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, Gabe Kaplan is missing.

Episode 4.8 “X-Rated Education”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on October 28th, 1978)

Epstein, because he’s apparently the only student who works in the audio-visual department, is setting up the projector in the classroom so that it can be used to show a sex education film.  Carvelli and Wilbur enter the room and announce that they have a pornographic film that they want to watch.  Horshack and Washington then show up and decide that they want to watch the movie as well, even though Horshack doesn’t seem to be quite sure what an adult film actually is.

(Horshack also now appears to now be about 50 years old.  The Sweathogs are aging …. fast!)

Epstein says that they can use a different projector to watch the pornographic film.  The Sweathogs and Carvelli head off to the storage closet while Julie takes the first projector to the office so that she can show the sex ed film to a bunch of parents who are not sure they want their children taking sex ed.

You can guess what happens, can’t you?  The two films get mixed up.  The Sweathogs end up watching the tame sex ed film.  Horshack becomes obsessed with the butterfly that is featured in the film.  The protesting parents watch the adult film and demand that both Julie and Woodman be fired.  Can Julie talk Epstein into explaining what happened even though it’ll mean that Epstein will be running the risk of being expelled?  Much like Horshack, Epstein appears to be 50 years old in this episode so maybe getting expelled would be good for him at this point.

This episode raises a simple question.  Is it really an episode of Welcome Back, Kotter if Kotter isn’t around to be welcomed back?  Gabe Kotter is not in this episode and his absence is neither mentioned nor explained.  (Off-screen, Gabe Kaplan was not happy with the show’s direction and refused to appear in all but a handful of season four’s episodes.)  It’s a shame because the plot of this episode does actually feel like a throw back to the type of first and second season episodes that Kaplan usually did quite well with.  Instead of Kaplan’s understanding but firm Gabe Kotter, we get Julie telling Epstein to tell the truth and negotiating with the parents.  Julie now works at the school but I’m not totally sure what her job is actually supposed to be.  Sometimes, she appears to just be Woodman’s administrative assistant.  Other times, she appears to be a guidance counselor.  Sometimes, she’s a teacher.  Julie usually gives good advice but she’s an outsider and it’s obvious that, unlike her husband, she would never consider herself to be a Sweathog.  Whereas Gabe talks to the Sweathogs, Julie often seems to be talking down to them.

This episode also suffers due to the fact that Barbarino is not present, even though the idea of the Sweathogs watching a sex education film seems like a classic Barbarino plot.  Robert Hegyes is the main Sweathog now.  He was a good actor but he was also way too old, at this point, to be playing a high school student.  Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs continues to be underused and Ron Pallilo performance as Horshack has grown more and more grating as the fourth season has progressed.

In the end, only John Sylvester White’s unhinged performance as Woodman remains a consistent source of laughs on this show.  Woodman is not quite as antagonistic towards Julie as he is towards Gabe but his constant bitterness is still a lot of fun to watch.  Maybe they should have renamed this show Welcome  Back, Woodman.

Anyway, this was another fourth season episode that fell flat because the Sweathogs and Julie all seemed like they would rather be anywhere than appearing on Welcome Back, Kotter.  Seriously …. let the Sweathogs graduate!