We continue our countdown of my favorite 1970s Christmas TV episodes with 1974’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Christmas” from Happy Days.
I’ll admit, this one is a bit tricky. Happy Days had a whopping FOUR Christmas episodes in the 1970s. Two of them, Season 3’s “Tell it to the Marines” and Season 4’s “Richie Branches Out,” where barely Christmas-related (and neither were particularly good, either. The first one is a Ralph Malph-centric episode, which, you know, I don’t think even Donny Most’s parents were asking for at the time), so they’re easily dismissed. That leaves two episodes. One of them, Season 6’s “Christmas Time,” is probably the more famous of the two episodes, as it features Fonzie’s father reaching out to his son for the first time since he was a very young child. And, I dunno, is that episode an okay Christmas episode? Sure. Heck, you could argue for it having a place on a theoretical list of “pretty good Christmas episodes,” but it’s really not THAT good. Heck, MOST Happy Days episodes weren’t that good.
The notable exceptions, of course, were the episodes in Season 1 and the first half of Season 2, which is where this episode is from. Those episodes were not done in front of a live audience, and as a result, were a good deal more serious and thoughtful. Once they started filming the episodes in front of an audience and got to see the audience FREAK THE HECK OUT whenever Henry Winkler came into a scene as Fonzie, the show quickly adapted to fit the obvious audience interest in Fonzie, and the show sort of went downhill into the nonsense of catch phrases and all of that nonsense.
However, midway through Season 2, it was still a thoughtful show, and “Guess Who’s Coming to Christmas” is a sweet, well told story about Howard and Richie needing help with their car on Christmas Eve. Fonzie helps them out, but in doing so, he essentially reveals to Richie that his alleged visit to see his cousin in a nearby county was obviously not true, and in fact, Richie spies Fonzie eating ravioli out of a can by himself in his garage.
This leads to Richie (and eventually, the rest of the Cunningham family) convincing Howard to invite Fonzie to the Cunningham family Christmas, something that Howard had made a point of noting was supposed to JUST be family this year. Of course, how do you get Fonzie to come over without him admitting that his other plans were a lie?
Well, it takes a lot of subtle finagling, but eventually, it all got done, and they all enjoyed a happy Christmas together. Tom Bosley is excellent in his scenes with Fonzie, as he plays Howard as a nice guy, who DOES want Fonzie to come visit, but at the same time, he also doesn’t really care THAT much, and it is actually that sort of detached nature that really works with Fonzie, as he sort of lets Fonzie come to them, and doesn’t push him. It’s very well done.
Tom Bosley was an excellent actor. I always felt that giving Fonzie more screen time did him a disservice especially.