episode is actually a lot of fun if you don't take Happy Days seriously (and you shouldn't). And even The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang has its redeeming qualities.

This week, my cohost and I go over our respective picks for the Top 5 episodes of the animated series, and we talk about our overall impressions of the show and its characters. It'd be awfully nice if you would join us.

Podcast Tuesday: "Fonz of the Baskervilles"

Fonzie (Henry Winkler) meets Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London.

Contemporary critics may see the animated series The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang as a disappointment or even an outright failure because it "only" lasted 24 episodes between 1980 and 1981. Apparently, to be successful by modern standards, a show has to accumulate many dozens of episodes spread out over numerous seasons. The live-action Happy Days, for instance, ran for 11 seasons and 255 episodes. Now that's an impressive run! Its cartoon counterpart didn't survive nearly so long.

What people overlook is that it was the norm at Hanna-Barbera from the 1960s to the 1980s to produce only a handful of episodes for each of its series and then rerun those same episodes over and over for years. Long-running series like The Flintstones and The Smurfs were the exception, not the rule. The original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? only ran 25 episodes from 1969 to 1970. Jabberjaw and Hong Kong Phooey ran 16 episodes apiece. Josie and the Pussycats ran 31 episodes, but that's only if you count Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. Wacky Races only ran 17 episodes, and that got two spinoffs! By those standards, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang did respectably.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we arrive at the final episode of the animated series, entitled "Give Me a Hand, Something's Afoot." This time, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and his friends travel to 1894 London and meet the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes (Henry Polic II). If you were hoping for an epic Sherlock/Fonzie team-up, however, this episode may be a bit of a letdown. The characters do meet, but they don't really work together for long. The famous detective's archenemy, Professor Moriarty, is here, but Holmes' sidekick, Dr. Watson, is mysteriously absent.

Does this mean "Something's Afoot" is a bad episode, though? Listen to the latest installment of the podcast to find out!