Even though I liked "Happy Days", at least through the first several seaons, and same for "Laverne and Shirley", there was something that always bothered me about Garry Marshall's directing. I couldn't put my finger on it.

Tonight while watching M*A*S*H, it came to me: MASH kept us in the Korean war. Hawkeye was taking a photo, and the camera was circa 1950s. True, the complaints were really about Vietnam, but at least the producer took the time to make sure many of the details were plausable: Old telephones, cameras, phonographs.

Not so with Garry Marshall, particularly in the last days of Laverne and Shirley. After they "jumped the shark" (hate that phrase) and moved to Hollywood, he had them making references to "the Space Shuttle". Yeah, really 1950s. Even before they moved, Garry didn't bother to find out how to pronounce the street they supposedly lived on in Milwaukee (it was said "napp street", not "k'napp street". The "k" before an "n" is always silent in English).

Yeah, if those women would just get out of Milwaukee and move to Hollywood, then lousy writing and lack of imagination wouldn't matter to us. We're just all fascinated with anything which goes on in Hollywood. If it was boring in Milwaukee, the same thing will be engrossing if it happens in Hollywood.

Shallow? Nah, not us.