Happy Days in release order

About this order

What is on this list

The pilot, which went out on 25 February 1972 as "Love and the Television Set", one of the short stories in an episode of Love, American Style. Every broadcast episode of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Blansky's Beauties, Mork & Mindy, Out of the Blue and Joanie Loves Chachi. The three Saturday-morning cartoons: The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, Laverne & Shirley in the Army and its second season with the Fonz, and the animated Mork & Mindy. And four reunion specials, two for each of the big shows.

Some of these are closer to the family than others. Blansky's Beauties starred Howard Cunningham's cousin Nancy, who was introduced on Happy Days, and Pinky Tuscadero and Laverne both appear in it. Out of the Blue is the loosest connection: its angel, Random, turns up on Happy Days, and Mork turns up in its first episode.

Not here: the last Happy Days episode on most lists, Fonzie's Spots, which ABC never showed; four episodes of Out of the Blue that were made and never aired; a 1992 pilot for a new Happy Days that was never broadcast; and the stage musical.

One row for each night

Several two-part stories went out as a single hour on a single night: the Happy Days season openers Fonzie Loves Pinky, Hollywood and Westward Ho!, Mork & Mindy's pilot and three of its hour-long episodes, and a few more. This list gives each of those one row, because that is how they were first seen. Episode guides and the DVDs split them into halves, so the episode numbers here will not always match theirs.

Tuesday nights, and the ones that moved

For most of seven years Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley were ABC's Tuesday at eight: Happy Days at 8:00 and Laverne & Shirley at 8:30. On the 133 nights both were new, Happy Days comes first. In March 1982 Joanie Loves Chachi took the 8:30 slot for its first run, starting the same night as the Happy Days episode that sends Joanie and Chachi to Chicago.

Not everything stayed put. Laverne & Shirley spent the autumn of 1979 on Thursdays and the start of 1980 on Mondays. Mork & Mindy was moved to Sunday for the same autumn, going out at 8:00 right after Out of the Blue at 7:00. The last four Happy Days episodes were shown on Thursdays in the summer of 1984, after the series had otherwise finished.

A few specials sit on odd nights too. The Happy Days anniversary shows went out on a Monday, a Friday and a Thursday. The third one is dated 4 February 1977, a Friday, but one listing puts it on the Saturday instead. That has not been settled.

Stories that crossed over

The best-known crossover is Shotgun Wedding, which started on Happy Days on a Tuesday in September 1979 and finished on Laverne & Shirley two nights later. Mork went back to Milwaukee in Mork Returns, the Fonz and Laverne both appear in Mork & Mindy's pilot, and Random from Out of the Blue visits Happy Days nine days after his own show began.

Episodes that set up a new show are not marked as crossovers: A Date with Fonzie, which introduced Laverne and Shirley, and My Favorite Orkan, which introduced Mork, both came before the shows they launched. Characters a show carries week after week are not marked either. The exception is the 1982 Laverne & Shirley cartoon, which billed the Fonz as a special guest star in every episode.

Where the links go

Every row links to IMDb and to Wikipedia. Almost every Wikipedia link goes to the episode's own row in the list of episodes, because only two episodes in the franchise have articles of their own. The fan wiki links go to the Happy Days Wiki. It has no pages for Laverne & Shirley in the Army, for most of Out of the Blue or for the reunion specials, and a handful of other episodes have none either.