Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.14 “Bride and Gloom”

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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, it’s Welcome Back Barbarino!

Episode 4.14 “Bride and Gloom”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on January 13th, 1979)

Epstein needs a favor from Barbarino. Remember the time I saved your life? Epstein asks. No, Barbarino replies. Well, no matter! Epstein is still intent on getting to Barbarino to pay him back marrying Epstein’s Guatemalan cousin, Angelina (Rachel Levario). Angelina needs her citizenship so Vinnie just needs to stay married to her from three days and then they’ll get a divorce and Vinnie can continue to date Nurse Sally (Linda McCullough). (“What you’re doing is so noble!” Sally tells Barbarino. I am not sure I would have the same reaction to my boyfriend announcing he was marrying someone else.)

Julie and Woodman tell Barbarino that he’s too young to get married and it’s somewhat jarring to remember that Barbarino and the rest of the Sweathogs are still just supposed to be high school kids. (John Travolta was the youngest member of the cast but, by the time the fourth season rolled around, even he looked too old to be hanging out at Buchanan High.) Gabe is not around to provide any advice and I don’t think this episode even bothered to come up with an excuse to explain his absence.

Angelina does not speak a word of English so Epstein serves as the translator while she and Barbarino fight about the wedding. Angelina wants a nice wedding. Barbarino just wants to get it over with. They compromise by holding the ceremony in Barbarino’s ugly apartment. (If the show couldn’t even spend the money to convince Gabe Kaplan to appear in the show that he was starring on, there was no way they were going to splurge for an extra set.) The guests are the Sweathogs and Julie and, for some reason, Mr. Woodman. Babarino and Epstein both have huge families but none of them show up for the wedding. I guess hiring extras would have cost money. The show did hire an actor to play the priest so that was good of them.

Does Vinnie Barbarino get married? No. Angelina changes her mind and marries a musician instead. Barbarino can go back to dating Sally and I guess Gabe will just hear about it later at dinner.

“I’m so confused!” Barbarino says at one point and the audience goes wild. Even though Travolta spent this episode looking like he was pretty much over the whole thing, the studio audience was happy to see him. The show’s greatest strength, at this point, was Travolta but this episode also shows the limits of the show’s format. Barbarino had to be both a high school student and a green card groom. It felt odd and kind of unpleasant.

Finally, why is Barbarino’s apartment is always so filthy? I get that he’s supposed to be poor and living in New York but seriously, couldn’t they have swept the set occasionally? The sight of that apartment always depresses me.

This episode features the cast going through the motions and, as was often the case with season 4, it’s obvious that no one really wants to be there. I certainly didn’t want to be there! Next week features Barbarino’s final appearance on the show. Soon, Vinnie will be free.

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back Kotter 4.9 “The Barbarino Blues”

Posted on November 23, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, they tease him a lot …. even though he’s not longer on the spot….

Episode 4.9 “The Barbarino Blues”

(Dir by November 3rd, 1978, directed by Norman Abbott)

Gabe Kaplan is not in this episode but John Travolta is. The audience goes wild when they see John Travolta stepped onto the soundstage. Maybe they were worried they were going to get stuck watching one of the episodes in which Barbarino doesn’t appear.

Well, no worries for them! This episode is all about Barbarino and the Sweathogs. Unfortunately, the majority of it takes place in Barbarino’s incredibly ugly and dirty-looking apartment. I don’t know why but every 70s sitcom appeared to take place in the filthiest locations possible. I saw an episode of All In The Family recently and I found myself cringing at the thought of all the bugs and weevils that were probably buried in Archie Bunker’s chair. Welcome Back Kotter takes thing even further by having Vinnie live in what appears to be the drug room in an abandoned building. Joe Buck and Ratso lived in a nicer place.

Anyway, Barbarino is depressed. He was going to break up with his girlfriend but she dumped him first. “I’m so depressed!” Travolta says, in his high-pitched Barbarino voice. The other Sweathogs try to help Barbarino conquer the blues. This means that a good deal of the episode is taken up with Beau giving advice to Barbarino. The whole thing is set up as a changing of the guard sort of thing. It’s as if the show is saying, “You think John Travolta’s cool? Well, check out Stephen Shortridge!”

It’s a dumb episode. At one point, the Sweathogs point out that Barbarino hasn’t come to school in three days and it was a bit jarring to be reminded that the middle-aged-looking men were all supposed to be high school students. Usually, whenever this show had a bad episode, John Travolta would serve as Welcome Back Kotter‘s saving grace. But, with this episode, Travolta appears to be as bored as just about everyone else. Travolta had movie stardom to focus on. By the time this episode aired, he had been nominated for an Oscar. It’s probably safe to say that being a Sweathog was the last thing on Travolta’s mind.

Speaking of the Sweathogs, I have defended Ron Pallilo’s performance as Horshack in the past. Yes, Horshack is annoying but Pallilo occasionally managed to capture the character’s sweet and innocent nature. But I have to admit that I’ve spent most of the fourth season hoping that someone will finally toss Horshack off the Brooklyn Bridge. Everyone turned into a caricature during the fourth season and, since Horshack was already a caricature, that just made his character even more annoying. There’s also the fact that Ron Pallilo was 30 years old during the fourth season and he looked older. Whenever he did Horshack’s signature laugh, the wrinkles on his face would suddenly appear and make him look like a map of the interstate highway system.

I guess my point is that this is another episode that left little doubt that it was time for everyone to move on. I mean, when even Kotter isn’t around to be welcomed back, it’s time to graduate and start a new life as a featured player Off-Broadway. To quote the Chambers Brothers: “TIME!”

Late Night Retro Television Review: CHiPs 2.18 “Rally ‘Round The Bank”

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, Ponch’s mom comes to visit! Will she get on a motorcycle? Uhmm …. no. She doesn’t. It probably would have been cool if she had. She could have helped chase down this week’s set of bad guys. This seems like a missed opportunity. It’s still a good episode, though.

Episode 2.18 “Rally ‘Round The Bank”

(Dir by Barry Crane, originally aired February 3rd, 1979)

Ponch is nervous because his mom, who is deathly afraid of flying, has boarded an airplane and flown from Chicago to Los Angeles to visit him. (In this episode, we discover that Ponch’s family apparently got rich and moved to Chicago sometime between the end of the first and the start of the second season.) Why is Ponch’s mother visiting? Ponch isn’t sure. He spends a lot of time worrying but, in the end, it turns out that his mother (well-played by Anna Navarro, no relation to that annoying woman on The View) came to town because Baker and Getraer called to tell her that Ponch would be receiving a special safety citation from Getraer.

Awwwww!

Apparently, Ponch has gone a whole year without crashing his motorcycle. I’m pretty sure I saw Ponch crash his motorcycle just a few episodes ago but whatever. The important thing is that this is actually a good Ponch episode. For once, Erik Estrada’s tendency to overact is not a distraction and his relationship with his mom is actually really sweet. When I watched this episode, my first thought was that Navarro looked way too young to be Estrada’s mother. If anything, she actually looked like she might be a few years younger than him. Then I checked with imdb and discovered that Navarro actually was sixteen years older than Estrada.

(I will admit that Anna Navarro — again, the actress and not that annoying woman who hosted a day of the Democratic National Convention — reminded me a lot of my own mom, which is maybe one reason why I liked this episode more than I thought I would.)

Ponch and Baker also find time to chase after two bank robbers, played by Frank Ashmore and Ron Hajak. Because the robbers are a part of a nation-wide rally race that is passing through Los Angeles, Ponch and Baker get to know some of the other racers. Two women invite Ponch and Baker to a square dance. Baker has to decline so Ponch brings Getraer instead. Getraer turns out to be a surprisingly good dancer. Ponch’s mom comes to the square dance as well and, for a few minutes, I thought maybe she and Getraer were going to announce to the world that they were in love. That would have been a great CHiPs moment but it didn’t happen. That’s another missed opportunity.

Missed opportunities aside, this was a good episode. It was fun and it was sweet and it made me smile.

Retro Television Review: Welcome Back, Kotter 4.3 “Don’t Come Up And See Me Sometime”

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Vinnie tries to move on with his life. The Sweathogs say, “No!”

Episode 4.3 “Don’t Come Up And See Me Sometime”

(Dir by Norman Abbott, originally aired on September 25th, 1978)

Vinnie Barbarino has his own apartment!

And it’s a dump!

Seriously, if you watch enough 70s sitcoms, you know that no one is going to live in a nice apartment. For whatever reason, characters on 70s tv shows always lived in the ugliest apartments imaginable. But, even with that in mind, Barbarino’s apartment is terrible. The walls are stained. The couch is worn and has visible stuffing. Every time the train goes by, the entire apartment shakes and Vinnie’s bed falls out of its closet. It’s an awful apartment in an awful part of Brooklyn but then again, Barbarino is a janitor who hasn’t even graduated from high school so really, the crappy apartment is probably the most realistic part of this episode.

Vinnie is happy to have his own place because he has a serious girlfriend, Sally (Linda McCullough). Sally works as a nurse at the hospital. Vinnie can’t wait to spend time with her, though she has to break their first date when she’s assigned to work overnight.

Julie Kotter makes her first appearance of the season when she drops by to give VInnie a house-warming present and to show off her terrible new haircut. The present turns out to be towels. Vinnie is happy with the gift because he was feeling bad about stealing towels from the hospital.

Then the Sweathogs show up, including a new blonde guy with a Southern accent. Washington says that the guy’s name is Beau (Stephen Shortridge) and he’s a new student at Buchanan High and in Mr. Kotter’s class. What’s odd is that the previous episode ended with Vinnie once again enrolled in high school and a student in Kotter’s class. So, why hasn’t he met Beau yet? Did Vinnie drop out after dropping back in?

After Vinnie and Beau debate which one of them is uglier, Vinnie gives everyone a tour of the apartment. He’s especially proud of his dining table.

Things are going fine until the Sweathogs start to talk about how they’re going to be spending all of their time at Barbarino’s new apartment. Vinnie, realizing the he just wants some privacy, asks all of the Sweathogs to leave. The Sweathogs get offended and say that Vinnie has let his new apartment go to his head.

The next day, at school, Gabe is shocked to see the Sweathogs shunning Vinnie. Woodman, however, tells Vinnie that he’s lucky. “I haven’t had a friend in 20 years,” Woodman says, “and look how happy I am!” Fortunately, Gabe is not quite so cynical and he’s able to help the Sweathogs realize that they need to give Barbarino room to live his own life. This episode ends with Barbarino, having nearly been driven mad by loneliness, happily allowing the Sweathogs, the Kotters, and Mr. Woodman into his apartment. But then Sally arrives and he kicks them all out.

This episode feels like a metaphor of sorts. Just as Barbarino was escaping the Sweathogs and starting his own life, John Travolta was escaping television for the movies. One has to imagine that, just as the Sweathogs were offended to be kicked out of the apartment, there were some Kotter people who weren’t necessarily happy about not being included in Travolta’s new Hollywood career.

This episode works surprisingly well. That’s largely because it’s a showcase for John Travolta. The scenes of Barbarino talking to himself come close to going on for too long but Travolta’s charisma carries the day. At the end of the episode, even Gabe and Julie look happy for a minute or two.