From ditching blind dates to goofing up on the conveyor belt at the bottling plant, Laverne and Shirley "did it their way" in Milwaukee until 1980, when ABC decided to change the setting of Laverne and Shirley to Burbank, California, for a new twist. Aside from a change of climate and employment, now in Bradburn's Department Store, the central characters and structure of the program remained the same until Williams left the program in 1982. Following her departure, the program continued for one year under the original title, but with Laverne alone as the central character.

     "There is nothing we won't try / Never heard the word impossible/ This time, there’s no stopping us/ We're gonna do it!" These lines from the theme song of the sitcom describe the state of mind of the program's two main characters. With the advantage of two decades of hindsight, Laverne and Shirley painted a picture of the 1950s from the single, independent woman's point of view. The plots of the episodes reflect concerns about holding a factory job, making it as an independent woman, and dealing with friends and relatives in the process of developing a life of one's own. Many plots revolve around the girls dating this man or that, or pondering the ideal men they would like to meet: sensitive, handsome doctors. If on the surface the characters appear to be longing to fulfill the stereotypical 1950s role of women, their true actions and attitudes cast them as two of television's first liberated women. They think for themselves and make things happen in their social circles. Together they fight for causes, from workers' rights at the bottling plant to animal rights at the pound. They help each other and they help their friends, who add much texture and comic effect to the program.

     Laverne and Shirley's two male neighbors, Lenny and Squiggy, provide much of the humor in the program with their greasy- l950s appearance and their ironic knack of entering at just the wrong time. If someone said, "Can you imagine anything more slimy and filthy than that?" in would charge Lenny and Squiggy with their famous, distorted "Hello!" Despite the fun poked at the two men, they are still portrayed as friends and thus are often caught up in the "Lucy­esque" escapades of Laverne and Shirley. Another prominent character, Carmine Ragusa or "The Big Ragu," is an energetic Italian singer. Friend to both women, Carmine is after Shirley's heart.

     Laverne and Shirley gave its lead characters room to explore boundaries and break some stereotypes common in television portrayals of women prior to the 197Os. Shirley is portrayed as interested in marriage, yet she is not sure that Carmine is "the one"; instead of settling, she keeps her independence and her friendship with Carmine.

     Among the loudest characters on the program is Frank De Fazio, Laverne's widowed father who owns the local Pizza-Bowl where everyone congregates. In his eyes Laverne is still a little girl, and he frequently checks up on her, evaluates her dates, and attempts to invalidate her decisions. Edna, Frank's girlfriend, acts as a buffer between father and daughter and becomes an even more motherly figure to Laverne after she marries Frank midway through the series' run. Although Frank expresses his overly protective and chauvinistic views, Edna's buffering reason and Lav­erne's stubbornness always win out. Laverne and Shirley was an early prime-time proponent of women's rights and placed much value in the viewpoints and experiences of l950's women, suggesting that even that decade women could be independent.

     Since Laverne and Shirley was a spin-off of Happy Days, and because the programs aired back to back, it was easy to cross over characters from one show to another. Laverne and Shirley are often visited by Arthur Fonzarelli (better known as The Fonz), or run imo Richie Cunningham or Ralph Malph (all from Happy Days) camping in the woods. Viewers were able to carry knowledge from one show (Happy Days) to the next (Laverne and Shirley) as characters shared experiences with each other outside the context of their own programs. The programs were thus able to layer meanings or overlap realities between previously mutually exclusive television families.

     While visits to or from Happy Days characters were always extra fun, Laverne and Shirley provided seasons of hilarious antics and left behind many memorable images uniquely their own: Laverne's clothing, always decorated with a large, cursive "L"; the milk and Pepsi concoction that is her favorite beverage; the giant posters of Fabian; and Shirley's Boo-Boo Kitty, a two-foot stuffed cat that is the true ruler of her heart. Laverne and Shirley may be a female "odd couple," Shirley  fanatically  neat  and  Laverne  hopelessly sloppy, but they balance each other and provide a system of mutual support, demonstrating that women can compete in the world of work as well as in the world of ideas. From a 1950s perspective, for two young women that indeed was "making our dreams come true."