S T A T S

A B O U T

The Basics:

Leonard "Lenny" Kosnowski was born sometime in 1938. Depending on which version of canon you want to follow, he has an older sister or was an only child, but definitely had a father and a mother, and was born in Seawall, New Jersey .

When Lenny was about the age of four, the family moved to Milwaukee, WI, presumably on time for Lenny to begin attending kindergarten, as he met his best friend Squiggy and his lifelong neighbors, Laverne and Shirley in grade school. Lenny's favorite toy as a child was sauerkraut, though he did own a turtle...which he accidentally killed by carving his initials into its shell. His fondest memory of his mother involves her shoving his head through the bars of his playpen...insinuating that she was physically abusive, and possibly mentally unstable. On his fifth birthday, she walked out on the family, leaving Lenny alone with his cake, saying that she needed to get him candles. She simply leaves via bus to parts unknown. We, nor Lenny, hear from her again for the rest of the show's duration - and he is raised in a single-parent household by his father.

By all accounts, Lenny grew up dirt poor- poorer, arguably, than the lower middle class DeFazio and Squiggman clans and the upper-middle-class Feeneys. Though they were all raised in a working-class blue-collar neighborhood, the gang is nonetheless considered by people who live in white-collar neighborhoods such as the Cunninghams of Happy Days fame to be living on the wrong side of the tracks. Of all of the gang, Lenny seems to have suffered the most from poverty - along with the aforementioned sauerkraut-as-toy, Lenny received his lunch money from his teacher - which means he was on a state-funded lunch program. This humiliating memory sticks with him, even as a twenty-six year old man years not quite beyond living hand-to-mouth. His father worked at a fish cannery for an extended amount of time; it's unknown if Lenny's sister cared for him while their father worked. It's likely that he as a latch-key kid, as he shares memories of playing with Squiggy during the day after school in "Helmut Weekend", so it's an arguable point that he spent his childhood playing on the streets of their Milwaukee neighborhood with Squiggy.

By the time he began attending Filmore High, Lenny at least had his own clique of friends to hang out with; Squiggy and "Icky" Hector Kestenbaum. The boys' favorite activities apparently included teasing the then-plump Angora Deb Rosie Greenbaum and desperately attempting to peep in on classmates Anne-Marie, Laverne and Shirley, who were a clique of their own within their high school sorority/girl gang, the Angora Debs. They were typical, mischievous, adenoidal teenage boys from what we see in the show, but to the girls they become perverse pests.

The way Lenny and Squiggy interact with Laverne and Shirley, behavior that is apparently stuck in the same pattern developed in adolesence, continues throughout their onscreen life as co-workers and neighbors for eight years.

A year after they graduated high school, Lenny had been living with his sister and brother-in-law. In "Hi, Neighbor," Lenny and Squiggy, on the girl's unwitting advice, moved in together and into the girl's building at Knapp Street. From that moment on, the boys became antagonists, mirrors, counterparts, companions, dates and friends to the girls.

For Lenny, this mostly involved flirting with Laverne, becoming a coconspirator in Squiggy's get-rich-quick schemes, dating women who largely wanted nothing to do with him, participating in such hobbies as Jell-O skating and bathroom tub gardening, and delivering beer and driving a truck for Shotz Brewery, the same plant that employs the girls.

While in Milwaukee, Lenny participated in the service. This, at first, was a big part of who his character was, and his work in the Army was alluded to frequently in first-season episodes - for instance, he injures his thumb learning to fire a rifle during basic training in "Once Upon a Rumor," and becomes a Private in "One Flew Over Milwaukee."

In the season three episode "The Debutante Ball," we learn that Lenny is of royal lineage. 89th in line to the Polish throne, he is the Count of Kulakowski. One has to wonder, since Lenny apparently inherited the title, what happened to his father.

In 1962, Lenny and Squiggy recieved a raise at Shotz - the same day the girls are demoted to truck-washing. With their increased sallaries, they buy an ice cream truck, planning to travel during their vacation. The girls, seeing nothing but a dead end life for them in Milwaukee, con the boys into driving them to California, where they plan on starting a new life where Laverne's father has already lined up jobs for them waitressing at his new Cowboy Bills franchise. Thus does Laverne and Shirley jump the sh - I mean, renooberate the show's scenery.

Resting overnight at Laurel Vista in Burbank, California, the boys immediately get lucky with two senoritas and decide to stay in the building, right next door to the girls. They take a neighboring apartment in the Spanish-style stucco-walled converted house, and opened up a talent agency: Squignowski Talent Agency Of Burbank (S.T.A.B.). They use the truck to sell ice cream and supplament their income. Surprisingly, boys manage to find a few clients and get them work, and were actually more successful at this venture than any of their other fly-by-night schemes from back in Milwaukee. Interestingly, Lenny seemed to be the brains of the outfit - running over contracts and keeping things organized while Squiggy shmoozed and negotiated his way through Studio City. Much of their work time, however, was spent chasing wannabe actresses and relying on their friendship with Frank DeFazio by booking their talent to his new resteraunt, a Cowboy Bills franchise.

For Lenny, we come to notice, California wasn't that big of a change from Milwaukee. Though, as if symbolic of their success, Lenny changed his mode of dress a little bit in California - and took to chewing, though not smoking, cigars - he was still broke, and still unable to attract and keep a woman. Yet there's also a slight maturation of the character - while he had always been the more "grown-up" of the twosome, Lenny had bigger responsibilities in California and acted accordingly. He was nonetheless openly dumbstruck by his good fortune at having moved up in the world - from driving a beer truck in Milwaukee to appearing with celebrities in LA.

What happens to Lenny after we see him for the last time in season eight's "Please Don't Feed The Buzzards" is a matter of great speculation and fanon. The truth behind the great mystery is that Michael McKean had an out in his contract related to "This is Spinal Tap" being picked up by distributors - when it was, he was gone, and therefore Lenny took a long onscreen hiatus. While Michael directed "The Bunny Show" and looked for a way onto the big screen, Lenny faded from everyone's conciousness as the other principle characters tried like hell to learn how to "Do The Carmine". Notice that Squiggy continues to mention him in the first few episodes of the final season - even attributing a wet wool fetish to him, of all things - though we don't see him after "Buzzards". When the series wraps, Squiggy is still fronting Squignowski Talent Agency, but Lenny isn't there to wave Carmine off to New York, and he misses out on the election of Laverne's father to Burbank's City Council.

When we meet Lenny again - thirty years after we last saw him in the "Laverne and Shirley: Together Again" reunion special - we find that he STILL hasn't changed. The girls have married, moved on, moved back to Milwaukee and back in with one another, but he and Squiggy are still together, presumably never having separated, and they both work for the reality game show "Island Of Doom"...torturing people in hole number five. We don't find out how his life went, or even how his life is going.

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