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“You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have… the facts of life, the facts of life.”
If you’re a child of the 1980s, those words, the first lines in a theme song co-written by Alan Thicke, immediately bring you back to Eastland School, Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae), and the boarding-school girls of NBC’s The Facts of Life. The Facts of Life didn’t reinvent the sitcom, but it struck a chord, running for nine years to become NBC’s longest-running sitcom at the time. What worked for the series was the charisma and chemistry of the cast, a winning formula that took root with the start of its second season, which makes the decision for the series finale of The Facts of Life not to include those core characters that defined the show all the more questionable. But there is a reason for it, one that would have brought the series full circle.
‘The Facts of Life’ Started as a Hail Mary for NBC
The Facts of Life premiered on August 24, 1979, a Hail Mary for a network that had only one series ranked in the Top 20, the TV classic Little House on the Prairie. One of the network’s few successes was the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, so NBC president and CEO Fred Silverman, hoping to bank off of its popularity, greenlit a spinoff before the first season was even over. The first season finale of Diff’rent Strokes served as the pilot for The Facts of Life, with housekeeper Edna Garrett helping Kimberly (Dana Plato) sew costumes for a play at East Lake School for Girls (“Eastland” for the series), where Kimberly was a student. The dorm housemother of the boarding school had recently quit, and Mrs. Garrett is asked if she’d like the position, and she accepts.
It was a safe bet. Garrett was a character whose absence wouldn’t negatively affect Diff’rent Strokes but allowed for guest appearances and a way back should the new series fail. It worked, with The Facts of Life becoming an instant success. Initially, seven girls were in Garrett’s care, including Molly Ringwald, but it was hard to create stories for them all. So, the decision to pare down the cast for Season 2 was made. Four girls were let go, leaving three: snooty rich girl Blair (Lisa Whelchel), full-figured Natalie (Mindy Cohn), and Tootie (Kim Fields), the young Black girl with a penchant for roller skating. The addition of a new character, the smart and rebellious Jo (Nancy McKeon), which Silverman recalls was to provide a “contrast to the other girls in attitude,” was another wise move. By narrowing down the number of characters, the series was given a focus, and Garrett and the core four would be the ones associated with the show from there on.
‘The Facts of Life’s Ending is “The Beginning of the Beginning”
Like its parent series, The Facts of Life had “special episodes,” life lessons about drinking, drugs, sex, eating disorders, and the like, but regardless of the narrative, the interplay between the five made the series special. Moves that traditionally have sunk other series, like character replacements, had little impact on the show’s success. For instance, when Jo and Blair graduated, Garrett opened “Edna’s Edibles,” which gave the four girls a reason to live and work together. When the shop burned down (shades of The Big Bang Theory‘s comic store), it was rebuilt as a gift shop. When Rae left the show, Cloris Leachman was brought in as Garrett’s sister. Other characters came in, including George Clooney‘s George Burnett, but the focus always remained on the core four.
A tenth season was planned, but the cast had their fill, and so the series would end after its ninth season (per Forbes). By this time, Natalie had moved to New York, Jo was married, and Tootie was going to acting school in London. The core four was going down to one, Blair, but the focus of the first part of the two-part finale wasn’t on them saying goodbye. Instead, it became a set-up for a new series, coming full circle with its own beginnings. “The Beginning of the End” saw Blair discover that Eastland is in financial trouble, so she uses her trust fund to save the school, becoming its administrator. The school would have become co-ed, and the episode introduced characters played by Mayim Bialik, Juliette Lewis, and Seth Green as new students. “The Beginning is the Beginning” gave the core four a proper sendoff, but the proposed new series did not move forward.
What the series finale did do is bring the narrative arc of its most interesting character to a satisfying conclusion. Blair began the series as the proverbial rich kid who looked at her peers as inferiors. Over the course of the series, she grows into a fully developed, caring young woman and is given the chance to change lives just as hers was changed by her friends and Garrett. As a result, The Facts of Life ended the only way it could, with the promise of new beginnings.
The Facts of Life
- Release Date
- August 24, 1979
- Cast
- Cloris Leachman , Kim Fields , Mindy Cohn , Nancy McKeon , Mackenzie Astin
- Main Genre
- Comedy
- Seasons
- 9
The Facts of Life is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
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