The Facts of Life Complete Series Jan 13th 2015 (1 Viewer)

[Mark Y]

Almost near the of season 6 with the Gone with the Wind 2 part spring break episodes. I always heard About the character that lost her virginity first but I'd like th point out that Jo dated her teacher for what seemed like forever on an episode of season 6 and things got very serious and without drawing attention to it, no way I hell they didn't do it. It didn't need to be said but come one finally on the final season they have one of them lose their virginity.Watched the Last Drive in Movie, contains multiple clips of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane.

I remember when that first aired. They made a really big deal about it, and it was hyped in advance as a "special" episode. The people behind the show basically said they had to have an episode like that to be realistic and reflect real life, but like you said, just because it hadn't been talked about on the show before doesn't mean it didn't happen.

It was a weird show, and it came off as a "rite of passage" kind of thing, i.e. they did it "because they had to," and it kind of seemed forced. (Also, they were running out of time to get it in -- no pun intended, I just realized what I said there -- since it was one of the last episodes.) But I am going on memory of having watched it the night it first aired. I think there was a "sensitive viewers" disclaimer at the beginning.

I guess it worked. I hadn't been watching the show for a few seasons, and they got me to tune in.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I remember when that first aired. They made a really big deal about it, and it was hyped in advance as a "special" episode. The people behind the show basically said they had to have an episode like that to be realistic and reflect real life, but like you said, just because it hadn't been talked about on the show before doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Let me preface with "I really don't want to have this discussion...". But my need to be right on the internet is overriding that.

Lisa Whelchel wouldn't have let, and didn't let, Blair lose her virginity before marriage because of her Christian values. IIRC, That was originally supposed to be a Blair episode, not a Natalie one. But, the actress didn't agree with it, so she sat out the episode and they switched it to Natalie.

The character of Jo wouldn't have before marriage, either. Why? She worked too long and too hard to get to where she was, and wouldn't have ruined everything by putting herself at risk of getting knocked up. She saw what happened to her mother when there was no father around. Her life would've been better at scaring her sexless than any abstinence-only program.

Tootie? Eh, she'd turned down her boyfriend before.

So yeah, Natalie probably was the first of the girls to have sex.

Now let us never speak of this again.

 

[MatthewA]

Technically, Nancy, the season 1 girl who was also in Zapped, was the first one to lose her virginity, and the first and only one to get pregnant (by Roger, who we never actually see) during the course of the show in season 8's "The Little Chill".

The flip side of Natalie losing hers is that she was the last of "The Big Four" to get married.

Now let us never speak of this again.

That still leaves Blair's disfiguring accident a few weeks later open for discussion. Even after Embassy ceased to exist as its own unit, and even after the tone of the show became more Screen Gems-esque (for lack of a better word; less Very Special Episode-y and more Broad and Wacky), they still managed to go dark with that one. I somehow managed to miss that one in reruns all these years until the DVDs came out.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Technically, Nancy, the season 1 girl who was also in Zapped, was the first one to lose her virginity, and the first and only one to get pregnant (by Roger, who we never actually see) during the course of the show in season 8's "The Little Chill".

The flip side of Natalie losing hers is that she was the last of "The Big Four" to get married.



That still leaves Blair's disfiguring accident a few weeks later open for discussion. Even after Embassy ceased to exist as its own unit, and even after the tone of the show became more Screen Gems-esque (for lack of a better word; less Very Special Episode-y and more Broad and Wacky), they still managed to go dark with that one. I somehow managed to miss that one in reruns all these years until the DVDs came out.

I think I vaguely remember that one from the Nick at Nite run, and watching it on DVD.

I know I wanted to put that episode behind us, but I'd never seen The First Time until DVD. Good ol' Nick at Nite and Hallmark never aired that one, that I saw. No "Dope" from season 1, either.

They were always weird with what they aired. Suicide? Okay. Rape? No problem! Tootie nearly becoming a child pornstar or nearly being abducted and pimped out? Sure, air it at 8 PM! But no consensual sex, and no weed.

 

[MatthewA]

I think I vaguely remember that one from the Nick at Nite run, and watching it on DVD.

I know I wanted to put that episode behind us, but I'd never seen The First Time until DVD. Good ol' Nick at Nite and Hallmark never aired that one, that I saw. No "Dope" from season 1, either.

They were always weird with what they aired. Suicide? Okay. Rape? No problem! Tootie nearly becoming a child pornstar or nearly being abducted and pimped out? Sure, air it at 8 PM! But no consensual sex, and no weed.

For much of its run, it was on at 9 when it was on Wednesdays when it was new, which is probably how they got away with a lot of that in the first place. It's amazing how much the post-Brady Bunch pre-TGIF youth-oriented sitcoms got away with in hindsight.

The cannabis episode is also notable because Helen Hunt was in it long before she and Jami Gertz, who guest starred as a similar-but-not-identical character after Square Pegs went off the air, were in the movie Twister together. The flop CBS show she did three years earlier, The Fitzpatricks, also had Clark Brandon and a cannabis-themed episode that also featured Hello Larry's George Memmoli.*

One thing I noticed recently is that the very first line of the first episode of the series proper, "Rough Housing," is Mrs. Garrett talking about a change of seasons. It sounds like a throwaway line at first (and while N@N cut it, the USA and original daytime/syndication cuts everyone else still gets did not), but it actually speaks volumes, not just about the roles and social expectations of young women changing dramatically in such a short time, but the actual seasons themselves. When Linda Marsh and Margie Peters left One Day at a Time to save this show, one of the things they wanted to change was having the older girls in short shorts, not just because they felt it was inappropriate, but because it's New York state in January and they'd be freezing their butts off! So it was then that they started paying attention to that particular detail. When Jo and Eddie tried to run away and get married, it was winter and it looked it.

Hallmark took the first scene of Act 1 and turned it into a pre-credits teaser, but that pales in comparison to their cuts to The Golden Girls. Before I left North Carolina for California, I had a gym membership and would watch it on the treadmill on Hallmark. They censored the word "ass", as in Blanche referring to Rose's "I lost my ass in Vegas" cup which is actually about a donkey, so it's not technically cursing. And every round of reruns has cut it differently, but again Hallmark's was the most insulting; in "The Days and Nights of Sophia Petrillo" they cut the whole scene where Sophia volunteered at the hospital with a boy whom (it was implied) got AIDS from a blood transfusion.**

*That was 1977, the same year Lisa Whelchel and Julie Piekarski were New Mouseketeers. Meanwhile, Julie Anne Haddock did a similarly large Irish-Catholic family show on NBC that same year, Mulligan's Stew, which was equally unsuccessful.
**Mr. Belvedere actually mentioned the disease when they actually gave it to a kid who never got seen again. Golden Girls did not mention it in that particular episode, but did in another episode where Rose got tested.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

The decline of television into a totally unoriginal pit of nostalgia reboots no one asked for continues apace

https://deadline.com/2018/08/the-fa...way-jessica-biel-in-talks-produce-1202439672/

 

[MatthewA]

This is why I don't watch new movies and TV shows. There aren't any. Norman Lear never should have sold Embassy, and Columbia Pictures never should have sacrificed its independence for a can of Coke.

1. How is this going to work now that pretty much all American schools, public or private, are now coed?

2. Leonardo DiCaprio? Seriously? Yeah, I get the Alan Thicke connection, but still…

3. Why are none of these reboots animated? When their shows were new, they made cartoon characters out of Punky Brewster, Gary Coleman, the Bradys, the Partridges, and even Roseanne! At least that would differentiate it from its predecessor in a way that is meaningful and beneficial.

4. Not to be morbid, but did they have to do this while Charlotte and Cloris are still alive to see it? At least with One Day at a Time, they had the courtesy to wait for Bonnie Franklin and Pat Harrington, Jr. to die first.

5. Exactly where is the end game of this reboot-mania? Seriously, this has got to stop. Viewers need to stop watching them. Critics need to stop giving them good reviews because they are just enabling more and more of them. They have no artistic value whatsoever and they only exist to sell you the lie that everything from the past, even if it defined your formative years and made them more bearable than they would have been otherwise, is retroactively worthless.

Spoiler: NSFW denunciation of corporate cynicism, laziness, and open contempt for new ideas

FUCK YOU SONY. SERIOUSLY. FUCK YOU WITH A HAPPY MAGIC MARKER. YOU DIDN'T PRODUCE THIS SHOW. YOU LAZY, GREEDY, CYNICAL PARASITES JUST BOUGHT THE COMPANY THAT BOUGHT THE COMPANY THAT DID. YOU'RE THE ONLY ONES MAKING MONEY OFF THE DVDS OF THESE SHOWS. BUT YOU'LL NEVER GET ONE MORE DIME OUT OF ME FOR ANYTHING FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER. I WILL NEVER SEE ANOTHER MOVIE OR TV SHOW FROM COLUMBIA WHILE YOU STILL OWN IT. AND THAT'S A FACT.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

4. Not to be morbid, but did they have to do this while Charlotte and Cloris are still alive to see it? At least with One Day at a Time, they had the courtesy to wait for Bonnie Franklin and Pat Harrington, Jr. to die first.

'

The new ODAAT is a very good show.

Only thing is, I see no reason why it's called "One Day At A Time".

The only things used from the old show were the title, the theme song, a tiny bit of the main set styling, and the name "Schneider". That's it. Otherwise, it has nothing at all to do with the original.

It could've been its own show and been almost the exact same show, and no one would notice the few ODAAT elements missing.

 

[MatthewA]

Then why call it that at all if it has no real connection to the original? It's not the continuing story of the Romano/Cooper/Royer family. It's a direct slap in the face to it by saying it has no intrinsic value in the modern world.

But name a mixed-race all-or-mostly-female show that predates The Facts of Life.

 

[John Karras]

The decline of television into a totally unoriginal pit of nostalgia reboots no one asked for continues apace

https://deadline.com/2018/08/the-fa...way-jessica-biel-in-talks-produce-1202439672/

Darn!! And I was ever so hoping for "The All-New My Mother The Car". As veteran producer Diane English said about the creativity abilities and output of today's television "talent" pool "...bad xerox copies of bad xerox copies"

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Darn!! And I was ever so hoping for "The All-New My Mother The Car". As veteran producer Diane English said about the creativity abilities and output of today's television "talent" pool "...bad xerox copies of bad xerox copies"

Mother's coming back as a 2001 Pontiac Aztek.

 

[MatthewA]

Someone's had a few too many sips of wine made from member berries:

 

[B-ROLL]

Then why call it that at all if it has no real connection to the original? It's not the continuing story of the Romano/Cooper/Royer family. It's a direct slap in the face to it by saying it has no intrinsic value in the modern world.

But name a mixed-race all-or-mostly-female show that predates The Facts of Life.

Julia

First episode date: September 17, 1968

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Reboot news was annoying, but now there's sad news to report

http://ew.com/tv/2018/08/05/charlotte-rae-dead-mrs-garrett-facts-life-dies/

Goodbye, Mrs. G.

 

[bmasters9]

They have no artistic value whatsoever and they only exist to sell you the lie that everything from the past, even if it defined your formative years and made them more bearable than they would have been otherwise, is retroactively worthless.

And worse, some of them have been incredibly successful-- if it keeps going the way it is, I think the newer O'Loughlin Five-0 will match the run of the O-R Jack Lord Five-O, or maybe even surpass it.

 

[sjbradford]

But name a mixed-race all-or-mostly-female show that predates The Facts of Life.

The Lucy Show. Well, at least the first few seasons before Vivian Vance left.

 

[Ron1973]

And worse, some of them have been incredibly successful-- if it keeps going the way it is, I think the newer O'Loughlin Five-0 will match the run of the O-R Jack Lord Five-O, or maybe even surpass it.

Some reboots aren't terrible. Don't forget, folks, Dragnet from the 60's was a reboot of a 50's series.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Some reboots aren't terrible. Don't forget, folks, Dragnet from the 60's was a reboot of a 50's series.

I'd say there's a difference between a reboot and a continuation/revival.

Dragnet 6X was the latter. Dragnet 2003 was the former.

 

[Bryan^H]

And worse, some of them have been incredibly successful-- if it keeps going the way it is, I think the newer O'Loughlin Five-0 will match the run of the O-R Jack Lord Five-O, or maybe even surpass it.

Yeah, the new H5O will probably run 15 seasons. Sad thing is the worst episode from the original series is still better than the best episode of the new series.

 

[bmasters9]

Some reboots aren't terrible. Don't forget, folks, Dragnet from the 60's was a reboot of a 50's series.

That it was-- I remember seeing parts of both.