Happy Days of Yore

Alumni Ron Howard (Richie Cunningham) and
Henry Winkler (the Fonz) - WSJ photo

WSJ editorialist Matthew Hennessey has a problem with pre-teen TV: [bold added]

like most parents, my wife and I are always on the hunt for “safe” shows for our kids to watch. Tween programming is as vapid as ever, but these days it comes with a distinct woke overlay. Pronoun preaching and climate propaganda have replaced slapstick and potty humor. None of that works for us.

His solution? "Happy Days," currently found on Amazon Prime. Mr. Hennessey's son especially likes the Fonz.

“Happy Days” was a half-hour situation comedy on ABC from 1974-84. Created by Garry Marshall, the show was set in Milwaukee and revolved around the middle-class Cunningham family, Howard and Marion and their children Richie and Joanie. Minor characters, Potsie and Ralph Malph, palled around at Arnold’s Diner, but the star was the Fonz...

It’s impossible to overstate the cultural importance of the Fonz in his time. He was the biggest thing on TV, which was the biggest thing in America...in leather jacket and tight jeans he was as cool as they come. The Fonz was a light caricature of the greaser archetype—slick, tough, a chick magnet. He rode a motorcycle and spoke in an incongruous Brooklynese (the mid-’70s were the height of the “Italian Stallion” phase of American masculinity). His cartoonish catchphrases—“Whoa!” “Sit on it!”—were ubiquitous.

"Happy Days" (1974-84) for me fell in that too-busy-to-watch-TV period after graduation but before kids. I did tune in occasionally to spinoffs Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy, notable for the off-script improvisation by Robin Williams, as well as the H-D mother ship, but none of it was must-see programming worthy of being recorded on the new VCR.

"Happy Days" appears to be enjoying a revival. It didn't jump the shark after all.