When it comes to class, Laverne and Shirley are to Phyllis, Rhoda and Mary Richards what beer is to Beaujolais. In fact, TV's newest career girls are so blue-collar they actually work in a brewery…. [The] time is 1959. Laverne De Fazio, three years out of Millard Fillmore High, is a flip but homely type with a bad case of virginal angst…. Shirley Feeney, Laverne's prim, diminutive roommate, comes across as a size-5 version of Doris Day….

ABC's "Laverne and Shirley" may sound terminally dumb, but the second-season sitcom has proved to be dynamite in the ratings….

But "Laverne and Shirley" has a bit more going for it than shrewd scheduling. Nostalgia, for instance. Its characters inhabit a period when girls pasted pictures of Julius La Rosa on their mirrors, danced "the stroll" to the Diamonds and kept going back to see "The Robe" because, as Laverne puts it...