Original Airdate: October 29, 1974
You can watch this episode on CBS All Access (free with subscription), bootlegged on YouTube, or on DVD.
Happy Days is a bit before our time. Its final episode aired on September 24, 1984, which at that time I think it was running on fumes and all sorts of crazy shit was happening and no one was watching anymore. My mind is being silently blown upon finding out that the infamous Jump the Shark episode aired in nineteen-fucking-seventy-seven and the series went on for six and a half more years after that. That episode is known of course for inspiring the term attached to the moment that effectively ruined a TV show. In Happy Days' case, this occurred when Fonzie literally water-ski-jumped over actual sharks. I'll save an in-depth discussion of this for another post because my only objective in pointing this out is to say that by the time Pete and I were born, Happy Days had long since gone off the rails.
I put Happy Days in the same category as Gilligan's Island, Gidget, to a lesser extent the Love Boat, and of course the Brady Bunch. These shows are not sitcom-core, but if you are 10-15 years older than us, you may feel the same way we do about Happy Days that we do about our Full Houses, Family Matterses and Saveds by the Bell. In our prime TV-watching years, roughly '86-'94, Nick and Nite was still dominated by shows our parents watched like Bewitched, Green Acres, and I Love Lucy. Shows from the late '60s and '70s were usually shown in syndication at odd hours. The only opportunities I had to watch the likes of Happy Days and Gilligan's Island were summer vacations because they aired on that weird channel that eventually became UPN in the middle of the day. But I never got into Happy Days as a kid and I can't explain that. It was only after I met Pete, who made me watch it with him on Nick at Nite that I really got it.
I don't recall how we stumbled upon this episode, but it's a stone-cold classic. We must have first caught it on TV because we only have Season 2 of Happy Days on DVD and I believe we purchased the entire set just to have a forever-copy of this episode. It's that good. It's the only episode of Happy Days we make a point to watch and it's one of those that I get so excited to see again, we consistently watch it during our first Halloween TV party of the year.
The episode begins at Arnold's where the gang is discussing Ralph Malph's plans to have his annual Halloween party in an abandoned house well known to the neighborhood as haunted. I guess a constant source concern for them a gang of 30-year-old high school students who crash and ruin the Halloween party and having the party not at Ralph's but at the Old Simpson Place will throw the Demons off the scent. I want to also point out that we know they're a gang because they're all wearing the same jacket. Also bonus: when chicks get scared, they need comforting. Richie is not terribly excited about the idea of having to go to a party in a haunted house, and for some reason Ralph gets all Joe Mayo on Richie assigns him the task of stopping by the Old Simpson Place to make sure it's creepy enough for the party. Richie is understandably unhappy with this request, not because Ralph should do it himfuckingself, but because he's scared, a charge he denies.
Richie and Joanie visit the Old Simpson Place together because Richie has to take Joanie to her Chipmunk (read: fake Girl Scout) meeting after. The place is indeed dusty and cob-webby, as Ralph wanted. Richie gets startled by something he-sees-and-we-don't in the closet before running out.
Back at Arnold's, the Fonz demonstrates that he knows Richie better than he knows himself and sees through his tough veneer, suggests that Richie face his fears and talks a big game until he learns that Richie is afraid of the Old Simpson Place, which Fonzie actually agrees is a reasonable thing to fear.
B plot has Joanie and her friends going trick-or-treating. C plot has Tom Bosley handing out candy. I am happy to report that neither Mr nor Mrs Cunningham are dressed up for Halloween. I am inspired to try and get to the bottom of when Halloween became an adult holiday as well as a child's fancy. I am finding several angry opinion pieces c. 2010-2012, back when The USA Today had time to be mad about such things. This doesn't answer my question because I'm curious as to what happened between the time that this episode of Happy Days aired and when Family Matters had Aunt Rachael wasting my time in her rented Rapunzel costume (material for a later post). A funny thing about Happy Days is that it is a show about the '50s that aired in the '70s so there are two layers of history I have no firsthand knowledge of, so I don't know whether the parents' non-participation in the costume tradition is the writers' acknowledgment of it being absurd for parents to spend hundreds of dollars to dress up as the Hunchback of Notre Dame just to pass out cans of soup at home (also covered in a future post) back in happy days of postwar Milwaukee or whether it was an absurd concept in 1974 as well.
The B and C plots are minimal. One of the trick-or-treaters that came to the Cunningham home was an absurdly cute fairy princess. She stood out. Tom Bosley asks another trick-or-treater for a fucking kiss. Again, it's hard to imagine that was ever appropriate, but I'm not sure if that was '70s writers basking in the general inappropriateness of the past or whether it was more-or-less acceptable in the '70s.
When Richie and his date arrive at the party, the room is dark and it doesn't appear that anyone's there. Richie attempts to diffuse his jumpy date's concerns by saying aloud in part to talk himself through the situation "this this isn't real; it's fake." A coffin opens and Ralph Malph sits up and in is best Hitchock "Good evening." The lights come on, the room fills in and everyone begins immediately dancing. Do they do this for all arrivals? Unclear. They didn't do it for the Fonz, who arrives later. I think they're all just picking on Richie.
Richie's date is beautiful, dressed as a belly dancer. Ralph is dressed as Alfred Hitchcock but everyone else is too lame to know the reference. Potsie is dressed as Superhost and the Fonz shows up with a black mask (no cape, etc.), claiming to be the lone ranger. His date is dressed insensitively as Tonto.
They have a great time dancing, eating cold cuts out of the coffin, and bobbing for apples in a party fun montage. Have you ever bobbed for apples at a Halloween party? I think I did once when I was a very young kid and never looked back. The concept of sticking your face into a tub of cold water to gnaw on a hard-skinned piece of fruit while in costume is so impractical, it makes me want to spit.
Ralph and Potsie, we learn, have been conspiring to scare the shit out of Richie and everything they've been trying failed, so they pull the trigger on their no-miss grand finale and ask Richie to get some sodas from the closet. I guess this answers my earlier question about whether all guests get the Richie treatment upon arrival. The soda is in same closet that scared the shit out of him days earlier. He opens the door to find a headless woman in a rocking chair. The chair lurches forward and the body falls off the chair and Richie is terrified. Everyone laughs at Richie's pain. I don't know why he deserves this.
The celebration is cut short, however, when another apparent headless woman begins descending the staircase moaning "where's my head? I'll chop off yours!" I'm not afraid to tell you that this is 100% scary. I mean, it's very, very scary. Richie starts his mantra again, approaches the headless animated corpse and pulls it off the head and shoulders of "Bag," the lead Demon.
The episode wraps with the family reconvening in the Cunningham kitchen. Joanie is forbidden from eating any candy that isn't wrapped, including the candy corn. You know, we laugh at parents of the past who checked their kids' Halloween candy for poison and razor blades because yes technically it was an urban legend, but in real terms you're taking free food from strangers. It's not a terrible idea. I did always wonder why my dad was such an expert in inspecting candy. As an adult, I don't know what I would be looking for. It was strictly dad's job, too. Like teaching me to drive. Never a question that it would be him and not my mom. Tom Bosley gives us the final gift in this very densely packed offering, asks the family what you get when you take the insides out of the hot dog. When no one comes up with a response, he answers, "A hollow weenie!" Delightful.
If you've never seen this one, I'd really encourage you to check it out. It's really very festive and actually a little scary. Our friend Anne is the only other person in the universe who's seen this episode and she agrees that it's delightful. I feel like she, Pete and I are in this special club of people who have been scared by an episode of Happy Days.