The very first retooling of The Facts of Life

[RetroGuy2000]

We all know The Facts of Life was retooled over and over: there was the "Edna's Edibles" retooling (season five), the "Over Our Heads" retooling (season seven), the post-"Over Our Heads" year (season nine), and of course the retooling which ripped the cast in half like a black and white photo: the Cast Purge between seasons one and two: the jarring departure of half of The Facts of Life cast, when Nancy, Sue Ann, Cindy, Molly, and Mr. Bradley were shown the door.

But did you know that there was an even earlier retooling? According to Kim Fields, there was!

According to Kim's book, Blessed Life, which you can get at your local bookstore, ISBN 978-1-4789-4754-7, the show was retooled before the halfway mark in season one. The network was worried that the show would not be successful, and kept making changes. According to Kim, "ratings were disappointing, and after only four episodes, the show went on a three-month break so the network could rework it."

Network executives hadn't bothered to promote the show (careful observers can see that cast photos promoting the show weren't even taken until after these episodes had already aired), but these same executives were now apoplectic over the show's poor ratings. The decision was made to trim down the large cast. This was only the first of many cast trimmings or character discontinuations.

During this time, Jenny O'Hara, who had played Miss Mahoney, was let go. The writers didn't even explain what had happened to the character, which became a typical thing on this show: the character was just gone, with no explanation, and no further mention.

It's also my belief that this is when Felice (Nancy) went from having a role on the show to having almost no role. Julie Anne (Cindy) also went from having a role to having a much smaller part (she would get only one more episode in which to shine: "Running", which she shared with Julie Pie). After these first four episodes, Felice never had more than (I believe) ten lines per episode.* Sometimes she only had five lines. In some scenes, she became living wallpaper: there with the others, but with no lines.

The writers then focused more on Blair, Tootie, Sue Ann, Natalie, and Molly, roughly in that order. A TV promo for FOL from the Spring 1980 era mentions "Blair, Tootie, Natalie and Molly". Julie Pie (Sue Ann) was picked to be on Hollywood Squares with Charlotte Rae.

Further changes would be made at the end of the season, and the producers telegraphed their intentions to reduce the cast further when they wrote into the final episode of the season that the character of Nancy had not made it into "The Group"; the final scene of the first season showed Charlotte hugging just four girls. The show would continually be retooled throughout its years on NBC, but First Season viewers would witness two cast purges within a single season.


*With the exceptions of second season episode "Gossip", more than a year later, and "The Little Chill" in season eight.

[Lorimar Television]

Living wall paper would probably be a good term to describe Judy Winslow. Mainly in seasons 3 and 4

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by Lorimar Television

Living wall paper would probably be a good term to describe Judy Winslow. Mainly in seasons 3 and 4

Definitely: there, but few or no lines. In both cases, I believe the producers were signaling their intentions to do nothing with those characters.

In Felice's case, she had played an important part in the backdoor pilot, "The Girls' School", and had had quite a few lines in "IQ" and "Like Mother, Like Daughter". But she'd never again have center stage after those episodes. Someone at the network, I suspect, didn't like her, leading to what Mindy called the "bum deal". Frantic about "too many girls", Felice's role was quickly trimmed to a minimal role.

In the case of little Judy Winslow, the producers of that series, Miller-Boyett Productions, had no qualms with writing out characters, and had been doing so since the 1970s.

[RetroGuy2000]

The last scene of the first season shows what I think the producers planned for season two:

['80sSitcoms]

Yup, perfect with their expressions, lol. Who knows? It could very well be.

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[RetroGuy2000]

Haha! ...But sad. All because Brandon Tartikoff saw a commercial.

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

Haha! ...But sad. All because Brandon Tartikoff saw a commercial.

True, just seeing a TV commercial...who knew?

While I don't say NM "saved" the show, the Jo character did end up working out very well. Who knows, if they hadn't trimmed down the cast, maybe the show wouldn't have lasted as long? (not taking into account, of course, the fact that they moved the show in season 2 to where it should have been in the first place!)

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

True, just seeing a TV commercial...who knew?

While I don't say NM "saved" the show, the Jo character did end up working out very well. Who knows, if they hadn't trimmed down the cast, maybe the show wouldn't have lasted as long? (not taking into account, of course, the fact that they moved the show in season 2 to where it should have been in the first place!)

Oh, I think the character of Jo struck a chord with audiences: all the people who felt like outcasts had someone to root in, with Jo. But I agree that Nancy McKeon didn't singlehandedly save the show: NBC scheduled FOL on a better night (immediately following DS, its parent series); they got better writers; they got female writers; NBC invested in nearly a full season instead of spreading 13 episodes out over a full year; they got rid of the short shorts.

But this idea that Nancy M somehow saved the show is fiction, and we know this because ratings immediately improved in FOL's new timeslot, before audiences had even seen much of Jo.

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

NBC invested in nearly a full season instead of spreading 13 episodes out over a full year

I was surprised years ago to discover there are only 16 episodes in season 2, just 3 more than in season 1. Maybe they ordered more but Tiamat--I mean, Warren Little"facts"--thought there were "too many episodes".

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[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

I was surprised years ago to discover there are only 16 episodes in season 2, just 3 more than in season 1. Maybe they ordered more but Tiamat--I mean, Warren Little"facts"--thought there were "too many episodes".

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Yeah, it's clear NBC was trying to go the cheap route, but also I suspect the writers' strike of 1980 also caused fewer episodes to be produced: FOL didn't debut until November... and didn't start taping until October, so no new episodes debuted in September or October of 1980.

['80sSitcoms]

Oh that's right, I forgot that it got such a late start.

And in this "photo", that's vintage Tiamat flame

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[RetroGuy2000]

Looks like he's talking about Molly Ringwald... Wonder what gets him so angry when talking about her.

Maybe he saw her flip him off in The Breakfast Club?

['80sSitcoms]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

Looks like he's talking about Molly Ringwald... Wonder what gets him so angry when talking about her.

Maybe he saw her flip him off in The Breakfast Club?

Haha, who knows?

[TMC]

Originally Posted by '80sSitcoms

Yup, perfect with their expressions, lol. Who knows? It could very well be.

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They pretty much created Jo by morphing tomboy Cindy and Blair foil Sue Anne into a singular character.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by TMC

They pretty much created Jo by morphing tomboy Cindy and Blair foil Sue Anne into a singular character.

I somewhat agree, and also at the same time disagree.

Yes, they took the tomboy aspect of Cindy's character and welded it onto Sue Ann's opposite-of-Manhattan-socialite character to come up with FrankenJo. They might have even added pieces of Nancy's scholarship-student character.

Yet there were also distinctive parts of Cindy, Sue Ann, and Nancy that were left on the scripting room floor. For example, we never again had a frank conservative/liberal discussion of divorce or sex or family values, because without Sue Ann, there was no one to bring those issues up. And Sue Ann wasn't on screen enough for those issues to be tackled. Jo's parents were already divorced, so she couldn't be an advocate for couples staying married, unlike Sue Ann. Jo and Eddie almost had sex in the most dirty motel room I've ever seen (the bedspread had tire marks on it), so Jo couldn't realistically be an advocate for abstinence. With Sue Ann fading away from the show, The Facts of Life lost a powerful conservative voice that could have cautioned viewers about some of the issues they tackled.

Similarly, with Cindy being written out, The Facts of Life lost the gymnast character during an era when female athletes were rarely represented on television. We hear, anecdotally, that Jo plays hockey, but we never see it. Cindy, on the other hand, was shown running, jump-roping, and doing back-flips on camera. The physicality of the tomboy role was lost with the loss of Cindy, and in turn a powerful role-model for young kids was snuffed out.

Finally, we lost Nancy, who we know far less about than most of the other girls. Yet even the loss of Nancy had an impact on the show, which we can see in "Gossip": it would be difficult for the series to have love triangles post-season one, as the Core Four girls couldn't be believably best friends while still stealing each other's boyfriends. Having a jealous Nancy on the show provided for fireworks that we wouldn't see once Nancy (and Roger) exited stage left.


Of course, the writers took pieces of Molly and used them in Tootie and Natalie, too: Tootie became the photography buff, a characteristic inherited directly from Molly, and Natalie became fascinated by journalism, a field in which Molly was previously interested. Tootie's interest in acting seems to have been spliced over from Nancy.

The loss of the Lost Girls had some major consequences on the series, not just with the characters being gone, but also the types of stories that could be told after they left the show. Worst of all, nearly every scene would have to be shot in the cafeteria, as scenes in the school outside the cafeteria would naturally need to show the Core Four interacting with other students, while network executives were having fits about showing more than four characters at the same time, in a show supposedly set at a girls' school, where there would normally be dozens of characters.

Restricting the scenes to the cafeteria only made the show feel somehow smaller, more claustrophobic, as the writers had to come up with pretexts for every event to take place in the cafeteria: Jo's parents argue in the cafeteria instead of in a private area, the girls learn self-defense training in the cafeteria instead of in a gym, and all discussions of book banning happen... in the cafeteria. Selling cosmetics? Let's do it in the cafeteria. School dance? Cafeteria. Famous photographer visiting? Cafeteria. Comedian appearing? Cafeteria, cafeteria, cafeteria.