In the process of watching the entire nine season run of The Facts of Life, as one does, a few things surprised me.
It had been a number of years since I watched any episodes and even growing up, my main memories come from the second half of the series’ run. The show certainly went downhill after the Edna’s Edibles fire starting off season seven, but I’d argue that even the Beverly Ann episodes held some gems and that Beverly Ann was actually a pretty interesting character. Yeah, the way she replaced Edna was a bit wonky, but her penchant for long stories, having bad luck with men thanks to her ex-husband (Dick van Patten!), and driving an RV everywhere made for some surprisingly good jokes over the last few seasons. Hot take: she was a stronger character than George Clooney’s George character1.
I was also taken aback by the first season of the show. I’m not sure I’d ever seen any episodes that were set in the girls’ dormitory and featured a main cast that was twice as large as from season two on (and that large cast included a young Molly Ringwald playing… Molly2). The show, which launched 1979, had a different tone that first season, but it was very enjoyable and featured a nice recurring gag where Tootie rode her skates everywhere.
One of the pleasant surprises is the continuity that the show had versus other sitcoms. I don’t recall any actors playing multiple characters like was so common in the 1980s (see Robert Costanzo), but the minor characters that were introduced were almost always used throughout the entire run of the show.3 And all those actresses from the first season? Three of them came back for a reunion in S8E6, which is impressive because the kids that were watching season eight were probably not watching during season one. That’s commitment.
The final surprise was the experimental nature some of the episodes took in season six when John Bowab took over most directing duties. In his very first episode, Cruisin’, he shot it single camera, without a live audience or laugh track. It’s a jarring episode, but also oddly intriguing. By season eight he was doing more predictable things like filming a Twilight Zone-inspired episode that had an admittedly funny recurring joke where the faux-Rod Serling enjoyed saying Tootie’s name way too much.
Over the past few years, I’ve returned to a number of 80s sitcoms to watch the entire run. Ones like Golden Girls and Family Ties hold up incredibly well whereas I suspect Growing Pains and Punky Brewster probably wouldn’t. Facts of Life falls into the first category for the majority of its run. Give it a shot, if you can, as you might be surprised at how good the first few seasons were.4
1 Whenever this happens, I always imagine it’s because the actor can’t function unless his character shares his name. Like, if he were “Mike” that every time another character said “Mike,” then George Clooney would be staring off into space. “George! It’s your line!” someone would yell from off-camera.
2 See 1.
3 Except for Blair’s mother, played by both Pam Huntington and Marj Dusay.
4 It’s been hard to do a full watching of the entire run because each season seems to be available for limited periods on assorted different free services like the Roku Channel or Crackle. It takes a little work to hunt it down.
Posted in Sitcoms
