'' was an
American Sitcom which ran on the
NBC network from
1979 to
1988 .
It was produced first by
TAT Communications , then
Embassy Television , followed by Embassy Communications (Norman Lear's production companies), and finally,
Columbia Pictures Television (through ELP Communications). Today,
Sony Pictures Television still distributes the rights to the sitcom.
From
1979 to
1982 , the series was produced at
Metromedia Square , and from 1982 on at
Universal City Studios in
Hollywood .
''The Facts of Life'' was a
Spinoff of the sitcom ''
Diff'rent Strokes ''. The spinoff focused on
Charlotte Rae 's character,
Edna Garrett , as she became housemother to seven young girls at the Eastland Academy in
Peekskill, New York .
The show was originally meant to be a summer series in
1979 , but the head of programming decided to bring it back in early
1980 . After a thirteen-episode run, the show was retooled extensively. Four of the actresses,
Felice Schachter ,
Julie Piekarski ,
Julie Anne Haddock , and
Molly Ringwald , were written out of the show (although the four did make periodic appearances on the series when it still took place in Eastland Academy, and three returned in a later season for a "reunion of friends", mentioning Molly's character being unable to attend), and a new actress was hired. Now, in addition to being den mother to the girls – wealthy, spoiled
Blair Warner (
Lisa Whelchel ), chubby, fun-loving
Natalie Green (
Mindy Cohn ), nosy
Tootie Ramsey (
Kim Fields ), and the new girl, street-wise
Jo Polniaczek (
Nancy McKeon ) – Mrs. Garrett also became the school's dietitian.
Early episodes of the show almost always revolved around a central morality-based or "lesson teaching" theme. The debut episode of the show was extremely controversial in that it found the character of Blair Warner intimating that her schoolmate Cindy was a
Lesbian because she was a tomboy who frequently showed affection for other girls. Though the show never said the word outright, instead using terms like "that way" or "different", it was the first time a teen questioning his or her sexual preference had been shown on television.
The series was given a berth on the
1980-81 American Network Television Schedule , and the show was a constant Top 30 hit for most of the early and mid-
1980s . In
1983 , Jo and Blair graduated Eastland Academy while Natalie and Tootie were still attending school there. To keep the four girls under one roof, Mrs. Garrett had her son Raymond buy a bakery for her, which she named ''Edna's Edibles''. The four girls came to work for her and lived in one of the rooms at the attached house.
The show became part of NBC's much-watched Saturday night lineup in
1985 , but by this time, the girls were now in their late teens and early twenties, and public interest was starting to wane. In an attempt to increase ratings, Mrs. Garrett's store, ''Edna's Edibles'', was burned to the ground and was replaced with a pop-culture influenced gift shop that the girls ran together, called ''Over Our Heads''. This phase of the show is notable for including a then-unknown
George Clooney as a supporting actor.
The gift shop also sold a few records, and this offshoot business was the springboard for many appearances by popular groups and singers, such as
El DeBarge ,
Michael Damian , and
Stacey Q .
The ratings began to fall in
1986 , when Charlotte Rae decided to leave the series and was replaced by
Cloris Leachman , who played Mrs. Garrett's sister,
Beverly Ann Stickle . During this time, Beverly Ann legally adopted Over Our Heads worker Andy (
Mackenzie Astin ), and
Australia n exchange student Pippa McKenna (
Sherrie Krenn ) attended Eastland Academy.
By the fall of
1987 , the show, which had ranked in the Top 30 just two years before, now lagged behind, rarely ranking above #40 and dragged down the rest of the night's lineup as a result (which, at the time, had Top 20 hits in ''
The Golden Girls '' and ''
227 ''). In another attempt to raise the ratings, the show's writers created a storyline in which Natalie became the first of the girls to lose her
Virginity . Originally Lisa Whelchel was offered the storyline but she had become a
Born-again Christian in
1973 , and premarital sex conflicted with her morals. The relative implausibility of Natalie having sex first out of all the girls, coupled with the equally implausible idea that all the women, now in their twenties, were not sexually active, contributed to the episode being a ratings dud. The show was eventually canceled in the spring of
1988 , with Blair impulsively buying Eastland Academy and becoming the headmistress.
''The Facts of Life'' aired in the
United States on the
USA Network and later on
Nick At Nite and the
Hallmark Channel . For the last two years, however, ''The Facts of Life'' has not aired on any nationwide cable channel.
Despite ''Diff'rent Strokes''' huge popularity in the
United Kingdom , ''The Facts of Life'' never aired on terrestrial TV there. A few seasons (referred to as "series" in the UK) were aired on one of the UK
BSB satellite channels.
In
2001 ,
Columbia House released ten "Best of" volumes of the series on VHS (40 episodes in all). Since Sony, the company which now distributes the Columbia library, focuses more on DVDs, the tapes have been discontinued and can only be found on websites such as
Amazon and
EBay at higher prices than they were originally sold.
''The Facts of Life'' episodes (currently Seasons 1 and 2) can be viewed on
Comcast 's
Video On Demand service in the United States.
Seasons 1 and 2 are scheduled to be released on DVD in the United States on May 9, 2006.
- ''The Facts of Life Goes to Paris'' - A two-hour TV movie, aired September 25 , 1982 , in which Mrs. Garrett and the girls travel to France . It was added to the U.S. syndication package as four half-hour shows.
- ''The Facts of Life Down Under'' - A two-hour TV movie, aired February 15 , 1987 , in which the characters got involved in adventures in Australia . It also is syndicated as four half hour shows in the U.S. package.
- ''The Facts of Life Reunion'' - A two-hour reunion aired on ABC on November 18 , 2001 , reuniting Rae, Whelchel, Cohn, and Fields showing what their characters had done since the series' end. McKeon did not attend, due to scheduling conflicts with her television series '' The Division ''. Although, appropriately, she was mentioned in the movie as becoming a policewoman. Jo's husband and daughter did appear in the movie, however. The plot of the special revolved around the girl's adult conflicts: the main plot was that Natalie had two gorgeous men that she couldn't choose between, with sub-plots involving Blair suspecting her husband of infidelity, and Tootie regretting her career choice.
, ,
Rae ,
Whelchel ,
Fields , and
Cohn .]]
- On '' The Simpsons '', in the episode '' Bart Gets Famous '', Lisa Simpson imagines that she has cured all disease, ended war, and reunited the cast members of this show, "including long-time holdout Tootie."
- On '' The Golden Girls '', in the third season episode ''Strange Bedfellows'', Dorothy gives a sardonic answer to an obvious question by Rose, "No, Rose, I'm upset because they haven't rerun ''The Facts of Life Goes to Australia''."
- On '' Family Guy '', the show has been mentioned several times:
- ---Peter suggests a line of Transformers based on the characters
- ---Peter's campaign speech in running for Quahog school board is made up off the cuff of theme song lyrics, including this one. (''"You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have...my opening statement."'')
- ---In "SuperGriffins," the family commission a statue based on the first season episode in which Blair plagiarizes the Emily Dickinson poem ''Beauty Crowds Me 'Til I Die.'' To show the sculptors how he wants it to look, Peter changes into Mrs. Garrett's bosom, which then exclaims, in a Mrs. Garrett falsetto, "Girls, girls, ''girls!''"
- ---Mrs. Garrett and Blair are also referenced several times in the dialog of different episodes.
- ---In "Brian Goes Back to College," Brian watches an episode in which a dual-gendered if it's okay that his/her penis touched his/her vagina.
- During her ''I'm the One that I Want'' stand-up routine, Comedienne Margaret Cho mentions the show - ''"My hair was so feathered it looked like an ass... It was actually more feathered than Blair's on "Facts of Life".''
- On the NBC sitcom '' Scrubs '' there is a group of hospital administration workers that are a barbershop quartet, The Worthless Peons (played by The Blanks), who practice singing old television and cartoon theme songs late at night. One of the first songs they perform is the "Facts of Life" theme song.
- Comedy Central's '' Drawn Together '' parodies Blair and her cousin Geri in an episode entitled " The Other Cousin ". In the episode, Princess Clara is first embarrassed by, then overprotective of her mentally handicapped cousin. In a direct homage to ''The Facts of Life'', the cousin is named Bleh , a reference to how Geri tended to pronounce Blair's name.
