Recap Episode 1-1: "Rough Housing"

Ladies, gentlemen, and anyone else, meet the very first episode of The Facts of Life: Rough Housing, in which princess Blair accuses jock Cindy of being a lesbian (but without using the 'l' word, of course), and Cindy manages it not by being out and proud, but by finally becoming attracted to her first boy.

We begin with our establishing shot in the girls' dorm house thingy. All the girls are there busy with something or other, and we soon learn they are setting up for the Harvest Fair. Lest we forget that this show is a spin-off of "Diff'rent Strokes," Mr. Drummond and Willis come in to pick up Kimberly and make some dumb jokes about crime in the city. 

Enter Cindy in a football jersey, hair tucked into her New York Yankees baseball hat, carrying a pig, which I guess is involved in the harvest fair somehow. There's some dialogue between Cindy and Willis in which Willis comments that Cindy looks like a boy, just in case we missed what they were going for.

Blair is standing at the bottom of the stairs buffing her nails, and thus our conflict gets its initial set-up.

Don't let Blair tell you she's never touched a pig. 

Blair's first line ever of the series is, "Awww, your first date." We have some jokes about the pigs Blair dates before we're treated to the entrance of Special Guest Star Gary Coleman as Arnold. Arnold makes some comments about how he doesn't like girls, leading to Mr. Drummond informing Arnold:

"In a few years, you'll think of women as being a necessity."

Well, thank you for the heteronormative assumptions, Mr. D. 1979 is calling. Oh, that's where you are.

Anyway, a few jokes about how Arnold doesn't like girls because they kiss completes the set-up for Cindy just to hammer home the point that she is being portrayed as a tomboy, to say the least. Just in case we've missed it so far, y'know. While showing how tough she is by punching the pocket of her baseball glove, she says:

"You don't have to worry about me, Arnold. I don't like kissing either. I'm into SPORTS!"

Here is where Tootie gets her first line, and I feel I have to mention it for posterity, but it's apropos of nothing and totally offensive. Arnold says to Cindy, "You wouldn't be pulling my leg, would you?" And Tootie replies, "Why not? You could use a few inches." As you may recall, Gary Coleman was suffering from a disease that kept him short, and that's all I'm going to say about that. The Drummonds leave.

Our new scene has Cindy grabbing everyone by the wrist and pulling them into the middle of the room to practice tug-of-war, which I guess is part of the fair, because we need to set up Cindy touching Blair so Blair can say:

"Would you mind not pawing me? You are strange."

Mrs. Garrett says that it's Cindy's job to get everyone to practice, because she's captain of the games committee, because of course she is. But Blair, as the episodic representative of all things "feminine," tells us that the girls are interested in the dance, and the boys. Tip: when you watch this episode, take a shot every time a stereotypical gender roles are advanced and/or a heteronormative comment is made.

And, when Blair declares that "super-jock" wouldn't know about enjoying the dance and the boys, Cindy threatens to punch her, because that's how she deals with things, because she's not feminine, you see. It looks like the pilot wanted a tomboyish, physically aggressive foil for Blair, but (spoiler!) with its feminization of Cindy in this very episode, it kind of lost that. Enter Jo, but we still have a year before that happens.

Following this altercation, Mrs. Garrett utters her first "Girls, girls!" of the entire series! We also learn of Blair's first boy toy quest of the series, a boy named Greg Hockney. Bates Academy hasn't been named yet, and it doesn't get named in this episode, but we can presume that's where he and the other boys that are to be at the dance come from. Sue Ann agrees that Greg Hockney is a hottie, and then Tootie bursts in the front door announcing that the pig is loose on the bus, solely to get Mrs. Garrett out of the dorm to set up a conflict between the headmaster, Mr. Bradley, and a teacher, Mrs. Mahoney.

This solo shot of Tootie is probably the first one where we see clearly that she's on roller skates. It's well-known that they put Kim Fields on skates to make her look taller (she was NINE years old when this was being filmed), but they got in some hot water because "the African-American roller skater" was kind of a racist archetype in 1979. It only lasted the season. 

Anyway, Mr. Bradley and Mrs. Mahoney come in to set up a conflict that never materialized in the series, that of Mr. Bradley being a new and somewhat more liberal headmaster who transferred from a public school challenging the stick-up-your-butt rules that a throwback like Mrs. Mahoney supports. The exchange results in Mr. Bradley extending the girls' curfew that night from 10:00 to 11:50. 

We get Natalie's first line of the series, here. Mrs. Mahoney says she's not afraid to reveal her age and "hilariously" painfully chokes out that she's the ripe old age of 32, to which Natalie responds, "32? Wow, so that's what it looks like."

We also get the first line from a tiny little Molly Ringwald, as Molly. Mr. Bradley says something about "you girls," and Molly informs him:

"We're women! OK, Mr. Bradley?"

Molly's character was intended to be a progressive feminist, and we find out in a future episode that she's also an environmentalist. In a 2010 interview with Advocate magazine, she says that she was supposed to be the fourth girl when they culled the cast for the second season, but then she was replaced by Nancy McKeon. I can't imagine the rest of the series without Jo, so I think it's a good move, but could you imagine if Molly Ringwald's growth in the 80s was not as Claire and Andi and Samantha Baker, but rather as feminist icon "Molly" on The Facts of Life?

The plot continues with Mr. Bradley asking which Eastland girls plan to run for "the inter-school Harvest Queen" competition. Blair, natch, is running, considering that she's the reigning Harvest Queen for two years in a row. Molly promptly opts out, asserting that "no one is judging me on my cleavage!" Sue Ann surprises everyone by nominating Cindy, a move that Molly supports, arguing that the best athlete in school would be a great Harvest Queen. Mrs. Garrett also loves the idea. And the girls proceed to prepare Cindy to compete in the harvest queen competition, not by encouraging her to be exactly who she is, but by promptly setting out to change who she is. In this exchange we get a fat joke, a nerd joke, and a Donna Summer reference.

Ultimately, Cindy is grateful to Sue Ann for nominating her, and she says, "I love you! And gives her an enthusiastic hug. Which Blair promptly judges, because she's the resident face of femininity AND homophobia. She tells Cindy that she's strange for touching and hugging girls and saying "I love you." When Cindy protests that it didn't mean anything, Blair says, "I'll just bet." And thus the lesbian accusation is complete.

We cut to a scene between Mrs. Garrett and Mrs. Mahoney in furtherance of the abandoned conflict regarding Mr. Bradley's rule changes, interrupted by Arnold climbing into Mrs. Garrett's window wearing a dumb outfit that the girls apparently dressed him in (he describes it as "Elmer Fudd the farmer"). Sue Ann and Tootie burst into Mrs. Garrett's room, and after a not-at-all racially motivated exchange between Tootie and Arnold in which she says, "I ain't got time for you, child," we learn that Cindy has dropped out of the Harvest Queen race and has locked herself in her room. Mrs. Garrett quickly responds by delivering a cupcake and milk and sitting down with her for The Talk.

We learn that Cindy thinks the harvest queen should be a "real girl," that there's no such thing as "queens in jeans," and that "there's nothing about [her] that's feminine." "This dress isn't me," she says, as notes that Blair was right that she touches and hugs girls and doesn't care about boys. 

"Maybe Blair is right," she says. "Maybe I'm not normal." And we cut to commercial as Mrs. Garrett looks concerned yet sympathetic.

We return from commercial right back to where we left off in Cindy's room. When Cindy rhetorically asks how many girls just think about sports all the time, Mrs. Garrett helpfully cites Billie Jean King, Nadia Comaneci, Wilma Rudolph, and Dorothy Hamill, a list that I'm happy to say includes one lesbian (although she wasn't out yet (it would be two more years) and if she had been, I bet she wouldn't have been on Mrs. Garrett's list).

Mrs. Garrett goes on to assure Cindy that at some point, her "time clock" will start ticking and everything will be fine. She talks about how they used her as a bean pole at the farm in Wisconsin (the first time we learn about the farm), but eventually things worked out. She's talking about puberty here, but the other implication is clearly that once this all happens she'll like boys too. We're then treated to a mirror shot where we're meant to consider how very tomboyish she is, as she says:

"I'd make somebody a great brother."

Mrs. Garrett tells Cindy that it's perfectly OK to touch and hug girls because it just shows that she's a loving person. We learn that Cindy's dad did a terrible job telling Cindy about the actual facts of life ("Life is a big garden, and everyone is a flower, and when you love someone you have to put fertilizer on them." OK.). Mrs. Garrett encourages Cindy to just wait for her clock to start ticking, as we get the parallel, transformative mirror shot.

But, just to emphasize that she's not changing who she really is inside, Cindy informs us that if Blair ever says she doesn't look feminine again, she'll punch her out.

The next scene might be the most awesome and terrible scene in Facts of Life history, where Mrs. Garrett totally exceeds the bounds of appropriateness by accusing Blair of being a big whore and responding to her protests of "I'm not that kind of girl!" with "If you're advertising, you must be selling!"

Apparently, this is all Mrs. Garrett's way of getting Blair to understand that you can't judge a book by its cover, and the fact that Blair looks like a big whore but isn't should teach her that just because Cindy looks like a big dyke doesn't mean she is. OK, but I think there might have been ways to communicate this that were less slut-shaming and homophobic.

But Blair agrees to apologize to Cindy, and when she does, Cindy goes to shake Blair's hand and Blair pulls her in for a big HUG. Awwww, Blair has come around and everyone is happy.

In the denouement, we learn that Blair won by a landslide but Cindy was the first runner up! And her clock started ticking! And even though Greg Hockney is now Blair's boyfriend, he winked at Cindy! And now she likes boys and looks girly and all is well with the world.