RetroGuy2000
11-25-2018, 01:38 AM
In the backdoor pilot of the show, there are many girls who live at the Eastland dorm. However, by the time FOL truly begins, it seems as though the dorm only has seven students, as the other girls seen in the pilot are all gone.
However, in "Rough Housing" and "Like Mother, Like Daughter", we're given some small hints that there actually are other girls in that Eastland dorm: In "Rough Housing", we see two "new" girls go down the stairs, and in "Like Mother, Like Daughter", we're given the name of one girl who apparently lives in the dorm with Blair, Sue Ann, Molly, Cindy, Nancy, Tootie, and Natalie: Nina Branch.
As we've discussed in other threads, Nancy mentions Nina Branch. Nina does seem to live with the other girls because why else is her father hanging out in that dorm all during that episode? Blair, who should have been acquainted with Nina, because her father is an old friend of her mother's, never interacts with Nina, only her father.
This got me to thinking about why the producers never showed Nina (unless one of the girls we briefly see in "Rough Housing" is meant to be her). After all, we hear about Tumpy, and then later meet her, in "Dope". In that episode, we also meet Emily (First Season Emily, anyway) and Gail (Gail is the girl on the bed in Tumpy's room), so it's clear the writers wanted to provide the fictional continuity of other girls at Eastland.
What the writers should have done, though, is they should have named Emily "Nina". This would have done a number of things, including providing continuity between episodes, establishing a lasting connection between Nina and Blair (and explaining how Blair got into "The Group"), as well as connecting a name to a face. It would also have explained why we never hear of Nina after the first season: she was expelled for smoking pot.
It also would have provided a little more emotional impact: a student we've actually heard of before was expelled from Eastland, rather than a student we'd never heard of before, and never would again.
However, in "Rough Housing" and "Like Mother, Like Daughter", we're given some small hints that there actually are other girls in that Eastland dorm: In "Rough Housing", we see two "new" girls go down the stairs, and in "Like Mother, Like Daughter", we're given the name of one girl who apparently lives in the dorm with Blair, Sue Ann, Molly, Cindy, Nancy, Tootie, and Natalie: Nina Branch.
As we've discussed in other threads, Nancy mentions Nina Branch. Nina does seem to live with the other girls because why else is her father hanging out in that dorm all during that episode? Blair, who should have been acquainted with Nina, because her father is an old friend of her mother's, never interacts with Nina, only her father.
This got me to thinking about why the producers never showed Nina (unless one of the girls we briefly see in "Rough Housing" is meant to be her). After all, we hear about Tumpy, and then later meet her, in "Dope". In that episode, we also meet Emily (First Season Emily, anyway) and Gail (Gail is the girl on the bed in Tumpy's room), so it's clear the writers wanted to provide the fictional continuity of other girls at Eastland.
What the writers should have done, though, is they should have named Emily "Nina". This would have done a number of things, including providing continuity between episodes, establishing a lasting connection between Nina and Blair (and explaining how Blair got into "The Group"), as well as connecting a name to a face. It would also have explained why we never hear of Nina after the first season: she was expelled for smoking pot.
It also would have provided a little more emotional impact: a student we've actually heard of before was expelled from Eastland, rather than a student we'd never heard of before, and never would again.