Joanie Loves Chachi

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Joanie Loves Chachi
Genre	Sitcom
Creator(s)	Lowell Ganz
Starring	Scott Baio Erin Moran Al Molinaro Ellen Travolta Art Metrano
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	17
Production
Running time	30 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	March 23, 1982 – May 24, 1983
Links
IMDb profile

Joanie Loves Chachi was an American TV spin-off of the popular American sitcom Happy Days that was originally broadcast on ABC from March 23, 1982 to September 13, 1983. It starred Scott Baio and Erin Moran as the titular Chachi Arcola and Joanie Cunningham. The series followed the exploits of Joanie and Chachi as they moved to Chicago and tried to make it on their own with a rock band and a music career. It mixed the traditional elements of a sitcom with musical performances on each show by Baio and Moran.

The format didn't gel with viewers, and the series only lasted for one season before the characters were rolled back into Happy Days for that program's final season. The series also starred Ellen Travolta as Louisa Delvecchio, Chachi's mother, and Al Molinaro as Al Delvecchio, Chachi's stepfather, who opened a restaurant in which Chachi and Joanie performed most of their music. Art Metrano played Chachi's Uncle Rico, who was the band's manager, and helped Joanie and Chachi advance in their careers.

[edit] Trivia

An actress named Winifred Freedman, played Annette, Rico's daughter and Chachi's cousin who was also part of the band. She went on to play girls school student, Patty DuPunt Krauss on the short-lived soap opera, Rituals.

A popular urban legend holds that Joanie Loves Chachi was very popular in Korea because chachi supposedly is Korean for penis (effectively changing the title to Joanie Loves Penis). The Urban Legends Reference Pages web site has expressed doubts about this claim, reporting that the series was shown in Korea only on the American Forces Korea Network, in English without subtitles and directed toward an American audience. [1] In addition, the Korean transliteration for chachi is 차치, whereas the Korean word for penis is 자지. Both words could be written in English as 'chachi', but 'chachi' can only be written one way in Korean.