The Facts of Life’s First Christmas Episode Was a Very Hoyay Holiday

[TMC]

https://popculturereferences.com/the...hoyay-holiday/

We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at a very Hoyay holiday in the first Facts of Life Christmas episode in 1983.



We continue our look at some notable 1980s Christmas episodes by looking at a very Hoyay holiday in the first Facts of Life Christmas episode in 1983.

The Facts of Life is one of the rare occasions when a dramatic Season 2 revamp of a sitcom actually turned things around, as the decision to turn the show from a story about Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae, being spun off from her Diff’rent Strokes role as the housekeeper for Mr. Drummond) being the housemother for a dormitory of an all-girls boarding school to a story about specifically four girls at the school who are forced by Garrett to room together (three returning cast members from Season 1 – Lisa Whelchel as Blair, Kim Fields as Tootie, and Mindi Cohn as Natalie, paired with street tough Jo Polniaczek, played wonderfully by Nancy McKeon) after they have a run in with the law.

With a paired down cast of four plus Mrs. Garrett, the show became a lot more focused and the change led to a long and popular run. With the two oldest students, Jo and Blair, graduating, the show changed formats by having Mrs. Garrett leave the school to open up her own bakery, with the girls working for her and living above the shop.

Two seasons later, with all four of the girls now graduated, the bakery burned down and the girls all opened a new gift shop alongside Mrs. Garrett. Then Mrs. Garrett left after Season 7, with her sister (played by Cloris Leachman) taking over her duties managing the store and being the mentor to the now young women. It lasted two seasons with this new format before ending after nine seasons.

The show’s first Christmas episode came in Season 5, during the Edna’s Edibles era (Mer actually asked me, “Mrs. Garrett sold weed?!”). This was the only good Christmas episode. Season 6 at least had the cast singing, but Season 7 and Season 9’s Christmas episodes were TERRIBLE.



Much of the appeal of the Facts of Life of was the relationship between Whelchel’s Blair and McKeon’s Jo. The rich girl Blair and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Jo, were polar opposites, and yet their friendship was the central driving plot of the series.

Looking back upon it now, so much of that tension on the show between the two seemed to honestly be romantic tension. This show was doing Hoyay well before any other show was doing Hoyay. They had MUCH more chemistry with each other than either of them ever had with their various boyfriends or husbands.

This season five Christmas episode is a perfect example of this. Jo is going to visit her mother for Christmas, but her mother has to go to Miami for the holiday because the restaurant that she’s working at has temporarily closed. Blair wants to give Jo the money to buy a ticket to go to Miami, but she knows that Jo would never accept charity from her, so instead, she and Tootie invent a fake raffle that Jo is meant to win with the winning prize being a ticket to Miami (Blair masterfully manipulates Jo into buying a ticket by making a big show of how charitable SHE is by buying ten).

Jo, of course, eventually sees through the lie and insists on not accepting the ticket. There is so much romantic tension in Blair’s argument with Jo to just let her buy her the ticket. In the end, Joe actually spends Christmas in Peekskill with Mrs. Garrett because she refuses to accept charity. It’s an interesting, almost bittersweet take on the holiday, where there is no traditional treacly ending, like Jo and her mother somehow getting to spend Christmas together. And Jo IS sad about not spending Christmas with her mom.

The only Christmas twist is that Blair returns to Peekskill because she doesn’t want to spend Christmas in Vale with her rich friends (her parent are in two different countries), she wants to spend the holiday with Mrs. Garrett and the love of her life….er…I mean, her best friend, Jo.

Look at the scene and tell me it isn’t LADEN with romantic tension!