The show presented a saccharine perspective on American youth culture of the I950s. With rock and roll confined to the jukebox of Al's Diner, the kids worried over first loves, homecoming parades, and the occasional innocuous rumble. The Cunninghams represented the middle-class family values of the era. Minor skirmishes erupted between parents and children, but dinner together was never miss-prepared and served by mother, Marion (Marion Ross), or daughter, Joanie (Erin Moran). There was no inkling of the "generation gap" discourse that was beginning to differentiate youth from their parents in the 1950s, which exploded in the 1960s, and which was still active in the mid- 1970s when the show was created.

One episode pits Richie and his friends against Richie's father, Howard (Tom Bosley), by virtue of the latter's support of a business plan that would send a freeway through the teen make-out spot, Inspiration Point. Civil disobedience is suggested by the teenagers' organization of petitions and picket signs to protest the plan. Fonzie even chains himself to a tree at the site. Yet generational harmony is restored when Richie makes Howard realize that he, too, participated in the culture of Inspiration Point when he was young. Fonzie's lower-class status, his black leather clothes, motorcycle, propensity to get into fights, and apparent sexual exploits with multiple women take advantage of the code of delinquency that social scientists of the period fashioned under the rubric of deviance studies. But again, Fonzie's representation had none of the hard edge or angst of a James Dean or Marlon Brandon character and was played more for laughs than social critique. Yet his popularity on the show may have tapped into deeper audience identifications.

His image of an impervious, highly testosteroned male, albeit with modicums of vulnerability and hyperbole as acted by Winkler, was overtly rewarded in the show. It took only a snap of his fingers to have women do his bidding or grown men cower in fear of being pummeled by an out-of-control Fonzarelli. So male-identified was his character that the men's restroom in Al's Diner was referred to as his "office." The Fonz's courting of many women at once meant he was never subject to the kind of romantic involvement and inevitable heartbreak that characterized Richie's relationships with women.

The Fonz's style, "my way" bravado, working-class ethos, and loner sensibility differed from the mainstream Cunninghams and was in direct opposition to the upwardly mobile, college-bound, leadership­ quality Richie. Richie, audiences knew, would some­ day outgrow Milwaukee and leave it behind, but Fonzie had fewer choices and would stay. And perhaps the tension between these two worlds and life-directions kept audiences watching through the show's ten­ year run, during which time Richie and his pals go to college, join the army, and even get married.

Despite these contrasts, however, Fonzie and the Cunningham family were never involved in overt conflict. Indeed, by the end of the show, Fonzie had moved into the Cunningham's garage apartment, and though the bemused Howard Cunningham often wondered what was happening "up there," Fonzie was, by this time, a thoroughly domesticated character. His role not only paralleled that of Mr. Cunningham, but those of countless sitcom fathers before him, and he was as likely to dispense careful, family-oriented wisdom as to suggest rebellion of the slightest sort. But this wisdom was always proffered with Winkler's parody­ delinquent sense of style, a style that continues to appeal to youngsters in syndicated reruns throughout the world.

Happy Days stands as the first of a string of extremely successful spin-off comedies from producer Garry Marshall. Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy, and other shows helped propel the ABC television network into first place in the ratings battles and enabled Marshall to move from television to feature­ film direction.