Talk:The Facts of Life (TV series)

Controversy of first episode
I distinctly remember an eruption of controversy over the subject matter of the first episode aired of this show. Specifically, tomboy Cindy was questioning her sexuality after Blair teased her and called her "strange" for dressing like a boy, playing sports and hugging other girls all the time. There was a big hullabulloo because Mrs. Garrett encouraged her to decide for herself, but reinforced the fact that all of these things do not add up to lesbianism. Though of course "gay," "lesbian" and the like were never actually said - they kept referring to it as being "strange" or "different." And it wasn't just tomboy-ism, because Blair put emphasis on how Cindy acted towards other girls, always touching and hugging them. Is this worthy of a mention in the article? Pacian 17:42, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Only if you manage to find a reliable source. -82.81.228.66 (talk) 16:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Facts of Life VS Facts of Reproduction
I have started a page "Facts of Reproduction". Will the authors who created the page about the TV show concede that the Facts of Reproduction has more gravitas than the TV show and that it should take over the "Facts of Life" entry? For now, I have simply used a disambiguation page.
 * This comment was entered into the talk page without differentiating itself in topic from the preceding comment; a header was added. The comment was not signed.

Lisa Whelchel's second birth
I am not going to intrude on my sleeping son to obtain it, but I know with certainty that I have read interviews of Lisa Whelchel from the early 1980s, long before Mindy Cohn's character crossed the line, in which Lisa states that she became a born-again Christian at the age of 12. This is not far-fetched. First, girls mature sooner than boys. Second, she grew up in a family of strong Christian example. In 2005, at the age of 42, she was quoted as saying she's spent almost 30 years speaking up for her Christian beliefs. At the age of 12, it would not be unusual for a girl to perceive her future and a need for salvation to secure her eternal destiny. Children as young as 8, though rare, have been known to give their lives to Christ.

Also, in the Jewish faith, age 12 is the age of adulthood for the bar mitzvah for boys and the equivalent for girls. Islam, I believe, also regards a 12-year-old as of the proper age for adult responsibilities and expectations.

Actually, age 13 is the Jewish "adult" age.Dshibshm (talk) 22:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I only regret that I could not have known what Lisa knew and also given myself to Christ when I was a teenager (as a boy, likely at age 15 or 16). After years of not understanding what it meant to my favourite actress, I finally became born-again myself at age 34 (when Lisa was 30 and long-since married). GBC 04:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

My little son is awake, and I fetched my fan file on Lisa Whelchel. The US magazine of January 16, 1984, proves me wrong. Lisa did not become born again at age 12. She became born again at age 10 !!! She joined the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Los Angeles in 1979, at age 16. GBC 05:28, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

"Dietitian"
Merriam-Webster says that the dominant spelling for this word is "dietitian," while "dietician" is a variant. I reverted the spelling change on those grounds. Mike H (Talking is hot) 19:10, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Episode guide needed!
Shouldn't there be an episode guide here as well?--68.192.186.32 17:35, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Spinoffs?
How many near and/or proposed spinoffs did this show have? WAVY 10 12:57, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Large trivia section?
There are only two items in the Trivia section, so any comments or tags about how large it is should be removed. 207.69.139.133 00:30, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not a matter of size, per se, but rather that there is one at all. The lists in the trivia and the pop culture sections should be worked into the article as prose as per the Embedded list manual of style. It's easier to get information from an organized and coherent paragraph than it is from unordered lists. &mdash;Elipongo (Talk|contribs) 21:00, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Jo's Cousin Similarity
I just noticed something today as I was looking at the "Proposed Spinoff" section:


 * "Jo's Cousin" - Another third season episode. In this episode, Jo visits her family in the Bronx, and we meet her cousin, a fourteen year old girl going through adolescence in a family full of men.

What I noticed was that the premise sounds similar to Blossom, an early '90s NBC sitcom. (Ironically, Mayim Bialik was a student in another would-be spinoff that never materialized; based in part on FOL's series finale). WAVY 10 15:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

So-Called Continuity Error
"Oddly enough, the entire reunion was actually a continuity error, as the plot of the episode was that Jo did not know the returning girls, and felt left out of the reunion.   However, the girls actually had appeared in quite a few episodes with Jo during the second and third seasons."

I took these two sentences out because I have heard this argument on YouTube and I just don't think it's accurate. Jo never bonds with the lost girls of Eastland. She appears in three or four of the same episodes as the lost girls, but she rarely talks or interacts with them. Molly hangs out with Natalie or Tootie a bit, Nancy and Blair are eager to attend a dance together... but it's clear from those few episodes that Jo has very little interaction with the first-season Eastland girls. They are clearly just acquaintances, they are never friends. In one episode where they do appear together, the girls talk excitedly around a table as the show concludes and credits start to pop up, and you can see the Sue Ann character talking with the other three girls and blatantly ignoring Jo, who tries to join in the gaggle to no avail. The moment almost foreshadows this reunion episode. "You guys remember Jo, right? This is Nancy, Sue Ann and Cindy..." are the words Tootie uses in the reunion episode and the line seems perfectly accurate -- she acknowledges that they barely knew each other in high school.

Legacy section
The entire Legacy section seems dubious to me -- there's no citation for the core claim (that this was the first ever teen drama), and the rest is just a random list of issues which aren't linked in a meaningful (or readable) way to the main series. If someone with more knowledge of the show can provide a citation for the main claim and rework the list into prose, the section could stay, but otherwise it seems ripe for deletion. Thoughts? Gusworld (talk) 20:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. THE evil fluffyface (talk) 00:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, am going to go ahead and remove it. Gusworld (talk) 20:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Thefactsoflife.jpg
Image:Thefactsoflife.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 13:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Comedy Drama
Having a handful of very special episodes does not qualify a sitcom to become a comedy-drama —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.134.95.103 (talk) 04:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Jo was in the reunion movie.
Nancy McKeon had a cameo appearance right at the end. I saw it when it originally aired on broadcast TV. Has that been cut in subsequent airings? Bizzybody (talk) 23:26, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Your memory is playing tricks on you. I have a bootleg of the show that was taped off of the network when it first aired. Jo does not appear. Rcarter555 (talk) 23:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Sitcom or Comedy Drama
The article refers several times to The Facts of Life as being a sitcom, but it was in Category:1970s American comedy-drama television series and Category:1980s American comedy-drama television series, despite there being no mention of the term comedy-drama in the article. I have therefore moved it to Category:1970s American sitcoms and Category:1980s American sitcoms. If someone strongly disagrees, then please feel free to discuss, but I think the article would need to be amended if it is going to be put in the comedy-drama categories. Dunarc (talk) 23:42, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Original Cast
One thing I noticed that noone else has put a mention to. That most of the Original cast for the show was made up of the Former Mouseketeers of "The New Mickey Mouse Club" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.93.166.24 (talk) 20:25, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

What about Langely??
The article mentions Eastland as the school in the series, but makes no mention of the school the girls were attending, Langely, in the 3 episodes I happened to see recently which was mentioned often. To add some detail of when in the timeline these were: one was actually a 2 part episode in which Jo becomes romantically involved with her photographic instructor; the other was Mrs. Garrett thinking of returning to school with the girls to 'get her degree'. Was this an oversight or someone just hasn't added the info to the article? Thanks! THX1136 (talk) 02:46, 14 November 2022 (UTC)