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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: January 13th, 2015.
Director: Various
Cast: Charlotte Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Nancy McKeon, Kim Fields, Mindy Cohn
Year: Various
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The Series:
What self-respecting child of the eighties didn't watch The Facts Of Life religiously when it was sweeping network TV by storm? Spun off from Diff'rent Strokes in 1979 the series ran for nine seasons (only the first five of which made it to DVD before the release of this massive set) making it one of the longest running sit coms of its era. Even if The Eastland Academy For Girls was a hotbed of girl trouble, melodrama and comedy that's a considerable achievement.
The first season is a bit of a revolving door in that a lot of minor characters come in and out of the show (including a young Molly Ringwold) but the series revolves around the exploits of a few different teenaged girls - a snobby hot blonde socialite named Blair (Lisa Whelchel), a chubby but ridiculously vibrant middle class bookworm named Natalie (Mindy Cohn) and the youngest of the bunch, a token black girl named Tootie (Kim Fields). They all live under the watchful eye of one Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae), a firm but fair house matron who keeps the girls in line and is seemingly always available to offer safe advice or simply just a well-deserved hug. The lineup was solidified in the second season of the show with the introduction of a tough biker chick named Joe (Nancy McKeon) from The Bronx but the 'core' of the series stayed the same. Every week, one of these characters would get into some sort of mischief or run into some sort of problem, and in this mammoth set, there's no shortage of them.
Highlights in the first season include the opening episode in which the Drummonds appear. Tootie is running around trying to smooch Arnold (Gary Coleman) who is puzzlingly dressed up like a cowboy and how at one point jumps out of a window to escape her. The real meat of this story, however, is that mean old Blair has convinced a younger girl that she may be a lesbian because she's more interested in baseball than boys! A few other early highlights include an episode in which Blair finds out her mother is, erm… shall we say a bit loose, and another in which Mrs. Garrett must decide if she wants to reunite with her ex-husband or not. As the series evolves, so do the various issues that creep up. Mrs. Garrett has to teach the girls about sex and in one episode she finds a bond!
Other stand outs include and episode where it looks like Joe is going to lose her scholarship - only one person can help her, and that's Blair! Everyone knows that Blair is the last person that tough ol' Joe wants to ask for help. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Things really heat up in an episode where Natalie writes a hard hitting article on abortion that draws her to the attention of the school's administration. They demand to know her sources and if pudgy little Natalie doesn't spill the beans, she could wind up kicked out of the school for good. But just where did Natalie learn so much about abortion in the first place, huh?
The series takes an even more unusual turn when, in the Different Drummer episode, Blair winds up tutoring a mentally challenged dude named Leo who she teaches about art and about life. Of course, things go wrong, they'd have to or it wouldn't be much of an episode, culminating in a scene where Leo freaks out and trashes his easel when Blair pushes him to do better. Of course, Mrs. Garrett has to step in and clue Blair in to the fact that maybe she shouldn't be pushing the guy so hard or try to turn him into someone he's not.... And then she goes on to call him 'retarded.' Nice one, Mrs. G!
Of course, there are other setbacks that the girls all encounter through the season - Natalie doesn't want to go to the Sadie Hawkins Dance when she doesn't figure she can score the lucky young guy she's got her eye on, while Jo runs into relationship trouble when she gets promoted over her boyfriend at work. Blair has to come to terms with the fact that her father is using her as a tax write-off while Mrs. Garrett has to decide whether or not she wants to accept the marriage proposal from the kindly old man who she goes jogging with. He's nice and all, but he's too old for her - or at least, that's what the girls keep telling her. But maybe they should mind their own damn business. Mrs. Garrett has needs too, damn it. At one point, Jo figures maybe the best thing for her to do with her life would be to join a convent and become a nun. That's good logic right there, Jo. Remember that cooking class Mrs. Garrett took when the girls went to Paris? The snooty instructor decides to come to America to visit Mrs. G., with his whole family in tow - none of whom speak English.
As the girls get older, Mrs. Garrett leaves the school to start her own business called Edna's Edibles. More recurring characters are introduced such as a boy named Andy Moffet (Mackenzie Austin), a hunky guy named George Burnett (George Clooney) and Mrs. Garrett's sister Beverly Ann Stickle (Cloris Leachman) who takes over the shop from her in the final season after Garret marries her beau and heads to Africa with him to work for the Peace Corps! Not surprisingly, these later episodes aren't as good and they wind up going to fairly gimmicky lengths to keep things from becoming stale. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does. The show continues, throughout its long run, to tackle real life topics, the kind of issues that do have an effect on its intended target demographic and in that regard it is at least consistent. The amount of laughs you'll get out of it will vary.
Much of the series' success is due not only to the writers but to the talented cast as well. McKeon and Whelchel did a great job of creating a really fun rivalry on the show, with rich kid Blair flaunting her money and street kid Jo pushing back every step of the way. Cohn and Fields, the younger girls in the series, form a very believable friendship between Tootie and Natalie but the real star of the show is the completely insane Mrs. Garrett. Charlotte Rae isn't afraid to take her character's emotions to ridiculous extremes in this show, often times coming off as a menopausal lunatic as she caterwauls around the dorm hooting and hollering about this and that. Yes, it's likely, in hindsight at least, that Mrs. Garrett was quite insane, though if she was a lunatic she was at least a lunatic with a heart of gold. The seasons where she takes a back seat suffer for it and then ones without her even more.
While it may very well be a product of its time, that's half the charm of a series like this. It harkens back to a different era without heed to political correctness though doing so without a mean bone in its televised body. It's goofy, sometimes preach, but often very funny and occasionally quite sweet. Realistically those who didn't grow up with it won't see as much appeal to the show as those who did, but it's hard not to pop in any one of the twenty-six discs and not find yourself with a big, dopey grin on your face.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 1.33.1 fullframe video is about as good as an early eighties TV series is going to look. The video quality is sometimes a bit soft and as such, the colors fade slightly here and there but overall the quality is certainly quite watchable. Skin tones look good, there aren't any problems with compression artifacts, and any problems noticeable appear to be related to the source material rather than the transfer.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono soundtrack is on par with the video in terms of quality. Dialogue is clean, clear and well balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to note. It's not all that exciting a mix but it certainly gets the job done.
The extras in the set start off by replicating those found on the individual season releases of seasons one through five (seasons six through nine are on DVD for the first time with this collection). Starting with season one we find an eighteen and a half minute long featurette called Remembering The Facts Of Life which is made up of semi-recent interviews with casting director Eve Brandstein, Kim Fields, Mindy Cohn, Lisa Whelchel and a few others. Rae and McKeon are conspicuously absent but what's here is good. It's an amusing and interesting piece that talks about the casting choices, how Fields had to wear roller-skates to make herself look taller (and therefore closer in age to the other girls) and how some of the characters evolved over the years. This is complimented by a quick featurette called After Facts that runs three and a half minutes and features Fields, Whelchel, Cohn, Schacter and Becker all speaking about what they've been up to since the show went off the air.
Also included in the set on the Season Four set is the feature length 1982 made for TV movie, The Facts Of Life Goes To Paris. For those who don't remember, this gripping tale explains how Mrs. Garrett enrolled in a French cooking school at the same time the girls were preparing to study abroad in gay Paris. Edna's initially distressed when she finds out that hotel she's staying at isn't as fancy as she thought but she soon takes a liking to its proprietor, Mr. Petite, who helps her wow the cranky French cooking instructor by letting her in on a secret - always use dill and sweet butter! While Edna's making doe eyes at Mr. Petite, Joe falls for a French motorcyclist named David (pronounced Dah-veed, of course) who introduces her to his family and takes her to the book store where he works after trying to make out with her. Joe can't help herself, she digs him more than Monte Carlo even! Blair sets out on the streets of Paris to look for love but after a few clumsy mistakes, soon finds herself content to simply wander around the city and enjoy it for what it is. The real highlight of the film, however, comes when Tootie and Natalie coincidentally run into an alcoholic writer (Frank Bonner - yep, that's right, Herb from WKRP In Cincinatti). They get him off the sauce and light a fire under his ass to get him moving on his next book, while he in turn shows them the sights. Few films are able to capture the inherent loneliness of studying abroad in a foreign country or the harsh realities of alcoholism so effectively as The Facts Of Life Goes To Paris, while Edna's daring-do and indomitable spirit, that same chutzpah that simply cannot allow her to quit, should serve as an inspiration to us all. The Season Four set also features an interactive trivia game.
Exclusive to the set are a few choice supplements, however, starting with the 'pilot' for the series simply entitled The Girls School spun off from the first season of Diff'rent Strokes. This is fun to watch as the story tells how the Drummonds' housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett, winds up helping out at the private girl's school that Kimberly was enrolled at. Here we meet for the first time a few of the girls who would go on to play various characters once The Facts Of Life became its own series.
This set also includes the 1987 made for TV movie The Facts Of Life Down Under where, not surprisingly, the girls (now all grown up but with younger kids Andy and Beverly Ann along for the ride) visit Australia to spend some time with the people at their alma mater's sister school. Tootie falls in love (with a young but instantly recognizable Mario Van Peebles!) while Blair and Jo get mixed up in a jewel smuggling ring! It's all completely ridiculous and fairly terrible, but at the same time, somehow completely compelling - who wouldn't want to see Andy learn how to become a sheepherder?
The last main feature in the set is a 2014 Reunion Panel in which Danielle Nussbaum moderates a discussion with McKeon, Welchel, Cohn, Fields and, yes, Charlotte Rae - who is still ridiculously feisty. It's a fun forty-five minute look back at what these ladies accomplished and their experiences working together and their thoughts on the success of the series all these years after the fact. Each disc in the set also includes menus that provide episode selection and inside the impressively sturdy cardboard box that holds the individually cased seasons we also get a full color twenty-four page booklet that provides episodes synopsis and related information for each and every one of the episodes that makes up the complete run of the show. Unfortunately the 2001 movie The Facts Of Life Reunion has not been included in the set. It remains unreleased on DVD as of this writing.
The Final Word:
Your own enjoyment of The Facts Of Life: The Complete Series will no doubt be affected by how much personal nostalgia you have for the series but despite the fact that it is often an incredibly goofy show, there's enough drama mixed in with the screwy comedy to help hold your interest throughout. Sure, the show does pretty much jump the shark in those later years but getting there was and still is a whole lot of fun. The DVD release from Shout! Factory should definitely make fans happy, as it includes the entire run of the TV series as well as some pretty choice extras too.
Stay in school kids!
Shout Factory has been hitting it out of the park lately with classic TV. Between this and THE JEFFERSONS and HILL STREET BLUES sets, it's going to be an 80's revival at my house for a while.
They truly don't make shows like those anymore!
Next stop: buying the ALL IN THE FAMILY and MAUDE sets, which are apparently excellent.