I have a weakness for nostalgia. Especially the pop culture sort... Love's Baby Soft perfume, Maybelline's kissing potion lip gloss, Jean Nate bath splash and, heck, I still wear my Dr. Scholls.... TV Land is usually enough to keep me satisfied with periodic doses of TV shows I'd nearly forgotten.... Night Court, Wings, Three's Company and an occasional Little House on the Prairie. But this week I stumbled upon seasons one and two of Facts of Life on DVD at the library. Now normally, this show wouldn't be all that exciting to me, but season one and two are the seasons that linger back, back, way back in the recesses of my memory, so much so that I was stunned to see Molly Ringwald in all her ten-year-old glory playing the role of Molly Parker (at least for season one) and I've only watched 1/2 of the first season so far. The theme song is different, there's 
a headmaster called Mr. Bradley and a bunch of girls that only stuck around until about three episodes into season three. Still, this is the show I remember, as it rushes back to me with startling clarity. Tootie on her roller skates, Blair being Blair, Natalie cracking jokes, and pretty much everyone else running around in the skimpiest gym shorts ever worrying about their IQ scores, and generally being after-school special sweet to each other.The highlight, though, was in episode five of season one "Career Day" when the girls all discussed their future goals and Molly stood up with her sad little four stringed guitar and declared with enthusiasm... "I want to be the Joan Baez of the 80's. Listen (strum, strum):
The skies are junky
The lakes are chunky
The oceans are gunky
I feel like a lab monkey
Stop grossing up America,
you turkeys!"
The lakes are chunky
The oceans are gunky
I feel like a lab monkey
Stop grossing up America,
you turkeys!"
Update: After finishing season one I had another surprise... Helen Hunt.... In episode 13, she plays a pot smoking student who is part of "The Group" that Sue Ann and Blair want to join. She also memorably appeared as a young woman who, while on LSD, jumps out of a second story window in a 1982 after school special called Desperate Lives or so it says on Wikipedia.
After soaking in season one I feel as though I am ready to face any issue: divorce, premarital sex, flash floods, crushes on older men, pot smoking, crash dieting, unhealthy competition, IQ tests, floozy mothers, adoption, tomboy teasing, future career goals, plagiarism, stereotyping, and gambling.
3 comments:
My favorite episode from this season is when they give the tomboy a make over. This is such a fun show!
My mother used to use some Jean Naté product when I was a little kid. I clearly remember that brand name on something-- probably the body powder-- which she kept in the bathroom storage cabinet along with the extra towels, and a package of Massengill douche, and one of those rubber douche bags with the long hose that had a weird metal clip near the far end to control the flow of liquid. These things were all VERY mysterious curiosities to me as a small boy (well, not the towels). Gee, I haven't thought about any of that stuff for over 20 years!
As for the TV show you mentioned, I think I once saw about 10 minutes of a single episode in some re-run. All I recall was some heavy-set girl who I found rather grating. It's too bad I never saw the shows with Molly Ringwald. I like her; in fact, she's one of my favorite "38-year-old babes" this year! .... ;-)
Okay... the douche stuff is pretty intriguing I will admit. I have never seen that kind of stuff. I do remember my mom having some kind of maxi pads that had a belt though... way back when! And then I remember the first time I saw o.b. tampons (applicator free and I was totally freaked out!) :)
I can picture a mini-marvin rifling through the bathroom drawers checking it all out. It sort of brings me back to the explanation I once offered to a guy in college who didn't "get" how tampons worked... (no sisters... none of that early curiousity!) It wasn't too traumatic... but it was a funny topic of conversation.
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