It is widely known that LA wasn't exactly the greatest of cities to move to for Season 6, but if they had to move, what city would have worked better?

San Francisco

I would cast my vote for Chicago since it's closer to Milwaukee. It would have opened up the story lines a bit more and given Frank a more diverse restaurant community to open an eatery.

Hang on for a stupid question: does anyone know why it was decided to move the setting at all? The series was riding high, as far as I know (number 1 in seasons 3 and 4).

I went with New York since they went there to visit Frank's mother in the Festival episode.

Hang on for a stupid question: does anyone know why it was decided to move the setting at all? The series was riding high, as far as I know (number 1 in seasons 3 and 4).


I read somewhere that the move was in an effort to keep the material fresh. The writers felt the Milwaukee setting was getting stale and moved it to California in hopes of providing plenty of new material. But the move was a mistake because it dramatically changed the Laverne & Shirley characters.

yeah see them cause havoc in disney world would of been fun to see

Disney World didn't exist in Season Six of Laverne and Shirley, and it's not close to Miami.

I would say Chicago: close enough to Milwaukee to have their friends still come for frequent visits, while being large enough to bring in guest stars from Chicago, especially athletes.

With everyone else coming for frequent visits, there would have been no need for everyone to pack up and move, which was unrealistic.

I don’t see how moving cities was really going to freshen the series, especially since the writers insisted on moving the ENTIRE supporting cast too. What they really needed was to dump Frank, Edna, and Carmine. They were comedy death.

I would have done a season of Army stories, with a new supporting cast, and maybe with a few weekend pass stories set back in Milwaukee.

Minneanapolis

I liked the LA era.

The long-form answer about why the move happened: the show switched timeslots and that killed its ratings. The LA move was planned for season 6 as a response to that, even though the back end of season 5 improved when it was moved back to its original timeslot.

Penny wanted the show to move to New York and stay blue collar (it probably would've worked better than the Burbank move but I don't know if it would've better for the show's health in the long run, or if CW would've balked because that would've made the show even more Laverne-centric). It was Garry's idea to move them to LA, so they'd be able to get lots of guest stars on in a plausible manner. The requirement for L&S to end up with season 9 would've been to move the whole show - production and premise - to New York, which is where Penny wanted to take up work, but the network turned her down and it was cancelled.

Fun fact: Mark Rothman wrote a treatment for a Laverne and Shirley movie that basically functions as a full-length apology for the LA move. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAY7ErTsLrg