THE OFFICIAL FACTS OF LIFE TIMELINE (Version 1)

I'm using the word "official" rather loosely; it's official only to the extent that, to my knowledge, I'm the only one who has gone through the trouble of putting together an official timeline, and it all comes from episode information. Remarkably, the timeline is incredibly consistent throughout the entire series. I find this impressive, especially for a show that comes from an era in which fans weren't picking apart every little inconsistency online after it aired. There might be a hiccup here or there (I will be looking for them as I watch episodes now), but there's nowhere where the girls have three junior years or suddenly go from being twelve to getting married or anything like that.

BUT it is not clear whether Season Four begins a new school year or not. If it does, the entire series starts a year earlier and it affects the girls' ages from seasons one to three. There are clues, which I will discuss, that I think support the theory that seasons three and four span one year.

With the excellent Facts of Life episode guide over at tv.com and my own memory, I've nailed down the girls' ages relative to each other and the world, plus remembered some highlights that I'm looking forward to enjoying when my Facts of Life: Complete Series DVD set arrives on Tuesday.


I'm sure there's some definitive detail that I will stumble upon at some point while viewing with this timeline in mind going forward. But for now we're pretty close.

So, without further ado, here is the official Facts of Life timeline.

Update: it is confirmed later in the series that seasons three and four indeed span two years, which means the girls are on the younger side for the first couple of years. Yikes.

SEASON ONE

Blair: 9th or 10th grade, Natalie: 7th or 8th grade, Tootie: 6th or 7th grade

It's a big age range, but having grades six through nine (i.e., junior-high age) living together makes more sense to me than having grades seven through ten live together. But I have the impression that in the writers' and producers' mind, Blair, and the other girls that were supposed to be about her age in the house (Sue Ann, Nancy, and Cindy), were on the older side. 

I think these girls are meant to be more like juniors or seniors in high school, but given the rest of the known timeline, they can't be older than sophomores.

It is known that Kim Fields was ten years old when she filmed this season (she wore roller skates to make her look taller), and a ten-year-old playing a girl who is supposed to be around twelve isn't that unreasonable. 

That could be the face of either a sixth or seventh grader. Whether that girl should be living with the girls in the first picture is a separate question. I am not familiar with the norms of Peekskill boarding schools in 1979. It also makes the fact that a record store sold Tootie and Natalie bongs even more creepy.

Though there are too few details to confirm for certain the ages of the other girls in Season One, using their relative ages, we can speculate that Sue Ann and Nancy are in ninth/tenth grade (Nancy's long-term, serious relationship with Roger is another clue supporting the girls being older); Cindy is in eighth/ninth grade (it is mentioned in "Running" that she is younger than Sue Ann, but she seems to be older than Natalie); and Molly is in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. I think she's probably Natalie's age, but she could be as young as Tootie.

SEASON TWO

Blair and Jo: 10th/11th grade, Natalie: 8th/9th grade, Tootie: 7th/8th grade

This is, of course, Jo's first season, and it begins as the girls are beginning a new semester. It seems insane for me to think about a seventh- and eighth-grader tagging along with two high school girls to sneak into a bar, and it also seems insane to me that a couple of sophomores are going to try to pass themselves off as legal. I know the drinking age was eighteen (this is explicitly said in the first episode), but sixteen trying to pass as eighteen seems more reasonable to me than fifteen trying to pass as eighteen. 

Additionally, in episode 8, Natalie plans to host a boy at her parents' place in New York City for a weekend. It's a little young either way, but way less icky coming from a ninth grader than an eighth grader. This season also features the Eastland/Bates mountain campout, which Tootie is expected to attend, and Tootie's trip to New York City where a pimp tries to recruit her. Eighth grade is still a little scarily young for these things, but it's better than seventh. We also have Natalie tutoring Blair in chemistry in episode 21. Whether it's more humiliating for an eighth grader to tutor a sophomore or a freshman to tutor a junior I'll leave up to you.

SEASON THREE

Blair and Jo: 11th/12th grade, Natalie: 9th/10th grade, Tootie: 8th/9th grade

This season again opens with a return from summer vacation, indicating the start of a new school year. The season opener is the episode in which the older girls, excluding Tootie, have a party with the wine Blair brought back from her summer in Europe. Which is more likely: Juniors willing to share with a freshman but not an eighth grader, or seniors willing to share with a sophomore but not a freshman?

Also, in episode 3, Blair's friend, who had dropped out the previous year to have a baby, comes and visits. She got pregnant, therefore, either as a sophomore or as a junior, by a senior boy (or a boy already in college). Isn't it strange how there seem to be those sharp divisions between ages that aren't that far apart? I'd love to open up discussion on this topic, if anyone wants to weigh in in the comments.

SEASON FOUR
Blair and Jo: 12th grade, Natalie: 10th grade, Tootie: 9th grade

The timeline solidifies here, because the end of this season features Jo and Blair's graduation from Eastland. The season begins with the school year in progress, so although it's possible that a summer has passed between the end of the last season and the beginning of this season, it's not necessary. The previous season could have taken place over only a month or two, with it ending and this season beginning toward the end of fall/beginning of winter. In episode 5, in which Blair develops a crush on a mentally challenged delivery boy, it is clearly the middle of winter. The actor who played the mentally challenged delivery boy, incidentally, would appear in an episode in Season Six as a completely different character, specifically, Blair's cocaine-addicted boyfriend.

Whatever happened to Thomas Byrd?

It does seem out of the timeline, however, at the beginning of the season when Jo is worried about losing her scholarship funds. It doesn't seem possible that one's scholarship could be cut in the middle of the year, particularly the middle of a student's senior year. It's nearly as implausible, though, for it to be cut once the senior year has already started, so I think this is just an outlier.

SEASON FIVE
Blair and Jo: freshmen in college, Natalie: 11th grade, Tootie: 10th grade

The season opens with the girls adjusting to the new school year, with Jo and Blair at Langley college and Tootie and Natalie hating their roommates at Eastland. We also have Mrs. Garrett - and the setting of the show - moving from Eastland School to Edna's Edibles in downtown Peekskill. Jo dates a rich boy and Blair pledges Gamma Gamma with Jami Gertz.

It seems a little odd that Blair, a freshman in college, is dating Cliff, a second- or third-year medical student, but it's not impossible, especially for the fabulous Blair Warner. He does propose to her in episode 20, though, which means he asks her to marry him after they've been dating for less than a year. Yeah, I'm judgy.

SEASON SIX
Blair and Jo: sophomores in college, Natalie: senior at Eastland, Tootie: 11th grade

The girls return from summer vacation in an awesome season opener that I can't wait to watch next week, so we know that we're in a new school year. Tootie's boyfriend Jeff is now in college, so he is a year younger than Blair and Jo, a year older than Natalie, and two years older than Tootie. It also means he worked  very hard as an illiterate high-school senior in Season Five, episode 5 so that he could catch up enough to be enrolled in college now. Jo has a relationship with one of her professors, and Mrs. Garrett enrolls in a Shakespeare class at Langley. Natalie graduates from Eastland but makes the decision not to go to college. Most of all, Jo begins wearing her hair down.

SEASON SEVEN
Blair and Jo: juniors in college, Natalie: 18 and she likes it, Tootie: senior at Eastland

The season begins with the girls returning from summer to find that Edna's Edibles has burned down. Tootie's graduation is discussed, and Tootie also learns to drive, which is not unreasonable for a 17 or 18-year-old who has grown up in a boarding school outside of a city.

Also, this is the first George Clooney season.

I had that haircut too

SEASON EIGHT

Blair and Jo: seniors in college, Natalie: second year like a rolling stone, Tootie: freshman in college

At the end of last season, Tootie wanted to join a traveling production rather than go to college, and when she didn't get cast, she wanted to move to New York and share a tiny rat-hole apartment with Natalie. They moved back in to Chateau Garrett and apparently Tootie went to college, since she's rushing a sorority in episode 13. Blair and Jo graduate from Langley at the end of the season.

But wait! Chateau Garrett becomes Chateau Stickle as Mrs. Garrett runs off with her safariing boyfriend-turned-husband, and her sister, Beverly Ann, moves in with the girls.

Episode 3 might be an outlier, in that the episode description refers to Beverly Ann being concerned about Tootie and "her new boyfriend." I don't remember this at all. As far as I recall, Tootie was with Jeff from the time she met him at Edna's Edibles in Season Five and the very end of the series.

Other highlights: Blair takes the LSAT! I remember this episode, but I haven't seen it since I had my own experience with that awful thing. I can't wait to watch the episode again. I recall that she decides she doesn't need to do well on the LSAT because she's a Warner, but then she learns the hard way that she can't buy her way into a T14. Jo stays up with her all night the night before the LSAT to prepare for it. Yeah, right. If I recall correctly, she got a 152. 

This season also features the silly-but-amusing Twilight Zone episode, and one of my very favorites, "The Little Chill," in which Nancy, Cindy, and Sue Ann come over to visit.

I wanted very badly to put a screen shot from 

"The Little Chill" here, but there just aren't 

any good ones online. Oh...when my complete 

series arrives on Tuesday...

SEASON NINE

Blair and Jo: just out of college, Natalie: year three of finding herself, Tootie: sophomore in college, I guess

Awww, this is the final season. It opens with Jo in Malibu, which I think happened because she went out there for a job. The job fell through and she was embarrassed to go back, I guess. I remember she tries to sleep on the beach and allows herself to get arrested so she can spend the night indoors in lockup. She ends up house sitting for Richard Moll from Night Court. Gee, that doesn't date the series at all.

But it ain't a series if it ain't in Peekskill, so eventually Jo goes back and gets a job at the community center and Blair interns at a law firm, apparently still planning to go to law school but taking a year off to try to get some experience to make up for that miserable LSAT score, which ends up not mattering because she puts her law school dreams on hold to buy Eastland as the series ends.

Also: Jo gets married, I guess to a dude she's been with for less than a year (his name is Rick and he just sort of shows up), and Natalie loses her virginity to her boyfriend Snake! 

Lisa Whelchel refused to appear in that episode because the pre-marital sex thing conflicted with her religious values. The rest of the cast, especially Mindy Cohn, were totally on board with a virginity-losing episode. I agree with them. It was about time.

And so the series ended, with Jo 22 or so and married to Rick, heading off to the Peace Corps, I believe. Blair, also 22 or so, has purchased and become the headmistress of Eastland. Pretty impressive. Natalie plans to move to New York to live with David Spade, Richard Grieco, and some other, less-famous people, and Tootie is scooting off somewhere with Jeff (who has graduated from college by now) to act. 

And you'll hear all about it, step by step, after my complete series DVDs arrive on Tuesday!