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, the fourth season premiere concludes.

Episode 4.2 “The Drop-Ins Part 2”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on September 11th, 1978)

When last we saw the Sweathogs, they were planning on dropping out of school and getting real jobs, just like Barbarino.

At the start of the second part of the fourth season premiere, we discover the details of Barbarino’s new job.  He does indeed work at the hospital but, unlike what his classmates assumed, he’s not a doctor.  He’s not a nurse.  He’s not an X-ray technician.  He’s an orderly.  He mops the floor and he changes the sheets and he fluffs the pillows.  As he puts it, “I make 68 dollars a week and ten of that goes to Uncle Sam.”

(Little does Barbarino know that only having to give ten dollars to Uncle Sam would sound pretty good to future viewers.  I imagine by this point next year, we’ll be giving every cent to Uncle Sam and maybe we’ll be lucky to get some stale bread and Flint water in return.  And, of course, everyone will pretend to love it.)

Gabe comes down to see Barbarino.  He tells Barbarino that the Sweathogs look up to him and he asks Barbarino to talk to them about staying in school.  Barbarino, who is mopping the floor, points out that he dropped out and he’s already got a job.

“If this is all you want to do with your life,” Gabe says, looking at Barbarino’s mop and bucket, “you didn’t need to go to school.”

“Now you to tell me,” Barbarino replies.

As for the Sweathogs, they’ve already talked to Barbarino and applied for jobs at the hospital.  But, looking over their applications, they realize that they have no job experience, no educational accomplishments, and no chance of getting a job.

When a patient nearly dies because Barbarino didn’t know how to push the emergency button or where to find the crash cart, he realizes that he needs to get more education.  Soon, he and the Sweathogs are standing in the doorway of Mr. Kotter’s classroom, ready for a new schoolyear.  Barbarino says he’s going to be a doctor but he knows he has to graduate high school first.  As for the other Sweathogs — well, they’re 40 year-old high school students.  What other choice do they have but to go to class?

Part Two of The Drop-Ins is a significant improvement on Part One, largely because the majority of the episode follows John Travolta’s Barbarino.  None of the Sweathogs were bad actors but, when watching an episode like this one, it’s easy to see why Travolta’s the one who went on to become a movie star.  As Barbarino, Travolta just has a natural charisma that can’t be faked.  Of the main Sweathogs, Barbarino is the one who you really find yourself hoping will eventually graduate.  He’s just such a nice guy, even if he is a little …. slow.

And so ends the fourth season premiere.  The Sweathogs are back in class ….  but for how long?