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, Epstein becomes a vet and a flu epidemic hits the school.

Episode 1.18 “Dr. Epstein, I Presume”

(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on January 29th, 1976)

At home, over a checkers game, Gabe tells Julie about his uncle, Walden Kotter.  Walden was always concerned as to whether or not he was going to go to heaven.

“Did he ever find out?” Julie asks, without a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.

Gabe explains the Walden went to India and asked the High Llama.  “The good news,” the High Llama said, “is that you are going to Heaven.  The bad news is that you leave Thursday.”

The next day, an energized Gabe enters his classroom and tells the Sweathogs that it’s time for them to read their compositions about what they want to do with their lives.  Barbarino wants to be a guy who never writes compositions.  Freddie says that he doesn’t know what he wants to be but he wants to make sure it’s something that pays a lot of money.  Horshack says that his essay is not about what he wants to be but about what he wants.  “Dear Santa….” Horshack begins.

Suddenly, Gabe realizes that Epstein is not in the class.  “I ain’t seen him,” Barbarino says before Epstein suddenly shows up at class, late because he says his pet hamster Florence is sick.  Epstein has put Florence in a box and brought her to school with him.  Everyone takes a look at the hamster.  Epstein explains that he also owns several white mice and a chicken.

“Have you ever considered becoming a vet?” Gabe asks.

“My cousin was in the army, he didn’t like it,” Epstein replies.

“A veterinarian!” Gabe yells.

Epstein says he likes to eat meat.

“Not a vegetarian, a veterinarian!”

It goes on for a while but eventually, Epstein realizes that he could be “Dr. Epstein” and he agrees to talk to the guidance counselor about his new career goal.  Yay!

Meanwhile, in the teacher’s lounge, Ms. Helms (Laura Zucker), the school guidance counselor, tells Mr. Woodman that computers and VHS tape are going to change the way that principals run their schools and teachers teach their classes.  Remote learning is the future!

“Are you telling me,” Mr. Woodman says, “that someday, I will be able to run this school without having to deal with any students?  Imagine that …. a school without students!”

Mr. Woodman is so excited about the idea that you have to feel bad that he wasn’t around for the COVID lockdowns.  Seriously, he would have been in Heaven.

Overhearing them, Gabe starts to imitate a robot teacher.  After an annoyed Woodman leaves the teacher’s lounge, Gabe brings in Epstein so he can talk to Ms. Helms.  Ms. Helms tells Epstein that he doesn’t have high enough test scores to ever pursue a career outside of simple manual labor.  She further says that encouraging Epstein to dream of being a vet is unfair to both him and dangerous to his animals.  Visibly hurt, Epstein says, “That was the shortest career I’ve ever had,” and storms out of the lounge.

When Ms. Helms explains that teachers should not get close to their students, Gabe replies, “Up your nose with a computer hose.”

As always happens whenever something bad happens at school, the Sweathogs show up at Gabe’s apartment, where they ruin his latest attempt to try to get Julie to laugh.  Epstein, Horshack, Freddie, and Barbarino all show up with Epstein’s animals and tell Gabe that they are all now his responsibility.  (It turns out that Epstein owned a turtle named Truman Capote.)  Epstein announce that all of his animals will be better off without him and Robert Hegyes delivered the line so sincerely that my heart broke a little for him.  Seriously, whenever I’m about to dismiss this show as being too silly for its own good, it’ll surprise me with a scene of earnest sincerity.

Anyway, it turns out that Florence the Hamster is pregnant and this somehow leads to all of the Sweathogs donning surgical scrubs while Forence gives birth in Gabe’s classroom.

Gabe runs out the classroom and returns with Ms. Helms.  Ms. Helms sees that Epstein supervised the whole process and admits that Epstein might have what it takes to be a doctor.  When Epstein says that the two baby hamsters are named Julie and Gabe, the human Gabe tells the hamster Julie a joke about his Uncle Max, who was 64 years old and married a 28 year-old girl.

Back at the apartment, Human Gabe tells Human Julie about his Uncle Max who was 64 years old and …. well, you get the idea.  When told that making love at his age could be fatal, Max replied, “If she dies, she dies.”  Ouch!

This is the second Epstein-centric story of the first season and, much like the first one, it’s surprisingly effective.  Robert Hegyes did a really good job of revealing that, underneath his tough exterior, Epstein was just an insecure kid who needed someone to believe in him.  This was a good episode, even if I did find myself wondering where the Sweathogs found those surgical scrubs.

Episode 1.19 “One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”

(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on February 5th, 1976)

At the apartment, Julie is upset over getting a crank call.  Gabe tells her about the time that he called a butcher and asked him if he had pig’s feet.  “Where do you buy your shoes?” is the punchline.

At the school, everyone is out with the flu so the gifted class has been combined with the remedial class.  The Sweathogs are upset over having to share their class with the smart kids but actually, they’re just insecure because they think Gabe likes the smart kids more than them.  Gabe reassures them by asking them a lot of sports-related questions.  In the end, the flu takes out everyone except for Gabe and Horshack.  This was an extremely simple episode and I got the feeling that it was probably meant to air earlier in the season than it did.  The Sweathogs’s individual personalities seemed to a bit less defined than usual and Gabe seemed like he was still struggling to win the trust of his students.  Considering that we’ve already seen the Sweathogs visit Gabe at his apartment several times, everything about their relationship in this episode felt a bit off.

To wrap things up, Gabe tells Julie about his Uncle Morris.  Morris told a judge that he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to become a U.S. citizen because he spoke “poor English” but, fortunately, the judge also spoke poor English.  So, I guess that worked out.

Next week …. it’s exam time!