Recap episode 8-6 "The Little Chill" or Reunions with love...or not

Reunion. Two weeks ago, the Boulder Rugby Football Club held its 50th anniversary reunion celebration. It was a beautiful time, and I left with my legs bruised and my heart full.

In the eighth season of Facts, the girls have a reunion with most of their old season one friends and castmates.

We open to Tootie and Natalie hanging a sign to welcome Sue Ann, Cindy, and Nancy, series regulars back in season one, to Peekskill. Young Andy enthuses that he can't believe he's going to meet cover-girl Cindy Baker. You'll recall that Cindy was very much a tomboy back in the day, so score yet another one for the Facts writers thumbing their noses at stereotypes.

Recap Episode 1-11 "Running" or My first request!

It turns out that third year of law school is not the picnic everyone promised. That’s at least in part because I made bad choices, but that’s neither here nor there, since the practical reality is that I haven’t been able to keep up with this blog. And also I have no actual Internet right now, thanks to shitty Comcast, so I have to use my phone as a hotspot. But having acquired a new viewer in RJ Guy, and having received a request for more season one recaps, particularly “Running,” I’m happy to oblige! I promised, and I keep my promises! I feel like there should have been a Facts of Life episode about keeping promises, but I can't recall one. It's sort of alluded to in the Jermaine Jackson episode, but that's more about learning that stars are not your friends. Anyway, on with the recap!

After some opening filler involving a hilarious camera that dates the show, a Blair photo shoot that they totally should have showed during the reunion show for the Survivor where Lisa Whelchel finished second, and some inane dialogue from Tootie and Natalie that makes you wonder why they were kept for the second season, we get to the meat of the episode. Mr. Bradley appears wielding the trophy for the state championships in the mile. Apparently if Eastland wins the mile one more time, they get permanent possession of the trophy. Mr. Bradley is very attached to this trophy, it seems, and he’s counting on Sue Ann to once again bring home the gold. We learn that she’s won it two years in a row, which means she had to have won it as a freshman, which will be clear when I get around to doing that timeline I’ve been promising.

However, I don’t recall Sue Ann ever being a track star before. In fact, this revelation seems inconsistent with the “Dieting” episode, where she worries that she needs to lose weight fast. Now, I understand that being an athlete doesn’t make a girl immune from body dysmorphia, but I feel like this is an understanding that would not have been common in 1979. Also, if she was as much of a running prodigy as the previous paragraph describes, and she suddenly stopped eating, wouldn’t her track performance have been affected, and someone would have noticed before she fainted? Am I asking too much from season one?

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.