The Facts Of Life – The Complete Fifth Season (1983 – 1984/Shout! Factory DVD)
Picture: C Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: C+
Spun off
from Diff'rent Strokes at the end of
its first season, The Facts of Life
has never gained the same amount of pop culture reverence as its originator,
but did manage to hold on slightly longer than that program - running for a
total on nine seasons. The show changed
gradually over time – starting out with a larger cast, then dropping several
members (including a young Molly Ringwald, who is the only cast member to have
a film career of any kind) and adding the tomboyish character, Jo (Nancy
McKeon).
Charlotte
Rae plays Mrs. Garrett, a former maid for Mr. Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes, who left for what she hoped would be a more
fulfilling job at Eastland
School for Girls, as a
housemother. Starting with the second
season, she was given a promotion to school dietician, which lasted up until Season Five. It's at this point we see Mrs. Garrett
deciding to set up shop with Edna's Edibles, keeping the girls living above the
store, and on hand to help out.
Here were
several fictional characters more worth watching than gutted-out real life
human beings that we see on “reality TV” these days. Each week, there would be a new situation
(usually funny, but sometimes serious), that the four clashing personalities
would take on. Not that the show was
always brilliant - with social issues giving way to more bad 1980s humor in the
later seasons - but the show was still good at this point and it holds up
better than you might expect.
The
1.33:1 image was (as always) shot on professional analog NTSC videotape and
looks alright for its age, though maybe some work could be done on these copies.
The show was colorful and relatively
well-lit, which was typical of sitcoms until shows like this were replaced by
much phonier looking fare by the mid-'80s that seemed increasingly stage bound
and somehow more plastic. The Dolby
Digital 2.0 sound is surprisingly listed as stereo, which is not necessarily
how the show was recorded, but sounds fine for its age.
Unfortunately,
Shout! Factory hasn't included any extras on this set. If you're looking for any retrospectives on
the cast's experiences during the run of the show, your best bet is to take a
look at the collection of the First and Second Seasons, which had some cast
interviews included as bonus content.
Although
not my thing, The Facts of Life
isn't a bad program, and still holds quite a following among retro-TV junkies. Hopefully Shout! will continue to schedule of
releases, as Sony, the original distributor of the DVDs, dropped out after
their release of the Third Season.
- David Milchick
