The Facts of Life: Season 4Blair (Lisa Whelchel), Tootie (Kim Fields), Natalie (Mindy Cohn) and Jo (Nancy McKeon), are back in school under the guiding hand of their housemother and dietitian, Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae), at the Eastland Academy for Girls. Season Four highlights include a marriage proposal for Mrs. Garrett, an eye-opening lesson in drunk driving for the girls, and Blair and Jo heading off to college! Dishing out quick-witted humor and big laughs, the girls literally grew up right in front of millions of viewers each week.My Thoughts:This season set starts off with an extra. The movie
The Facts of Life Goes To Paris is included in this set as a bonus. But it is rightfully placed on disc one before the first episode of the season. This is because it is where it should be viewed story-wise. I felt the movie was good. Being able to see the characters away from their home was interesting to watch... but it also lost some of the charm that we always get with the episodes. And it didn't have hardly any laughs what so ever. So while entertaining to a point this TV Movie was more disappointing then not compared to the rest of the set.
Once we get into the episodes that charm is back and we see a great sitcom with plenty of laughs. A sitcom that is not afraid to take on some real and heavy issues. In the fourth season we get them tackling such issues as abortion, deafness, the mentally handicapped, adoption and fatality. Even dealing with such issues they manage to give us some laughs on the way. But more then that. The laughs they give us is tasteful and respectful to the issue they are tackling. The characters while growing up manage to remain who they are... but at the same time mature as young adults. Looking back at this season's episodes... while some were definitely better then others. There was really none that I disliked.
As for the dvd set... the audio and video were as good as would be expected. Though I did feel it was a little sparse when it came to the extras. As we only really get two extras for this set. The movie I mentioned earlier in this review and a fun and entertaining trivia quiz. I like how they did this trivia quiz. They formatted it to look and feel like a pop quiz you would take at school. And I really liked how the questions came from not just this season but all the seasons up to this point. So we get questions from seasons 1-4. The only thing I didn't like about the quiz is they made it a little too easy. I mean my one and only try on the quiz and I got a 100% A+. And to be honest I only had to think twice about one or two of the questions. And embarrassingly one of the questions I had to think twice about was from this very season I just finished watching.
Over all I am thrilled to finally have this season to add to my collection. I only hope more seasons will follow. Sooner rather then later. It is definitely a series I recommend checking out if you never have. If you do decide to check this series for the first time... don't get discouraged from the first season episodes... the series changes a lot in the second season of the series... giving us the show we enjoyed for several years to come.
My Rating:Out of a possible 5
