It remained for Garry Marshall … to blend the two dominant forms of sitcom forms into a single, notoriously popular show: Laverne & Shirley (1976–). We can be even more specific: Marshall and co-creators Mark Rothman and Lowell Ganz invented a single character … Shirley Feeney—who could express both slapstick and sentiment, who was both Lucille Ball and Mary Tyler Moore.

The idea here was to put a Mary Richards character into Lucy situations, and to play her adorable fastidiousness against a more pragmatic, good-time-Charlotte colleague: … Laverne De Fazio. Marshall, Ganz, and Rothman had turned the trick before, in The Odd Couple (1971–75) … and it was frequently a funny show. But someone realized the premise would work better if these two arrested adolescents were closer to teen age, if they were working-class, if they were women, and if the show were set in the Fifties. (p. 56)

To get the money for tickets...