Laverne & Squiggy & Chuck & Rhonda: The Bizarre Last Season of Laverne and Shirley

Here’s a little confession – I love Laverne and Shirley.  Yes, it’s goofy, broad and quite behind the times (avoid The Bully Show at all costs), but there’s something about watching two women struggle against the odds to figure out who they are and survive in an environment that is considerably hostile to them, two single women trying to date.  For all of the traditionalism that soaks into the narrative through the girls’ pursuit of guys and marriage, there are just as many episodes (“The Feminine Mistake” and “2001: A Sitcom Odyssey”) that served as a burgeoning support pillars for the nascent feminist movement that was just trying to grasp the concept that it was okay to want a fair wage, stay unmarried and be less than classically feminine.

The show suffered through some growing pains on its way to the eighth season.  Running out of fresh material, they chose to move the girls to Los Angeles, take them into the 60s and submerge them into the culture of the swinging, movie-mad era of the time.  The girls go from worshiping Fabian to lusting after the Beatles, but little else changes besides the size of their set and the introduction of a flighty-surfaced/iron cored blonde actress/dancer/model named Rhonda Lee

Then Cindy Williams became pregnant, and the show dealt with that fact very poorly.

The Five Most Forgotten (and secretly most awesome) Parody Films in Existence

Humor is a very, very subjective subject.    What’s funny to one person definitely won’t be funny to another, but some parody films (Young Frankenstein, Airplane!, Not Another Teen Movie, Blazing Saddles and Naked Gun, for example) have stood the test of time and become universally beloved.  That said, some movies that are pretty darn good in this genre that have either been critically derided or completely ignored.  These are the top five most obscure – and achingly funny – parody movies you might not have heard of.

The Five Least Necessary Sequels Ever

Film sequels can be divvied up into neat piles.  There are the ones that arrive at the perfect time, with something to say and a theme to build on from its origin film (The Empire Strikes Back, if you please).  There are those that are misbegotten from the very start and leave the audience sitting in their seats scratching their heads (Stayin’ Alive and its odd plot choices).  Still yet there are sequels that get greenlit ten plus years after the first film and arrive before surprised and occasionally horrified audiences (Dumb and Dumber To, rise and take a bow).  Some sequels – even worse -  feature none of the original elements or stars that made the first one so successful (Grease 2) .  But some are special; some fall into the category of being unnecessary because the first film in the series was so satisfying, so complete, that a sequel feels like a desecration. 

Below are the five most unnecessary of that bunch, in my little opinion.  I’ve tried to be a little less obvious with my choices, but some chestnuts cannot resist a good roasting.

Matrimony Month(s): The Notebook versus The Wedding: Love As Tragic Farce In Nicholas Spark’s Mild Kingdom

The late 0’s to the early 10’s were an odd time.  Spurred on by war, famine and fear on all fronts, weary Americans turned toward simplistic, homespun entertainment to comfort them.  All of a sudden, and completely out of the blue, romances were all about tradition, and all about weeping again.

Maritmony Month(s): Mama Mia!: Loud Trope Subversion, ABBA and Fireworks in Greece

It took nearly ten more years after My Big Fat Greek Wedding for another big, splashy ‘feel good’ movie about marriage to hit the big screen – in this case a filmed version of the enormous Broadway jukebox classic “Mama Mia.”

Hitting theaters in 2008, the big-budget film came at the very tail end of the movie musical revival begun by Chicago’s 2002 Oscar win.  There were a handful of highlights and lowlights in the genre leading up to Mama Mia before the genre would receive another mini-revival with 2012’s Les Miserables update.  As for Mama Mia itself –and its POV on marriage and romance – the story is simple.  And complicated.

Matrimony Month: Muriel’s Wedding: Sisterhood in the ‘90’s Romance Oeuvre

The flipside of the traditional values renaissance brought to life by movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding was the anti-traditionalism brought to life by movies as diverse as the critically reviled The Next Best Thing and the critically acclaimed Muriel’s Wedding.

Matrimony Month(s): My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the Resurgence of "Traditional" Cinematic Romance

The 90s brought about something of a sea change in romantic movies.  Pretty Women led the charge, and Cindarella – sometimes with a fresh coat of feminist paint as in “Ever After – emerged as a fresh role model.  If the 80s were all about individualism, then the 90’s brought about a resurgence of traditional romance, with My Big Fat Greek Wedding leading the charge.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding is as traditional a movie marriage plot can get and yet it is ostensibly about rejecting tradition…at least at first.  Toula is a lonely spinster stuck working at her parent’s Greek restaurant.  She falls for a regular customer, but her true motivation is independence – from her parent’s traditional values, from the pressure of marrying a Greek boy, from the expectation that she’ll be working at the family diner all her life.  Toula breaks free, taking classes, cutting her hair, and marrying a WASPy teacher…and marries him in a traditional Greek ceremony for which her fiancé has to convert.