good show, but it should have had:

LESS ERIC ~ I found this character to be completely obnoxious. He openly berated the other members all the time and didn't even want to be in the IHP, and was the only one not on the quiz bowl team or whatever it's called because he thought it was too nerdy, and only joined when the team was in a jam and even then he needed some heavy duty convincing. He seemed to hate everyone and everything and I have no use for this character. I think they tried to pass him off as eye candy by having him try to act cool and wear these leather jackets, but I found him to be incredibly ugly and not cool at all. Not trying to be rude, but that's how I feel.

MORE JAWARHALAL ~ I was annoyed that they never did anything with this character, usually reducing him to a few lines per episode if that, and he never got a major story line. I'm sure he would have wanted more exposure, particularly in the Russia episodes because those were landmark episodes, but the storyline had him get sick and absent for the rest of that episode. figures.

MORE SIMONE ~ I love redheaded women, there's just something about them. She seemed particularly nice and caring. I've seen 55 episodes and she doesn't get that much screen time.

LESS TJ ~ Rude and obnoxious as hell.

LESS JANICE AND MARIA I'm guessing there was a good reason these characters were eventually dropped as they just didn't blend in very well. I especially didn't buy Janice's child genius act and thought she was incredibly immature and seemed to be evil. Maria was passed off as a genius, but she seemed really ditzy at times and I just don't think she belonged.

Those are very good points you made, and here are my opinions on them myself:

1. LESS ERIC - Agreed 100%!!!! Eric always acted like a tough guy to everyone in the class thinking he was a macho man, and he was all wrong to even try to date someone as sweet as Simone Foster (which is why the episode "First Date" ranks as one of the worst episodes ever in my book).

2. MORE JAWARHALAL - Agreed again! I don't know what the writers of the "Russians Are Coming" episode were thinking when they wrote him out of that episode (again, that's also one of the worst episodes I've ever seen). He deserved much more airtime than he actually got.

3. MORE SIMONE - I think anyone who's reading this right now would know that I would agree on this 10,000%!!!!! I really do! I always thought Simone Foster was the prettiest and sweetest girl in the class. She's still beautiful to me. Also, the episodes she had the biggest parts in (Ode To Simone, The Write Stuff, Don't Play With Matches, and especially First Date) were the ones that ended up torturing her the most (mainly thanks to that jerk Eric Mardian). She deserved much better treatment on this show.

4. LESS T.J. - Agreed yet again! 100% rude and obnoxious.

5. LESS JANICE AND MARIA - Agreed on Janice because she was just too young and looked seriously out-of-place in the class, however, I actually liked Maria. I thought she had a great sense of fashion, and she comes in a close second for favorite HOTC character (after Simone, of course).

Also, I'd like to mention one other character that never seemed to get much airtime: Ms. Meara. It always seemed like Dr. Samuels got more airtime than her when discussing school plans with Mr. Moore, which is why I liked the episode "For Better, For Worse" where she got to teach a class on marriage (this ranks in my top 5 favorite episodes for this reason).

ERIC: I was fine with his airtime. I just thought that he was annoying and enjoyed T.J.'s insulting him her debut on the show.

JAWR: He should have had more air time period. You could almost write all of his lines here on this board the three years he was on the show.

SIMONE: I thought she was just fine. She also proved to be one the popular characters from the show. I loved her crimped/curly red hair. The actress (during her time on HOTC) was hot property appearing on the New Match Game and talk shows like "Arsenio" at the time.

T.J.: She was a bit much from time to time. You just wanted to say "girl, shut-up!"

JANICE: I thought she fit in fine as the overachieving 10 year old. That's what the producers were going for.

MARIA: I dunno. It seemed like they did less and less with her. One good ep centered around her was ep 56 when she was Chuck's girlfriend. (Chuck, of course was played by Brad Pitt).

MS. MEARA: She got more airtime in the last season when Billy was on board as the new teacher. I saw a handful of eps during the last season. There was a lot of sexual tension between these two. I must say that I enjoyed the last season of the show.


I believe that Jaw was let go because he became set dressing and had nothing to do or say on screen. Maria was getting too bland, maybe? I dunno? Maybe they did not know what to do with her? Janice, I think, was getting too old and they could not go with the child prodigy concept.