"You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life." - "The Facts of Life" theme song
The Facts of Life: The Complete First and Second Seasons DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
In the latter half of the 1970s, NBC found itself in a similar situation to the one it is in now - ratings were down, and hit shows were few and far between. In the 1977-78 season, the network held only four slots in the top thirty: Little House on the Prairie, Project U.F.O, and two nights of movies. The following season, the network scored a minor hit when the premiere season of Diff'rent Strokes came in at number twenty-seven. Trying to capitalize on its success, executives planned a spin off with the only character that could logically be spun off, housekeeper Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae). The final Diff'rent Strokes episode of the 1978-79 season served as a pilot to the new series, The Facts of Life.
In the new series, Mrs. Garrett becomes housemother to a group of girls at the prestigious Eastland boarding school in Peekskill, New York. Blair (Lisa Whelchel) is super rich, super pretty, and super snobby. Tootie (Kim Fields) is a nosy gossip who earns the nickname "the Rona Barrett of Eastland." Natalie (Mindy Cohn) writes for the school's newspaper. Sue Ann (Julie Piekarski) is smart. Nancy (Felice Schacter) is obsessed with her boyfriend, Roger. Cindy (Julie Anne Haddock) is a tomboy who would much rather play baseball than attend a ball. Molly (Molly Ringwald) is the group's budding feminist. Mr. Bradley (Phyllis' John Lawlor) is Eastland's dunce of a headmaster, and Miss Mahoney (My Sister Sam's Jenny O'Hara) is a teacher. Miss Mahoney disappears after the fourth episode, an early indicator that the series' concept had not yet been totally thought out.
Almost every episode in the series' short first season plays like a "Very Special Episode." Cindy is nominated to compete against Blair in the annual Harvest Queen pageant but becomes upset when Blair obliquely accuses her of being a lesbian ("Rough Housing"). Blair discovers her mother kissing a married man and worries that dear old mom is about to ruin yet another marriage ("Like Mother, Like Daughter"). When Tootie finds a list of everyone's I.Q. scores, Sue Ann discovers that she has Eastland's lowest I.Q. ("I.Q."). Blair learns about sex in Mrs. Garrett's sex ed class, but it takes a hunky delivery boy to teach her about love ("The Facts of Love, AKA Sex Education"). A school project on family trees leads Natalie to reveal that she is adopted, but she has mixed feelings on taking up Blair's offer to find her "real" mother ("Adoption"). Molly's parents are heading to divorce court, and even a lamebrain plan cooked up by the other students can't stop them ("Molly's Holiday"). Blair and Sue Ann are allowed to join an exclusive clique of students, but to be truly accepted, they have to smoke marijuana ("Dope"). Each episode guarantees viewers a little laughter.a few tears.and Very Important Lessons for the students.
One Very Important Lesson that the cast learned very quickly is that sometimes TV series are rethought, and sometimes actors get fired. When The Facts of Life returned for a second season in the fall of 1980, Sue Ann, Nancy, Cindy, Molly, and Mr. Bradley were no longer cast members (although the students do make brief appearances in subsequent episodes). Nancy McKeon joins the cast as Jo, a street-smart tough girl who rides a motorcycle and sometimes gets in trouble with the law. She is sent to Eastland in an attempt to tame her wild ways, but she isn't even there a week before she and the girls are thrown in jail and expelled from Eastland ("The New Girl"). They are allowed back in school, but only if Mrs. Garrett takes personal responsibility for their actions. Soon Blair, Jo, Tootie, and Natalie are rooming across the hall from Mrs. Garrett and working in the school kitchen (where Mrs. G is now the dietician). Jo also attempts to elope with her boyfriend ("Teenage Marriage") and tries to hide the fact that her father was just released from prison ("The Secret").
In the standout episode "Cousin Geri," we are introduced to Geri Warner (Deadwood's Geri Jewell), Blair's cousin who is trying to make it big on the standup circuit. Blair reacts coolly to her cousin's visit, which Mrs. Garrett takes to mean that she is ashamed that Geri has cerebral palsy. Mrs. Garrett soon discovers that the truth is actually much more complicated. This is a memorable episode that features a fine performance by Jewell who actually is a standup comedian with CP.
One extremely odd episode is the season-ending "Brian & Sylvia." Tootie and Natalie shuffle off to Buffalo to spend the weekend with Tootie's Aunt Sylvia (Rosann Katon) and her Uncle Brian (MacGyver's Richard Dean Anderson). The emphasis here is on Brian and Sylvia, suggesting that this was intended to be the pilot for a series dealing with the interracial couple. Make that "the pilot for an extremely boring series dealing with the interracial couple." The actors do their best, but nothing in this episode suggests that it could successfully spawn a TV series.
The first season is perfectly acceptable, but the streamlined cast elevates the second season. Season one has too many characters, several of whom have very little personality. Adding McKeon's Jo makes the series click. It helps to simplify the concept of the series and sets up the pairings of Blair/Jo and Natalie/Tootie as foils and friends.
Mrs. Garrett isn't as ditheringly odd here as she was in Diff'rent Strokes, probably because no elite school would dare to hire that Mrs. Garrett as a housecleaner, much less a housemother. Rae's performance still makes the character fun to watch - and dig her kooky singing in the first season's theme song. Mostly Mrs. G is used to deliver morals and lessons to her "girls." Somehow, though, she never quite gets around to "Don't wear roller skates on the staircase."
The series really is a triumph in good casting. Even when the plotlines are a bit hackneyed, most viewers will be won over by the sparkling cast. The girls truly seem like friends - to each other and, in a weird way, to us.
Guest stars include Diff'rent Strokes' Conrad Bain, Todd Bridges, Dana Plato, and Gary Coleman, Donald May (The Edge of Night), Robert Alda (Supertrain), William Bogert (Small Wonder), Helen Hunt (Mad About You), Clark Brandon (Mr. Merlin), Bill "Jose Jimenez" Dana, Kenneth Mars (The Producers), Alex Rocco (The Famous Teddy Z), Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tom Fitzsimmons (The Paper Chase), and Ja'net DuBois (Good Times).
The twenty-nine episodes that make up the first two seasons are divided onto four discs. The discs are housed in two slim, clear plastic keepcases, each of which holds two discs. The fronts of the cases are decorated with publicity stills of the entire cast. The backs of the cases include titles and brief synopses for each episode. The interiors of the cases include more publicity stills. Each of the DVDs spotlights one of the cast members - Piekarski on disc one, Ringwald on disc two, Whelchel on disc three, and McKeon on disc four. The keepcases slide into a cardboard outer sleeve.
The static DVD menus are simple and easy to navigate. Viewers can play all of the disc's episodes or choose them individually. The episodes are divided into chapters, but there are no scene selection menus.
