Shark Bytes

Happy Days wasn't really spun off. Garry Marshall had an idea for a show and ABC rejected it and rather than waste the script and such that was already done, they adapted it to an episode of Love American Style, rather than just throw Marshall's idea out.

Then people liked it, Garry had been right after all, THEN it got picked up.

Lo-o-o-ove, love, LOVE!

LOVE!!!!

American style, hooray for the red, white, and blue-hoo-hoo-HOO!!

LOVE!!!

American sty-HIII-yle, that's meeeeeee and youuuuuuuuuuu...

Can there be any doubt? This was a day one jumper.

NEVER JUMPED
This show was part of growing up in the 70's. ORDERED BOTH DVDs and hope there are more to come. I am mostly a game show fan but this show is a favorite... (hey...it fearured many game show personalities)

As many have commented LAS was where Happy Days got it's start. A couple of years into the series the poor girl so unimpressed by Ritchie then, she's back in an episode which has LAS flashbacks and now is gaga over him. Ritchie though has upped his game a few notches by then with the fair sex, and he's not interested. So Ritchie has dinner with her parents, and plays the biker hood to try and scare them off! But it doesnt work so he must tell her 'no sale'. She's so devastated she immediately dates the next guy who comes along, the movie house usher! I hear they married eventually and live in Modesto CA in a modest ranch house these days.

This show really has not aged well. The mini-skits w/ Stuart Margolin, etc were horrible. In its time, this show was probably somewhat on the cutting edge, but times have changed. I ordered the DVDs out of a sense of nostalgia and it serves that purpose, but a quality show? Nah.

I saw LAS in reruns at a youg age-you can say this was my first "grown-up" show. The blackout skits,theme song, and title sequence got me hooked and the rest is history. Watching it on TV Land and Oxygen, I grew to love the show even more, especially seeing the HAPPY DAYS pilot, I do have fond memories seeing "Love and the Old Fashioned Father" as a kid. The music of the show made the show. It NEVER jumped at all!

I heard the theme song on this site for like the first time in what 35 years and it took me back home...I was also a young lonely kid struggling with issues I didn't even know about until years later....I wonder if kids today will ever feel nostalgic about these shows on the air now, I mean since very few of them have a theme song! No doubt, it is the song not the particular episodes that stand out in my mind.

Keeping in mind that this show aired when I was 10-15 years old, in my memory it never jumped! One of my favorite episodes was when a man had a huge tattoo on his chest with his former girlfriend's name as part of the design: "Erna." His new girlfriend, whom he was engaged to marry, was understandably unhappy about this. (This was before the days of tattoo removal.) Ultimately he solved the problem by returning to the tattoo artist and having it altered so that it read "etERNAlly."

This show was great and it never "jumped the shark" The ironic twist is that this is the show that "Happy days" spun off from where the whole "jump the shark" originated I was not even aware that "Happy Days" spun of from an episode of "Love American Style".

I was too young to remember much about this show and if and when it might have jumped the shark. I do remember one funny episode about a woman eagerly waiting for her missing husband to be declared legally dead so she could remarry. (At the same time her missing husband is patiently awaiting the same thing.) Oh, yes: regarding an earlier post, Harmon Killebrew was mentioned in at least one episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

I used to watch this show for the 'sexual' risky tone that many shows did not seem to have at that point in time, and after a while the show just seemed to have 'old' actors (I am probably older than many of these I call old - myself now - actors like Sid Caesar or Michael Constantine...) basically doing the same plot over and over again when I wanted to see youth and... well more sexual... well you get the idea - heck I was a teenager!

I remember when I was a kid my parents didn't want me watching LOVE AMERICAN STYLE because they thought it was about sex. We've come a long way, baby. Yes, a lot of the shows were about sex, but let's be real, this stuff would look pretty lame on TV today and wouldn't even raise an eyebrow. Now the little blackout skits between the episodes seemed to be more about sex than anything else. These were the weakest portion of the show IMO. Otherwise, this was a pretty harmless, relatively entertaining show that never really jumped the shark.

Just wanted to add to the previous post about sentimental feelings for shows. I absolutely feel this is true for me and for many other people. How else to explain the current trend of turning a nostalgic TV show into a movie? For me, (and I guess what TV shows you would pick for this shows your age), shows that have not held up but will always hold a place in my heart, include "One Day at a Time" (I know, I know, its blasted on this board but it meant a lot to me at the time - I SO wanted to have Barbara's looks, her clothes, her life, and that long macrame keychain!) and "Eight is Enough" (that house! that yard! loved it...). There are many more but the point is, we all have shows that we acknowledge, and at the same forgive, their shark jumping.

A qualified never jumped. Boy meets girl, then sex (which was new to TV back when), and often ending with the couple looking forward to getting married. Simple, sweet, funny, interesting seeing all the different actors (most a little past the prime of their acting careers) and was a very positive show by its very nature, showing the start of good loving relationships. Now for the qualification. I can not recall any particular episode, can recall thinking back then some of the black out sketches were lame, and I suspect this show would utterly fail the test of time (it was very caught up in early 70’s American courtships, a period of our culture that does not stand the test of time, it’s probably no classic). Have not seen it on TV for years and which probably confirms this notion. The following is personal, not relevant to many folks and to this show in particular, but I hope is of interest to a few. I was a bit lonely and bored 12-14 year old boy when this originally aired and I watched it regularly. Not a lot of love in my household (it was not awful by any means, but at times it was not the greatest place to be) but this show offered love, laughs, a hopeful and bright future, sex, and for an hour filled some personal voids. It helped me feel better and survive (I am now 47 and happily married with kids and a have a good life). I posted some similar sentiments I have for Leave it to Beaver, The Time Tunnel, and St Elsewhere (latter is post childhood, but there’s some comments sort of in this realm) and this is the last show for which I have this type of personal attachment, so I wanted to sum it up here and ask a couple of questions. I suspect I am not only person who had some lonely periods, or grew up in a dysfunctional household, and for whom TV at times was a needed entertainment escape, which also offered a window into different worlds where things seemed better. I hope this does not come off as self absorbed amateur psychology; I am talking about myself, not the show. But I thought others may have had similar experiences and might wish to comment. Or simply and broadly stated, has TV helped you get through tough times in life? And in the sprit of jumping the shark, are there shows which live in your heart in such a way that when you think of them years later or actually see them now, you now know maybe this was not such a great show after all (test of time, being an adult, changes in taste) but because of a positive impact on your own life at the time, it’s forever personally endearing which stops it from ever jumping the shark? This is a pretty thin message board so if anyone responds great and thanks in advance.

Might be the only television comedy that mentions Baseball Hall of famer Harmon Killebrew. Here is the quote as I remember it. Wife to sports nut husband: "You love Harmon Killebrew more than you love me." I think the married couple were played by Imogene Coca and Red Buttons.