Happy Days: Mork Returns

Happy Days: Mork Returns
ABC
March 6, 1979
Sitcom
DVD
B-

What a difference a year makes!  When Robin Williams returns, there's no question that he is one of the hottest new stars on TV.  It's not just in the reaction of the admittedly always hyped-up HD studio audience.  It's also in his looser, hipper, and naughtier portrayal of Mork.  (When Mork temporarily transfers some of his power to Fonzie and then Richie, the audience does not seem to get the "Was it good for you, too?"/ "It knocked my socks off" exchange between Williams and Winkler, who were friends in real life.  And then Mork says something like, "Twice in one night," when he repeats the act for Richie.)

This makes the fact that the episode is a clip show much more bearable, as does the part where Richie recalls the "amazing" things that the Fonz has done.  I wasn't quite sure where we were in the HD timeline, beyond Episode 142 and the 5th anniversary, but I said aloud, "Oh, do the shark-jump.  Do the shark-jump!"  And, sure enough, they showed Fonzie jumping the shark.  I couldn't help wishing that Robin Williams had known at the time how infamous and phrase-making that moment would become in retrospect, but it was fun to watch on my own (twice).

Lorrie Mahaffey, who was married to Anson Williams and played the recurring role of his girlfriend Jennifer, around this time played Ann on M & M.  Seen in archive footage are Ed Peck (as Officer Kirk, and he'd at this point not yet played a bigot on M & M) and Laurette Spang (who played Bosley's daughter in the first Love Boat TV-movie, as well as Inga on Three's Company)

Happy Days: My Favorite Orkan

Happy Days: My Favorite Orkan
ABC
February 28, 1978
Sitcom
DVD
C+

Mork, with a weirder voice and a less pacifist attitude than on his own show, arrives and decides to kidnap Richie, specifically because Richie is average and humdrum.  And in a way, that's a good metaphor for this episode.  As I've said elsewhere, I was a Happy Days viewer but I'm not a HD fan.  Watching this again, seeing how stilted and formulaic it was (yes, even compared to Laverne & Shirley or What's Happening!!), I felt the opposite of nostalgia, more of a comical disbelief.  And then Williams showed up and, while he didn't make everything OK, he did make it better.  He gave to the role, which was, remember, just supposed to be a one-time cameo, little whimsical touches, even if this is not the pop-culture freak that the '70s Mork would be.  (He does slip in an Opie joke, but it's too set-up to be ad-libbed.)  Note that the version on the DVD (packaged with M & M's fourth season) seems to be the original, rather than the later one where Mork has erased everyone's memories of him.

Jerry Paris, who it looks like directed just about every episode of Happy Days, definitely directed this one and "Mork Returns."  Note that this is the 110th episode of the series, from Season Five, when Richie was in college.