The Facts of Life

I didn't see this show until recently when they started re-running it on Nick-At-Nite. I fell in love with it immediately. While the plots are a bit corny at times, I still love to watch it and get to know the characters. While the later ones aren't as good as the earlier ones when they're in boarding school, I still love this show. And I hope other people will check it out. :o)

If you want to see another example of why the 80's were the greatest decade of the 20th century, here's a prime example. Although I was a male, me and my brothers loved this show. I don't why, I guess it was a "what were we thinking" kind of deal. I guess as fans of "Diff'rent Strokes", we would watch the spin-offs. Granted, no one in the cast of females would cause the S Club 7 girls to lose sleep in the beauty department (sorry Lisa), but the character development was superb. Natalie Green, Jo Polnochek, Tootie Ramsey, Blair Warner, and the young girls that would come and go were all so appealing. You cared about them all. Charlotte Rae's Mrs. Garrett was the kind of women we all wish we could have known and befriended. Heck, I even miss Pippa, she was a cute, headstrong kind of girl. The acting was always good, it felt like it was real life instead of an act. I would like to check this show out again, just to see why I watched it. Oh, and Mrs. Garrett, Oingo Boingo's music is still very cool.

I LOVE this show! It's dramatic and funny simaltaneously. The Facts of Life focuses on serious issues that teens have to face and it also has a humorous twist.

Mrs. Garret, who is played by the very talented Charlotte Rae, is a housekeeper turned housemother turned dietician. She watches out for four girls, Blair (Lisa Whelchel), Jo (Nancy McKeon), Tootie (Kim Fields) and Natalie (Mindy Cohn). She plays the peacemaker and always tries to resolve problems that the girls are dealing with. She calls them "her girls" and is always there for them when they need her.

The episodes with Mrs. Garret are the best. However, the ones later on into the show where she is gone and her sister Beverly Ann is around are horrible. And the cast additions that took place in the last two years of the show, Makenzie Astin as Andy and Sherry Krenn as Pippa, totally ruined The Facts of Life.

I suggest that you watch the episodes that are from the first several years of this show because they feature an excellent cast. But don't watch the last two years of this show because the new cast was horrible, with the exception of the four original girls that remained on The Facts of Life from the very beginning.

This show aired when I was just entering my teens, and I can't think of a better time to have had such a wonderful show to watch. It was as if someone had asked my little-girl imagination what it's dream show would be, and then made it just for me. I've enjoyed the re-runs on USA, but can't quite understand why they never show the earliest episodes from 1979. Observant fans will remember those as the ones with the girls living in the dorm, prior to working in the cafeteria. Those were my favorites, and it seems like they never show them. Please get a clue USA. That's when the show was at it's best!

I remember back in 1979 when The Facts Of Life debuted it was a nice show, but lucky it got a second chance when it got retooled and revamped and streamlined. When it first debuted there were about six blond teen girls plus two other, a young black girl played by Kim Fields and a stout young girl who was Mindy Cohn. The rest were a group you could barely tell apart.

The following year this show about a girl's boarding school underwent a huge makeover. All the anonymous blond teens went, save one played by Lisa Whelchel. She stood out somewhat because of her character as a rich teen débutante who avoided serious subjects like the plague and thought her money fixed all. Over the years Whelchel's character grew somewhat.

But the show needed a contrasting bite and it got it when Nancy McKeon joined the cast. When she rode in on that motorcycle, bad girl in the making what it made was the show. Now you had potential for real conflict on the episodes.

Whelchel, Fields, Cohn, and McKeon pulled a real nasty prank on that first episode and were put in some kind of permanent probation living with school counselor Charlotte Rae. She became a strict but loving den mother to the four of them as they went through puberty learning The Facts Of Life.

With a few tight scrapes they learned them well. If the show wasn't completely realistic it wasn't exactly the Fifties either. The kids had some real issues, but it was all done PG.

It was also good entertainment.