The second season also makes a sound move in the employment of Jo, the wisecracking tough girl from the Bronx, who gives the series a much needed injection of cool, clipped humor to balance out the meekness of the other characters. Garrett still has that cloying way of the dizzy den mother fussing over the girls, but this time she is more of a concerned source of guidance rather than a complete interference. The humor is far more developed in this season. The second season fares much better in it, the show pares the principal cast down to just the four school girls along with Mrs. The first season especially suffers because there were too many cast members involved, never giving writers enough time to fully flesh each one out. For instance, marijuana, a hot topic back in the day, is now a punchline on today’s sitcoms. Many of the episodes during the first season feature the girls squabbling on matters which at the time seemed incredibly pressing, but are really more of an afterthought nowadays. The opening season gets off to a rocky start to begin with, there are too many cast members to keep track of (including a then preteen Molly Ringwald). The Facts of Life has its full share of these lessons, much of them hammered home in the first four seasons. The common ones involve drinking, sex, dating, drugs, peer pressure, family strife, racism and bullying. The Facts of Life is typical of most ’80s sitcoms, wherein each episode is hinged on a certain moral. These four characters have since become iconic keepsakes of the ’80s, tokens of nostalgia that are inevitably brought up whenever discussing Reagan-era television. Following the first season, the series was retooled so that the large group of girls is whittled down to a primary four: Blair, Tootie, Natalie and Jo (played by Lisa Whelchel, Kim Fields, Mindy Cohn and Nancy McKeon, respectively). The program is often fondly recalled for its insanely catchy theme (co-penned by actor Alan Thicke, no less) and the five women who led the series, each possessing a distinct personality that made them every bit as memorable as it did an archetype.Īs framed in its debut, the show revolves around a large group of teenage girls in a boarding school, run by housemother and school nutritionist Mrs. Premiering in the summer of 1979, the series has many revisions and reboots that moved with the changing trends of the decade, running for nine consecutive seasons. was probably Bob Hope's best picture." Awards and nominations Awardīest Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the ScreenĪrt Direction: Joseph McMillan Johnson and Kenneth A.The Facts of Life has already gone down in history as one of the longest-running sitcoms of the ‘80s that helped to define the era. In 1964, Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote that the film ". a wonderfully good-humored estimation of an essentially pathetic state of affairs" and wrote: "It is a grandly good-natured picture, full of thoroughly sparkling repartee and word-gags and sight-gags that crackle with humor and sly intelligence." In a positive contemporary review in The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther called the script ". The result is a madcap race back home to retrieve Kitty's breakup note before her husband Jack reads it. The bungalow with a leaky roof rented by Larry becomes the backdrop for their gradual realization that leaving their families is much more complicated, and Larry and Kitty are much less compatible than they thought. They arrange a weekend together in Monterey, and Kitty leaves behind a note for Jack telling him she is leaving him. This leads to a rendezvous at the drive-in movie, where they are recognized, followed by a botched visit to a local motel with humorous consequences. They can't bear seeing each other at their usual social activities, without being together. However, when the vacation is over, they face difficulties deciding whether to continue the romance. Forced together, Kitty and Larry fall in love. ![]() When their spouses are kept away from the vacation, Kitty and Larry find themselves alone in Acapulco, with the Masons bedridden with illness. ![]() ![]() As the yearly vacation of six neighbors, the Gilberts, Masons and Weavers, approaches, Kitty Weaver and Larry Gilbert find themselves frustrated with the routine.
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