Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC  from 1975 to 1979.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, it’s term paper time!

Episode 3.19 “Epstein’s Term Paper”

(Dir by Bob Claver, originally aired on January 19th,1978)

It’s term paper time!

Freddie Washington’s term paper is on the Dust Bowl, which he turns in despite the fact that, as he explains it, “Dust killed my grandma.”

Vinnie’s term paper is on the Irish Potato Famine.  Vinnie thinks that the potato famine had something to do with no one in Ireland being able to eat French fries.

Arnold Horshack’s paper is on Joseph Stalin and the Purges, despite the fact that Horshack doesn’t know who Stalin was.

As Gabe tells Julie when she stops by his classroom for lunch, he’s really impressed with all the term papers.  In fact, he is concerned because he’s too impressed.  The Sweathogs have never been A-students so why are they now turning in perfect term papers?  Gabe, however, is looking forward to reading Epstein’s term paper on FDR.  Eleven years ago, Gabe turned in a term paper on FDR in which he described FDR as being a “white knight.”

Julie takes one look at Epstein’s term paper and mentions that Epstein used the exact same phrase.

Yes, you guessed it.  The Sweathogs bought a bunch of old test papers from Carvelli (Charles Fleischer) and attempted to pass them off their own.  Only Angie wrote her own term paper.  She got a B minus, which she is happy about.  Vinnie, Horshack, Freddie, and Epstein all gets F’s.  They’re not happy about it because they spent five dollars apiece for those papers.

“I could have written it myself,” Vinnie says, “and gotten an F for free!”

Gabe, however, tells the Sweathogs that he’ll give them one final chance to write new term papers.  Gabe explains that just because he turned in a term paper on FDR, that doesn’t mean that he wrote it.  So I guess the lesson here is that Gabe cheated and now he’s a teacher so cheating isn’t the end of the world.

Considering the subject matter and the fact that Gabe usually tries to encourage the Sweathogs to not take shortcuts, this was a surprisingly slight episode.  One gets the feeling that, if this story had been used during the first season, Gabe would have been a lot more upset about the fake term papers and he would have encouraged the Sweathogs to believe in themselves and their abilities.  However, in the third season, everything was treated as a big joke.  Gabe no longer seems that concerned about the Sweathogs realizing that they’re capable of being more than just Sweathogs.  Watching this episode, I couldn’t help but think about how the Sweathogs lost their edge halfway through the second season.  They used to be believable as delinquents, albeit goofy ones.  By the time the third season began, they had all been reduced to a series of catch phrases and gimmicks.  Robert Hegyes had some funny moments in this episode but it’s still hard not miss the old Epstein, the one who voted most likely to take a life.

As for this episode’s opening and closing jokes, Gabe told Mr. Woodman about his Uncle Murrow the biologist.  Woodman was not amused.  Later, Gabe tried to tell Julie about his Uncle Joe, just for Julie to shout out the punchline before he finished.  Gabe was not amused.