When did Fonzie go from being this normal laid back guy who showed up once in a while to add a few quiet words of wisdom to the cartoon somewhat superhuman who can knock doors off hinges, play a song on the jukebox with just a tap and gets a girl wet and to him with the snap of his fingers?
Humans are not the only species on earth.
We just act like it.

I like the whole series altogether. I'm not partial to any particular version between the early episodes or studio audience ones. I will agree with most that there was a dip in quality in the show once Ron Howard and Don Most left.
When there's no more room in Hollywood, remakes shall walk the Earth.

I actually liked the later episodes better.
The first two seasons were much more period oriented and you could tell that the cast chemistry really hadn't gelled yet.
I always thought that as the show progressed it was more about the interaction between the characters and the cast chemistry rather than trying to be all about the 1950's.

"The Field-Goal-Kicking Donkey"
Was that
Gus (1976)
? That 5.8 Disney flick was definitely silly, yet inexplicably Ed Asner and Don Knotts (not so surprisingly) were in it.
DrakeStraw
LinkLikeThis
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I loved the first few seasons of the show, but later seasons were just wretchedly awful. I remember hearing an interview with Ron Howard on the
Howard Stern Show
years ago in which Howard talks about why he stopped doing movies for a time in Hollywood (until
American Graffiti
). He complained that he kept getting offers from Disney to star in kiddie-oriented fluff such as "The Field-Goal-Kicking Donkey" and similar stuff. He was able to turn that down for being too silly, yet the kinds of plotlines he was involved with in the later seasons
of
Happy Days
were worse, especially since it had started out as a more adult-oriented series. Did he even realize how fatuous the show became, or was he
just pocketing the paycheck and pretending not to notice? Personally, I would rather watch a goofy Disney live-action movie of that era than a single episode of one of the later seasons of this series.
I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!
Hewwo.

I really can't watch any episodes with the studio audience. The early episodes are modeled after the "Love, American Style" pilot (Love and the Happy Days) and are quaint, charming and entertaining. They stayed with the feel of the 1950's nicely. Once it became The Fonzie Show, they time-warped to 1975, had long hair, wire-rimmed glasses, etc. The expressions of the 1950's were no longer used ("made in the shade", "how would you like a knuckle sandwich", etc.). It was just another below-average sitcom by then. At least we have DVDs.

I totally agree! The first season was great. It went downhill fast though.

Wasn't Season 1 of this show more like it was truly trying to be a period comedy, rather than a show supposed to be set in the '50s, but obviously influenced by the '70s? It seems that hairstyles and clothing styles got more 1970s/1980s, after the first season or two.
"A New Kind of Man" (John Foxx, 1980):

Seasons 3-5 are my favorites. I like season 2 much better than 1. It is very similar to season 3.