"The New Girl" - The Facts of Life

 Jumping a season from my previous review of the season, I go to the second season premiere of The Facts of Life. Unlike the first season, the series now focuses on only four young girls at the Eastland School as opposed to the large ensemble of yesteryear, three of which are returning cast members, alongside Mrs. Edna Garrett.

Starting off the season, we once again find ourselves with exposition, with Tootie (Kim Fields) and Natalie (Mindy Cohn) explaining to each other and Blair that Mrs. Garrett got a new job as the school dietitian, as opposed to being a housemother.

Surprisingly, we also see Arnold Jackson (the late Gary Coleman) return from Diff'rent Strokes in one of the final scenes the two shows crossover.

Minutes into the show, we see the motorcycle driving Jo Polniaczek (Nancy McKeon) enter, moving in from The Bronx, New York as Blair's latest foil, transferring from public education to start a new life. While they do not necessarily see eye to eye, they at least make the effort to be friendly and embrace their new assignment as roommates in Eastland housing.

From her initial few scenes, Jo proves to a misunderstood bad influence, taking the Eastland girls to The Chugalug Bar underage after hotwiring Mrs. Garrett's van. While Jo and Blair make it to the bar, they almost immediately end up in legal trouble, being caught with their fake identifications by an uncover police officer. With racking offenses, Mrs. Garrett arrives just as the four students are arrested in Peekskill, leading to the first part's cliffhanger conclusion.

Entering the second part, we see the girls in a jail holding cell. While the girls are at odds with each other, they stick up for each other to the other rough-acting inmate until being sprung out by Mrs. Garrett. This is when she explains that all four girls are sentenced to six months' probation alongside being tasked to be in the protective custody of Mrs. Garrett, living across the hall from her while they ask work in the cafeteria helping the dietitian or else, they face expulsion from the school.

Nearing the end of the episode, we see the now-former Eastland girls Nancy (Felice Schachter), See Ann (Julie Piekarski), and Cindy (Julie Anne Haddock), who have since been booted to recurring roles in the season before leaving all-together. This also includes Molly (Molly Ringwald), who makes a cameo in the episode as her final appearance in the series.

While I may have seen scenes of this two-part episode before, especially given most of this provides many of the theme song scenes, this may actually be the first time I have ever seen these episodes in its entirety.

Being familiar with the later seasons, while I was aware that the girls shared residence with Mrs. Garrett, I was never aware of how exactly that came to be. Now knowing, I believe that they handled the major overhaul between the first two seasons rather well and in an organic way. While I can't speak to the entire first season, I trust that the characters of Blair, Natalie, and Tootie remained true to their existing characterizations throughout the episode, with them simply being enhanced with the creation of the Jo character.

By including the part about probation for the girls, it follows the steps of fellow Embassy Television sitcoms (many, though not this one, developed by founder Norman Lear) by having real-world consequences to your actions, as opposed to more traditional ones that disappear by the close of the episode. This, in-part makes the series much more realistic and not as likely to promote such devious behavior by the audience thanks to being influenced by the episode.

One plot hole I noticed, though, was that Edna Garrett seemed to leave Arnold in her over-the-cafeteria apartment alone potentially unsupervised at the end of the first episode, nowhere to be found or even mentioned by the second. While this can be easily explained by the time jump that occurred between scenes, I find it unusual given he was emphasized as being there several times throughout the first episode.

Furthermore, it was mentioned that the Eastland headmaster spoke with police to have the girls released from custody, though Steven Bradley (John Lawlor) is no longer in the series by this point, begging the question of whether the character was still in this role by this point.

Nevertheless, this is a great episode that helped set up the remainder of the series, at least the next couple, allowing for the Eastland School for Girls setting to remain, but explain the consequential cast change that had to occur to save the show.

Now having seen this episode, it also makes me appreciate the final seasons of the show more, though that's a story for another time.