Facts of Life

[Deleted]

Yahooo!!! The first and second season are coming out on DVD May 9th.

[gemstone]

I still love Jo's reaction when she find out that Natalie has "done it" with Snake. "These darn cereal boxes..."

[dwanollah]

You take the good, you take the bad....

I loved the first season, especially. The Is Cindy a Lesbian "Funny" is social commentary at its finest.

Last year, me and my friend went to go see the Phacts of Life, with various drag queens playing Jo, Blair and Mrs. Garrett (and Cousin Jeri!), Julie Brown playing Natalie and someone from a variety show who does a spot-on Tootie playing Tootie. It was SPECTACULAR!

[proper stranger]

dwanollah said:

Last year, me and my friend went to go see the Phacts of Life, with various drag queens playing Jo, Blair and Mrs. Garrett (and Cousin Jeri!), Julie Brown playing Natalie and someone from a variety show who does a spot-on Tootie playing Tootie. It was SPECTACULAR!

Ha! I really wish I'd seen that.

By strange coincidence, I was talking with someone at a party this weekend about TFoL. I came to the conclusion that I remember this cheesy show far too well. Remember how the first season theme song was a bit different and Mrs. Garrett sang part of it? Remember when Tootie made a papier mache head of Special Guest Star Jermaine Jackson?

I always wanted to do a group "Facts of Life" Halloween costume with some friends, but none of us can roller skate well enough to be Tootie.

ETA: Inspired by this thread...behold my new avatar.

[Ripley]

I totally remember the first season of TFoL, where there were lots of girls. I remember Molly Ringwald was one of them. I also remember the episode where one of them decided to smoke pot and write an essay. She thought it was great while she was high, but then she read it sober and realized how weird it sounded. That's how we all learned about The Evils of Marijuana.

I remember the episode where Natalie nearly got raped on campus. And I remember the episode where Blaire's mom got pregnant and said she was going to have an abortion, and Blaire got pissed, and her mom decided to keep the pregnancy. And I remember the episode where they were studying for exams and Natalie had to wear her hat with lightning bolts and Tootie had her headphones on and kept singing, "Cel-e-brate good time, come on! Na na na na."

You know why Tootie was on roller skates the first season? It was because she was so much shorter than the other actresses, and the skates made her look taller.

[clementine74]

My all time favorite episode is the one where Tootie is FREAKIN' THE HELL OUT about going to a Jermaine Jackson concert, but Mrs. Garrett will not let her. Tootie becomes hysterical: "I'm GOIN'!!!"
Ah, good times in Peekskill.

[WitchyPoo]

I remember the one where the girls went into the city. I can't remember why. They stopped at a diner and Tootie made friends with a teenage prostitute. Tootie didn't know what was really going on until the girl's pimp noticed Tootie. He tried to get the girl to lure her in.

I loved the "special episodes".

[proper stranger]

Wasn't the teenage prostitue played by the same actress who played Ginger on Homefront (another one of my fave TV shows)?

clementine74 said:

My all time favorite episode is the one where Tootie is FREAKIN' THE HELL OUT about going to a Jermaine Jackson concert, but Mrs. Garrett will not let her. Tootie becomes hysterical: "I'm GOIN'!!!"

I wonder if Tootie would now be a member of the COTWTS? Or maybe started a new Cult that focused on Jermaine instead of FUBAR.

[dnt]

One of my best memories is the night a friend and I watched a USA marathon of TFOL that I'd taped. Good times.

I used to want to look just like Jo. I have very thick hair and when I was a little girl, every morning, my mother would ask me what I wanted done with it: sides pulled back with barrettes, pigtails, braids, ponytail, whatever. She felt that I just had too much hair to wear loose because it would look sloppy. Every day for awhile in fourth or fifth grade I would request a ponytail to look more like Nancy McKeon and get so upset because my mom didn't put the little rubber-banded sections in the sides of my hair like she had. And I would steal my brothers' plaid flannel shirts to wear over my jeans.

The odd thing is that I never developed a taste for rich blonde girls...

[indygirl]

ripley said:

And I remember the episode where they were studying for exams and Natalie had to wear her hat with lightning bolts

And then one of her bolts got crushed!

My all time favorite episode is the one where Tootie is FREAKIN' THE HELL OUT about going to a Jermaine Jackson concert, but Mrs. Garrett will not let her. Tootie becomes hysterical: "I'm GOIN'!!!"

And the body guards dunked her sculpture os his head because they thought it was a bomb!

I think I went through two seasons of that show before I found out why they all had to live over the kitchen. I had never seen the first season or the first few episodes of the second.