You Take the Good: The Facts of Life and Its Vanishing Act

What was it about the ‘80s that made girls think about going to boarding school? Was The Girls of Canby Hall based on the popularity of The Facts of Life? Possibly. But although the show was a spin-off of Diff’rent Strokes and originally intended to show the adventures of Kimberly Drummond (Dana Plato) at her upstate girls’ boarding school, the decision was instead made to keep her on her original show. However, the Drummonds’ housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae), stayed despite assuring the Drummonds that she would be coming back.

But Mrs. Garrett became the housemother of a dorm at the Eastland School. Originally, there was a cast of seven girls. Nancy Olsen (Felice Schachter), Sue Ann Weaver (Julie Piekarski), Cindy Webster (Julie Anne Haddock) and Molly Parker (Molly Ringwald) would be dropped after the first season. They would be replaced with Jo Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon). The other core characters, who would be there for the whole series, were Blair Warner (Lisa Whelchel), Natalie Green (Mindy Cohn), and Dorothy “Tootie” Ramsey (Kim Fields). The girls would eventually graduate, and Mrs. Garrett would start a restaurant, and shenanigans. There would be other characters, including George (George Clooney), and Mrs. Garrett would leave and be replaced by her sister, Beverly Ann (Cloris Leachman).

I have to admit I haven’t watched the show in years. What’s more, I’d probably have to go to unpleasant lengths to do so. Only one season is available streaming. Probably more people have watched the Family Guy bit where Peter turns into Mrs. Garrett’s bosom recently than have actually watched The Facts of Life recently. And yet it was everywhere when I was a kid. On NBC, yes—it was even on in a block with Golden Girls for a while. But also syndication, that sadly lost icon of Gen-X childhood. And I think kids today might enjoy it.

Okay, so it was also one of those shows that’s definitely known for its Very Special Episodes. Tootie encountering sex workers. There are not one but two episodes dealing with suicide. Jo’s father turns out to be in prison. Blair’s grandfather had been in the Klan. Episodes dealt with drugs and shoplifting and all kinds of other things. And frankly, it makes sense. Future article will be about Very Special Episodes, I’m sure, but any show with a lot of teenage characters runs the risk of them, because teenagers are, I think, Very Special Episodes personified.

Which is why it’s so strange that it took until season nine for one of the characters to lose her virginity. Okay, so maybe not Tootie, who was supposed to be twelve in season one but was actually ten, and it’s not that unusual for women to be legal adults before having sex. But for not one of them to be a legal adult first? And the writers originally wanted it to be Blair, but Whelchel insisted that, because of her personal Christian faith, it couldn’t be her, and since she disapproved of the message it sent to young girls, she boycotted the episode entirely. Cohn volunteered, since her character was in a long-term relationship anyway and it made sense for it to be her character.

It’s a little improbable that all the characters stayed in one place for as long as they did, and the show knew it. Didn’t have them all go to the same college or something, just came up with a plan to keep them in the same small town without going to college. Sure, why not. And while they in theory made room in the show for Geri Tyler (Geri Jewell), she eventually left the show because, while she is the first actress with cerebral palsy to have a recurring role on a sitcom, all she seemed to appear in after a while was Very Special Episodes.

The show has a legacy, among Gen-X women if no one else. The number of us who can sing at least a few lines of the theme song with very little provocation—no few of my Gen-X readers are singing it now, and doubtless cursing me for getting it stuck in their heads. And there’s that George guy; I’m sure he went places. Molly from the first season, too. (Whelchel had actually been one of the ‘70s Mouseketeers and is the only one I can name off the top of my head, though her name when I do it is “Blair from The Facts of Life.”) Cohn had been discovered as a student at an actual boarding school, and she’s still acting. She was even the voice of Velma for a while. And there you have it.