"LAVERNE & SHIRLEY" - FROM A TO ZONK

One of the biggest Zonks in the new TV season is the fact that Zelda and Stephie lived in the same building that served as the exterior for the credits sequence of 'Laverne & Shirley'. Once they found that out upon moving in, it became a ritual for them to re-enact that scene as they left for work each morning.

A few years ago, ye olde caretaker of Toobworld threw up his hands in defeat over so many Zonks created by the mentions of other TV shows which should be sharing the same TV dimension. But we've come to accept that just about everyone on Earth Prime-Time will have their lives documented in one kind of TV show or another eventually.

Sometimes those Zonks can be splained away as being movies rather than TV shows. ('Starsky & Hutch', for example) Other times we can claim the shows mentioned have nothing to do with the show we in the Trueniverse got to see. (Some of the police procedurals with generic names - like 'Naked City' or 'N.Y.P.D.' could be documentary/reality series, so long as the actors were never mentioned. Unfortunately the franchises for 'CSI' and 'Law & Order' violate that rule, mostly due to David Caruso and Sam Waterson especially.)

But those shows that are made within Toobworld's reality about the lives of various TV characters should have something about them that would make them worthy of a TV series. One that is often Zonked is 'The Brady Bunch' - so there must have been some interest back in the late sixties about such a blended family with three boys and three girls (the youngest one in curls.) The ditzy housewife married to a Cuban bandleader and her legendary attempts to break into show business herself would be enough inspiration for a series about her. (Gee, I can't seem to remember the name of that show.....)

So what about 'Laverne & Shirley'?

The series was a spin-off of 'Happy Days' and took place on the Toobworld timeline back in the late 1950s, early 1960s. Decades later it became a TV series in both the Real World and in Toobworld. But since Ms. DiFazio and Ms. Feeney were real life people on Earth Prime-Time, what was so unique about their lives that warranted a TV show?

We never saw how Laverne's and Shirley's lives played out after the series was cancelled. And being so long ago, anything could have happened since then. Maybe they became the "Thelma And Louise" of their times and the TV show mentioned within other TV shows was an attempt to show how their lives led up to the pivotal moment that made them household names across America.

I'd like to think that they killed a guy......

BCnU!