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TV Shows - Happy Days
Happy Days is an American television sitcom that originally aired from 1974 to 1984 on ABC. The show presents an idealized vision of life in 1950s and early 1960s America.
The family consists of Howard Cunningham, a hardware store owner, his homemaker wife Marion and the couple's two children, Richie, an optimistic if somewhat naive teenager, and Joanie, Ritchie's sweet but feisty younger sister. The Cunninghams also had an older son named Chuck, a character who disappeared during the second season.
The earlier episodes revolve around Richie and his friends, Potsie Weber, Ralph Malph and local dropout Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli, but as the series progressed, "Fonzie" proved to be a favourite with viewers and soon more story lines were written to reflect his growing popularity. Soon Fonzie befriended Richie and the Cunningham family. The focus would also occasionally shift to other additional characters, such as Fonzie's cousin Chachi, who became a love interest for Joanie Cunningham.
This long-running show spawned several other television series, including Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and Joanie Loves Chachi.
Wikipedia Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Days
eBay Link: View Happy Days on eBay
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| # | Reason | Why? | Votes | Vote |
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| 1 |
Fonzie Jumped The Shark |
Lame Attempt To Reinvigorate Show |
138 |
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| 2 |
Richie and Ralph |
Lost Two Central Characters |
46 |
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| 3 |
Filmed Before Studio Audience |
Suddenly All The Performers Screamed Their Lines |
34 |
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| 4 |
Day 1 |
Sucked from the start. |
18 |
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| 5 |
New Characters, Later Seasons |
characters were bad- KC, Flip, Jenny Picalo, etc. |
17 |
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| 6 |
Exit stage left |
Richie |
16 |
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| 7 |
Al Delvecchio |
Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah... |
6 |
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| 8 |
Singing |
Potsie sounds like the whitest person in the world |
6 |
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| 9 |
Never Boned |
Still rocks. |
6 |
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| 10 |
Exit Stage Left... |
Chuck Cunningham |
6 |
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| 11 |
Ted McGinley |
Replaced Ron Howard |
5 |
| 12 |
Ralph's Parents Divorce |
Beginning of the end. 70s themes in 50s show. |
4 |
| 13 |
A very special... |
Al moves to Mississippi |
4 |
| 14 |
New kid in town |
Chachi |
2 |
| 15 |
When Fonzie boned the fish. |
Do I really need a reason? |
2 |
| 16 |
Breakout Character: The Fonz |
Show focused more on the Fonz instead of others |
2 |
| 17 |
Spinoff |
Joanie and Chachi |
1 |
| 18 |
A very special... |
Al goes to Mississippi |
1 |
| 19 |
Theme Song Changes |
Rock Around the Clock was the Better Theme |
1 |
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| # | Comments |
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| 1 |
I've been watching these on TV recently and have to agree with that the show really started to suck at season 3. The switch to the live studio audience was certainly annoying, and many of the 3rd-string characters just vanished without explanation, like Chuck and the waitresses at Arnold's. The shift of focus to The Fonz began here. Almost every episode was about Fonzie having to do something out of his comfort zone, but succeeding and proclaiming new experience "cool". The Fonz got watered down and preachy. "Wearing glasses is cool!" etc. -- Submitted By: (Travoltron) on April 24, 2013, 6:52 pm - (0 votes)
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| 2 |
Potise singing is the indicator of the decline. An actor trying to use the show's popularity to start a recording career. He forgot one thing - HE CAN'T SING!!! -- Submitted By: (davev) on April 24, 2013, 6:01 pm - (0 votes)
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| 3 |
A correction, Greg. In Happy Days, Fonzie never got married. Heather O'Rourke played the daughter of a woman (Ashley Pfister) that Fonzie fell in love with and decided to go steady with. Ashley was played by actress Linda Purl. Linda also was on Happy Days in a recurring role (Gloria, Richies girlfriend) during the second season. The first and second seasons were the best seasons of Happy Days before they changed the show to a three camera set up, filming before a live audience. -- Submitted By: (bmovies) on February 6, 2013, 7:37 pm - (0 votes)
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| 4 |
Just saw an episode from 1978 - on a local retro station - where Fonzie goes blind from being hit with a tray. This was a couple of seasons after the show jumped the fish, so one would not expect much. It was a surprise, though, just how horrid the writing was. The next episode aired was when Henry Winkler's character rode a bull to save some kind of a dude ranch owned by Marion's "Uncle Ben." By this time, the shows were centering more and more on the ridiculous Fonzie while everyone else was pretty much pushed to the back burner. Later, the show went into a complete nosedive as Richie joined the Army and Fonz got married and had Heather O'Rourke. -- Submitted By: (GregEichelberger) on January 10, 2013, 7:27 pm - (0 votes)
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| 5 |
If Rock Around The Clock isn't the opening theme of the ep you're watching, don't bother. Maybe that's harsh. Some season 2 eps were OK, but once the audience started cheering for characters (mostly Fonz) when they first appear on camera, it became a giant stroke-off fest. I still LOL at "Potsie and His Raiders" from the stolen bike season 1 ep. -- Submitted By: (ParkerTillman) on June 12, 2012, 4:35 pm - (2 votes)
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| 6 |
As the show went on, Fonzie lost his hard edge and became too nice. When he entered the ballroom dance contest with Ms. Cunningham, I tuned out. -- Submitted By: (HailHail) on August 9, 2011, 6:41 pm - (2 votes)
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| 7 |
or Bone the Fish, which I forgot to add to my last post. -- Submitted By: (SSM) on May 26, 2011, 7:19 pm - (1 votes)
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| 8 |
Happy Days seems like a forefather to a lot of stuff that exist for TV shows today, like the Chuck Cunningham sydome when a one of the main characters or somebody related to the main characters leaves with little or no explation and for next seasons acts like that characters never existed at all. Obviously Jumping the Shark is also one of them. Also a minor character or a guest star become the main character like Fonzie and Urkel. -- Submitted By: (SSM) on May 26, 2011, 7:16 pm - (2 votes)
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| 9 |
Richie and Fonzie's interaction and Ron Howard and Henry Winkler's chemistry is what made the show, when the link was severed, that was that. -- Submitted By: (jonkaplanseaver) on May 9, 2011, 2:57 pm - (4 votes)
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| 10 |
I hate to echo an earlier submission, but when the hair on the actors began reaching unrealistic lengths, and the episodes began to be preposterously surreal, and the audience reactions to every-single-thing-Henry-Winkler-said-or-did began to drown out everything else, the fish of Milwaukee began to lose their bones.... -- Submitted By: (Soggy9000) on April 25, 2011, 7:38 pm - (1 votes)
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| 11 |
Part of the problem with this show is that what may seem like a BTF or JTS moment today, back then was just a typical episode of the same show. The many Fonzie BTFs were actually popular moments at the time as the audience screams it's approval the moment that Henry Winkler appears on the set. The popularity of this show at the time was a case of the end justifies the means. I've seenmany shows in syndication where the daily exposure to the same episodes makes it easy (if not impossible to miss)many moments that were popular then but becom tiresome when viewed repeatedly. Also DVDs have the same effect as plot inconsistencices of loopholes in stories beom glaringly self-evident. During the height of it's popularity the audience couldn't get enough of "The Fonz". They merely rode the wave until it crashed.
IMHO the real issue here would be that departure of characters who out grew their roles, and then the eventual goody goody style format of trying to teach the viewers a lesson about staying in school or smoking. -- Submitted By: (lrbloom) on February 24, 2011, 6:39 am - (2 votes)
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| 12 |
Happy Days in Jump The Shark:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080504173334/www.jumptheshark.com/category/H/28&fstart=0 -- Submitted By: (TMC1982) on November 15, 2010, 11:37 pm - (1 votes)
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| 13 |
BTW, I just heard that Tom Bosley (who played Mr. Cunningham) just died yesterday. R.I.P. -- Submitted By: (cartooner) on October 20, 2010, 1:38 pm - (0 votes)
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| 14 |
Personally, I say that its true boning point (to the point where they couldn't turn back) was when Richie (Ron Howard's character) left the show. -- Submitted By: (cartooner) on September 14, 2010, 4:25 am - (3 votes)
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| 15 |
Actually, I thought the show was fairly decent for the first season or two. I didn't think it would ever make comedy classic status, but it did have a nice, fairly authentic "American Graffitti"-ish feel back then. Even the Fonzie character was kept under control. Then 'Tha Fonz' became the breakout character on the series, and shortly after the whole show fell apart for me; it became irritating, dumbed-down and totally geared to the Fonzie-fanatics. It always surprised me that Ron Howard stuck around for as long as he did in the mess that HD turned into as a result of Fonziemania. -- Submitted By: (elainewood) on September 13, 2010, 4:32 pm - (4 votes)
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| 16 |
Mr Fox wrote "If this was really the beginning of a downward spiral, why did the show stay on the air for six more seasons and shoot an additional 164 episodes?"
Well why are shows like 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians' and 'Big Brother' still on the air.
People will watch garbage and love it, I suppose. -- Submitted By: (Friedrich_Feuerstein) on September 7, 2010, 9:47 am - (2 votes)
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| 17 |
The writer of the infamous Shark Jump episode finally speaks out! http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/03/entertainment/la-et-jump-the-shark-20100903 -- Submitted By: (Travoltron) on September 6, 2010, 2:51 pm - (2 votes)
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| 18 |
Forget the early 60s, did anyone dress that way in the 70s? -- Submitted By: (DolFan316) on June 29, 2010, 10:41 pm - (1 votes)
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| 19 |
What's with the guy with the bare midriff in the later seasons? Did people actually dress that way back in the early 1960s? -- Submitted By: (JayD) on June 29, 2010, 6:26 pm - (2 votes)
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| 20 |
Season 3 a definite turning point. "Two Angry Men" was ludicrous - the suing and the courtroom scene in particular. -- Submitted By: (Gordon_Bennet) on May 6, 2010, 5:15 pm - (3 votes)
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