TMC
02-01-2023, 10:40 PM
https://popculturereferences.com/top-five-cindy-williams-episodes-of-laverne-and-shirley/
Today, we count down the top five Cindy Williams episodes of Laverne and Shirley
This is Top Five (https://popculturereferences.com/category/top-five/), where I rank certain pieces of pop culture.
Cindy Williams, one half of the iconic duo of Laverne and Shirley, with Penny Marshall, passed away last week (https://www.cbr.com/cindy-williams-laverne-shirley-obit/). Here’s my picks for the best episodes of Laverne and Shirley, in terms of how much they showed off Williams.
Laverne and Shirley was an interesting series in that both Williams and Marshall essentially had the Lucy role from I Love Lucy. They were both wacky and did plenty of over-the-top comedy. However, between the two, Marshall was both A. clearly the star of the show (it didn’t help that her brother, Garry Marshall, was in charge of the series), and B. even WACKIER than Williams. Then the show brought in Michael McKean and David Lander as Lenny and Squiggy, and those two guys were both A. quite popular and B. even MORE over-the-top than Marshall’s Laverne. So now Williams’ Shirley, who was, by any NORMAL sitcom standard, would be considered and over-the-top physical comedian right out of an episode of I Love Lucy, ended up becoming, by default, the straight woman to the even WACKIER antics of Laverne and, to a lesser extent, Lenny and Squiggy. Williams had a great deal of range, and that range (plus, again, the fact that the show was more of a starring vehicle for Marshall than for Williams) led to her taking on the straight woman attributes in the peculiar dynamic that was Laverne and Shirley while, of course, still being wacky on her own. So that’s a bit of a problem when it comes to picking out spotlight episodes for Williams, since typically when she would get a spotlight, Marshall would get an even BIGGER spotlight.
With that in mind, then, here are the five episodes I think best spotlighted Williams (note that, like a lot of shows, the best Laverne and Shirley episodes were the early ones, so almost all of these episodes are from Season 2).
Today, we count down the top five Cindy Williams episodes of Laverne and Shirley
This is Top Five (https://popculturereferences.com/category/top-five/), where I rank certain pieces of pop culture.
Cindy Williams, one half of the iconic duo of Laverne and Shirley, with Penny Marshall, passed away last week (https://www.cbr.com/cindy-williams-laverne-shirley-obit/). Here’s my picks for the best episodes of Laverne and Shirley, in terms of how much they showed off Williams.
Laverne and Shirley was an interesting series in that both Williams and Marshall essentially had the Lucy role from I Love Lucy. They were both wacky and did plenty of over-the-top comedy. However, between the two, Marshall was both A. clearly the star of the show (it didn’t help that her brother, Garry Marshall, was in charge of the series), and B. even WACKIER than Williams. Then the show brought in Michael McKean and David Lander as Lenny and Squiggy, and those two guys were both A. quite popular and B. even MORE over-the-top than Marshall’s Laverne. So now Williams’ Shirley, who was, by any NORMAL sitcom standard, would be considered and over-the-top physical comedian right out of an episode of I Love Lucy, ended up becoming, by default, the straight woman to the even WACKIER antics of Laverne and, to a lesser extent, Lenny and Squiggy. Williams had a great deal of range, and that range (plus, again, the fact that the show was more of a starring vehicle for Marshall than for Williams) led to her taking on the straight woman attributes in the peculiar dynamic that was Laverne and Shirley while, of course, still being wacky on her own. So that’s a bit of a problem when it comes to picking out spotlight episodes for Williams, since typically when she would get a spotlight, Marshall would get an even BIGGER spotlight.
With that in mind, then, here are the five episodes I think best spotlighted Williams (note that, like a lot of shows, the best Laverne and Shirley episodes were the early ones, so almost all of these episodes are from Season 2).