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, Horshack’s not going to take it anymore.

Episode 4.17 “Come Back, Little Arnold”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on February 24th, 1979)

Arnold Horshack’s a drunk!

Well, not quite.  He’s not an alcoholic.  He does buy a bottle of cheap whiskey from Carvelli because he has a date coming up with Mary (Irene Arranga) and he’s nervous about it.  To the shock of everyone, Horshack gets mean when he drinks.  He calls the other Sweathogs out for always making fun of him.  He tells his teachers to leave him alone.  He throws all the money from the school store out into the hallway.  He starts wearing a leather jacket.  Horshack is out of control!

It’s a good thing that Vinnie is around to serve as a mentor…. oh wait, Travolta became a movie star and Vinnie Barbarino is no longer on the show.

It’s a good thing that Gabe has a good relationship with Arnold Horshack and …. oh wait, Gabe Kaplan was angry with the show’s producers and only appeared in a handful of episodes this season.  And this is not one of those episodes!

Maybe Julie could …. Marcia Strassman isn’t in this episode either!

Mr. Woodman could …. oh, who are we kidding?  Woodman doesn’t care.

Instead, it falls to Jean Tremaine (Della Reese) to gather all the Sweathogs together and let them know that Horshack needs help.  Jean Who?  Well, apparently, Ms. Tremaine has been around for a while and she’s as much of a mentor to the Sweathogs as Gabe ever was!  Oddly, we’ve never heard about or seen Ms. Tremaine before.  In fact, I thought the whole idea of the Sweathogs was that they weren’t allowed to attend regular classes, like the one taught by Ms. Tremaine.

It’s easy to see what happened here.  With Gabe Kaplan determined to leave and Marcia Strassman also tiring of the show, the show’s producers were trying to figure out how to continue Welcome Back Kotter without any Kotters.  With this episode, we saw one possible way to keep the show going.  Della Reese would be the new teacher and hopefully, she would have eventually gotten some new students.  It was time to let the Sweathogs graduate.  As I watched this episode, I noticed that Ron Palillo, the actor who played Horshack, actually had gray in his hair.

Surprisingly enough, this was actually a pretty good episode.  After spending the past two seasons playing Horshack as just being a weirdo with a strange voice, Ron Palillo finally got another chance to play the angry, misadjusted Horshack who  we first met during the show’s first season.  Palillo really got into the scenes where Horshack told off the Sweathogs, dropping the funny voice and delivering his lines with authentic anger.  Watching the episode, it’s hard not to get the feeling that Palillo was acting out some of his own frustrations in this episode.  It can’t be easy to play Arnold Horshack day-after-day.

And you know what?  As clumsily as she was introduced, Della Reese did a good job as Ms. Temaine.  The idea of her as the new regular teacher was not a crazy one, though it was one that was probably suggested too late to save the show.

This was a good episode.  I’m as surprised as anyone.