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 is finally the center of the action.  Unfortunately, the episode doesn’t really take advantage of the character and all of his possibilities.

Episode 3.14 “Epstein’s Madonna”

(Dir by Bob Claver, originally aired on December 8th, 1977)

For his art project, Epstein paints a picture of a naked woman on the outside wall of Buchanan High.  (Actually, it stretches out across two walls.)  The Sweathogs are impressed.  The local media wants to do a story on the painting.  Epstein is proud of himself.  Woodman is offended, even after Gabe points out that Botticelli also painted nudes.

“Botticelli,” Woodman replies, “didn’t paint a nude with Born To Boogie tattooed on her thigh!”

Gabe is all about defending Esptein’s right to express himself …. up until he realizes why the painting looks so familiar to him.  As Epstein explains it, he put Julie’s head on Debbie Del Vecchio’s body.  Gabe likes the body but he’s less happy about Julie’s face staring at him from the wall.  And it must be said that the painted Julie looks even more annoyed with Gabe than the real-life Julie.

Julie, surprisingly enough, is flattered.  That’s not really the reaction that one would expect from Julie, who is usually a lot more uptight.  But, after being married to Gabe for five years or however long they’ve been together, Julie is probably just happy to know that there are still other options out there for her.  Seriously, Julie …. Epstein takes care of his family and he has that cute gap between his front teeth.

Does Gabe deface Epstein’s artwork?  Though tempted, he does not.  Someone else does and there’s some confusion when Gabe is caught holding the spray-paint can but that’s all forgotten when the other Sweathogs jump in to help fix the painting.  Good for them!  Epstein passes his class, the painting gets to say on the wall for a week, and …. well, that’s it.  Wow, that wasn’t a very consequential episode.

“Lisa, what about the jokes!?”

Oh yeah!  Gabe tells Julie about his Cousin Janet, who lied about being pregnant and seriously injured so that her parents would be less upset about the D she got in English.  He also talks about his Uncle Willie who used his resemblance to Jimmy Cagney to get laid.  Julie was amused by both jokes, which I think was a record for her.

This episode really didn’t have much going on.  In the first season, Gabe would have had a semi-serious heart-to-heart talk with Epstein about his love for art and it would have been touching.  But, in the third season, the show was more about catch phrases and audience applause than teaching life lessons.  It’s a shame because Robert Hegyes usually did a pretty good job as the tough but secretly sensitive Juan Epstein.  This episode has to be considered a bit of a missed opportunity.