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 can be purchased on Prime.

This week, Washington gets an admirer.

Episode 4.10 “Washington’s Clone”

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

Arthur (Ron Dennis) is a nerdy student who worships Freddie and desperately wants to be a Sweathog.  When Freddie tells Arthur that he’s too smart and clean-cut to be a Sweathog, Arthur reacts by dressing like Washington and trying to act just like Washington.  At first, the Sweathogs are amused and Washington is slightly flattered.  But then Washington discovers that Arthur is stealing watches and selling them in the school courtyard.  Washington tells Arthur that Sweathogs don’t commit crimes, which is certainly a change from the first season of the show.

After Julie tells Washington that Arthur’s grades are slipping and he’s throwing away his future, Washington goes to Barbarino for advice.  The audience goes crazy for Babarino’s cameo but I have to admit that I cringed the whole time.  I don’t like the idea of Barbarino working in the hospital.  Every time Barbarino makes an appearance, he’s making life difficult for a patient.  In this case, he spends so much time thinking about Washington’s problem that he doesn’t realize he’s spilling food all over a hungry man in a hospital bed.  It was nerve-wracking to watch and not particularly funny.

(Again, in all fairness, it’s hard for me to see any scene set in a hospital room without thinking about my Dad.  So, your mileage may vary as far as Barbarino’s cameo is concerned.  For me, it still hits too close to home.)

Eventually, Washington and the other Sweathogs dress up like members of a street gang (which, again, is what the Sweathogs were supposed to be during the first two seasons of the show) and they tell Arthur that he’s going to have to help them attack Mr. Woodman in order to become a Sweathog.  (Uhmm …. this seems like a bad idea.)  Arthur says he has no problem with that but, in the end, he defends Woodman when the Sweathogs pretend to attack him.  Arthur goes back to being himself and somehow the Sweathogs are not expelled.  Julie tells them that she “can’t believe I’m saying this,” but she’s mildly impressed with how they handled Arthur.  Julie is even bitchier without Gabe around than when he was forcing her to listen to his jokes.

Indeed, Gabe does not appear in this episode and there’s no reference made to where he might be.  You would think that, being vice-principal, he would be the one who would be talking to Arthur about his grades.  Gabe Kaplan, of course, was not on the show because he was upset that the network and their refusal to allow the Sweathogs to graduate high school.  In-universe, one can only guess that Gabe Kotter just doesn’t like to come out of his office.

For a fourth season episode, Washington’s Clone wasn’t bad.  Ron Dennis’s performance as Arthur made me smile.  The fact that he was dramatically shorter than Washington made his attempts to imitate Washington a lot more humorous than they would have been otherwise.  Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs gave a good performance as Washington, even if his sudden concern about following the law went against everything that the show had previously established about the character.  This episode was amusing (with the exception of Barbarino’s cameo) and Horshack didn’t say much.  You can’t complain about that.