The Facts Of Life – The Complete Third Season
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B-
While Diff’rent Strokes is being remembered
for all the disasters that befell its younger cast after the show’s
cancellation after tremendous commercial heights, its spin-off The Facts Of Life lasted longer and has
endured to a great extent. Part of the
reason is that it was the only show on TV with an all-female cast. Though the first season was an up for grabs
situation, the series eventually settled on four characters: Blair (Lisa
Whelchel), Tootie (Kim Fields), Natalie (Mindy Cohn) and Jo (Nancy McKeon).
Still on
the coattails of socially aware shows like Alice
and The Jeffersons (the latter of
which’s T.A.T. Communications produced this show too), the series dealt with social
issues in a way that was more direct than I remembered. The
Complete Third Season was also the 1981 – 1982 season, when TV still was
producing interesting shows. Charlotte
Rae played Mrs. Garrett, a former maid for Mr. Drummond on Diff’rent Strokes, who left for what she hoped would be a more
fulfilling job. In real life, Rae also
lucked out by having a run as the same character for over ten years.
Each
week, there would be a new situation, usually funny but sometimes serious that
the four clashing personalities would take on.
Oddly, this seems more real than later similar situations (give or take
good and bad jokes) from “reality TV” starting with MTV’s The Real World, with the show now being a last record of the
pre-MTV generation even if fictional.
Here are several fictional characters more worth watching than
gutted-out real life human beings methodically picked by computer programs and
insidious psychological formulas. It is
also what is missing from most dramatic TV today.
Not that
the show was brilliant, with the social issues giving way in later seasons to
more bad 1980s humor, but the show was still good here and it holds up better
than you might expect. Too bad there is
not enough such programming for young ladies today. That is even with the bizarre Jermaine
Jackson episode.
The 1.33
X 1 image was shot on professional analog NTSC videotape and looks OK for its
age, though there is some digititis in the fine detail. The show was a relatively well lit and colorful
and typical of sitcoms until shows like this were replaced by much phonier fare
by the mid-1980s. 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.
There are no extras, though you’d think the younger cast would have
something new to say. Well, maybe we’ll
see that on the next set.
- Nicholas Sheffo
