The producers felt that there were too many characters given the limitations of the half-hour sitcom format and that the plot lines should be more focused to give the remaining girls more room for character development. Other season one episodes deal with issues including drug use, sex, eating disorder, parental relationships and peer pressure. The show's pilot episode plot included a story line in which Blair Warner insinuates that her schoolmate Cindy Webster is a lesbian, because she is a tomboy and frequently shows affection for other girls.
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Early episodes of the show typically revolve around a central morality-based or "lesson teaching" theme. Steven Bradley ( John Lawlor) and Miss Emily Mahoney ( Jenny O'Hara), an Eastland teacher who was dropped after the first four episodes. Also appearing was the school's headmaster, Mr. In the show's first season, episodes focus on the issues of seven girls, with the action usually set in a large, wood-paneled common room of a girls' dormitory.
The facts of life series#
Although Kimberly Drummond is featured as a student at East Lake, her character did not cross over to the spinoff series with Mrs. Bradley becoming part of the main group featured.
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Following the pilot, the name of the school was changed to Eastland and characters were replaced, with Natalie, athletic tomboy Cindy Webster ( Julie Anne Haddock), and Mr. Garrett is asked to stay on as the new housemother but states she would rather remain working for the Drummonds at the end of the pilot. Garrett agrees to help, puts on a successful play and also solves a problem for the boyfriend-obsessed Nancy Olsen ( Felice Schachter) as she also meets Blair, Tootie, the small-town girl from Kansas Sue Ann Weaver ( Julie Piekarski), and the budding activist Molly Parker ( Molly Ringwald). Garrett help her sew costumes for a student play at East Lake School for Girls, the school Kimberly attended in Upstate New York, as her dorm's housemother had recently quit.
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Garrett's Girls)." The plot line for the pilot had Kimberly Drummond ( Dana Plato) requesting that Mrs. The pilot for the show was originally aired as the last episode of the first season of Diff'rent Strokes and was called "The Girls' School (a.k.a. The girls in her care included spoiled rich girl Blair Warner ( Lisa Whelchel) the youngest, gossipy Dorothy "Tootie" Ramsey ( Kim Fields) and impressionable Natalie Green ( Mindy Cohn). I am forever greatful to Nick at Nite for re-running this charming sitcom.A spin-off of Diff'rent Strokes, the series featured the Drummonds' former housekeeper Edna Garrett ( Charlotte Rae) becoming the housemother of a dormitory at Eastland School, a private all-girls school in Peekskill, New York. Like the one when Natalie doesn't get a job at the Peekskill Press and she needs to learn to share her feelings with her boyfriend (one of my old faves, Casey Siemaszko made an early appearance here) I also love the episode where Jo runs a late night radio station and all the girls come and help her out. However, some of my most favorite episodes, focused on Natalie and Jo.
The facts of life tv#
They all fit together and the four make for one of the greatest casts in TV history. Blair was fun too, but she needed the balance of Jo's character to tame her down a bit. I actually really liked all of the girls. It's a shame today that sitcoms have become so obsessed with sex, violence and vanity, that many of the children of today feel they must identify with these ideas instead of the show identifying with them. They were down to earth and I could really identify with them and so did many others my age, we being children of the 80's. The reason why is because they were not glammed-up susperstars with unreal problems. Natalie and Jo were also my favorite characters. G leaving), in just wanting to find out what happens to the other girls, especially Jo and Natalie, who are two of the greatest and most real characters in a sitcom. The show is still, however watchable and even enjoyable, after all this (including Mrs. Then they add some corny testosterone in the form of two characters a whiney, conceided 12 year old boy and not even George Clooney's early talent could make up for his lame character either. However,I must say I agree with the other reviews in saying that the show was just wonderful until about 1985, when Edna'a Edibles burns down and they remodel the store. I love this show! This was and still is one of my favorite sitcoms from the 80's. Although the begining of this show takes place in the 70's, this show is so 80's it hurts.