During a recent conversation with my wife, I called and still contend, that the dormitory run by Ms. Garret in The Facts of Life was a half-way house for young girls. My wife was incredulous, but I think it is obvious. This is why.
In the dormitory run by Ms. Garret, you had four young women, all from different backgrounds, living under the same roof with a single parent figure. One of the young women was a rich socialite. Another young lady was a motorcycle riding, leather clad badass. The third was a spunky African American loud mouth from the tough side of middle-class America. Â The final young lady was Natalie. The four had NOTHING in common. NOTHING! Except uteruses of which they had 3 between them which they swapped out on date night.
Hahahha… not really. After Season 1 Episode 2 their cycles would be synced so swapping uteruses was impractical Plus it was the 80’s and Uterine Swapping Technology had not been invented by Nichole Richie and Paris Hilton.
So why were these ladies living together? They were forced to live there. It was a half-way house. Blair was obviously a coke head. Jo beat a man to death with his own helmet, but he totally deserved it. Tuttie dealt weed. She didn’t use, she was way too smart for that, but she did invent vaping which increased her penetration into the college markets. Finally Natalie was a computer hacker in the vein of Matthew Broderick’s character in War Games. Either that or she ate her younger brother after being left alone with the tyke for three hours because the Twinkies were on a shelf higher than she could reach. Or something. Regardless they all ended up at Ms. Garrets for reprogramming rehabilitation.
Ms. Garret was an ex-Madam. She was caught, tried, and convicted, but since she had the goods on several highly-placed political figures, her time was reduced to community service. Twenty-three years of community service. Who better than an ex-Madam to “manage” four rambunctious teen girls with various issues? She knew how to keep a B. in line after all.
Now of course I’m sure that the original TV show didn’t support much of this, but I assume that was simply the network execs bowing down to the most conservative factions of our society. In this day and age however, I think my version of the show rocks socks. The New Facts of Life should be a Showtime or HBO production. The show would be like HBO’s Girls … but good. And it would have characters that are smarter than a four pound bag of bricks. You know, real girls who you can root for. Girls you don’t hope get hit by a random bus. Or maybe The New Facts of Life could be done like Game of Thrones. Ms Garret could be the Queen Regent, and each of the girls could be from different Houses vying for favor. Or maybe the show could have a Sucker Punch like ending where you find out that the entire show is Blair’s mental retreat into her own mind where she’s a rich socialite helping her friends overcome normal teenage problems while in reality she is a poor teenage runaway prostitute on Death Row for killing abusive johns.
If Hollywood is interested in any of my ideas, they are feel free to use them. Just mention me in the credits and pay to get me to the set a few times. I’ll take the good or the bad. Maybe I’ll take ’em both, and then I’ll have … umm … something. I’ll have something. Wouldn’t you know I’d forget what I was going to say. Now that is a fact of life!
© 2014, Joe Little. All rights reserved.