Welcome Back, Kotter: The Great Debate

Welcome Back, Kotter: The Great Debate
ABC
September 9. 1975
Sitcom
DVD
C+

Rick Mittleman, who did four That Girl scripts, wrote this inauspicious debut of a very different New York sitcom, although I have more of an issue with director Bob LaHendro (who would direct 37 more episodes), because the timing and characterization is off through most of the episode.  The only one who really seems to know what he's doing at this point is John Sylvester White, who has already nailed the grumpy Mr. Michael Woodman.  The opening and closing "joke scenes" with Kaplan and Strassman (who had spent time around Alan Alda's Groucho impressions and probably found Kaplan's an improvement) aren't bad.  The main problem is that there's not the resonance of later episodes.  This is a program that perhaps more than any other of its time (even Happy Days) thrived on catchphrases and audience anticipation of what the characters would do.  Did I watch this from Week One?  Maybe, but probably not.  I do know that at some point in the first season it became my favorite evening program.  And if I wasn't yet an ABC loyalist, I would be by the time this show left the air, four years later.

The Sweathogs, about whom more later:

• 24-year-old Robert Hegyes as Juan [many middle names omitted] Epstein
• 22-year-old Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington
• 26-year-old Ron Palillo as Arnold Horshack
• 21-year-old John Travolta as Vinnie Barbarino
• and as the only female Sweathog with lines at the moment, 22-year-old Debralee Scott as Rosalie "Hotsy" Totsy.

Scott Ben-Yashar makes his first of four uncredited appearances as a Sweathog, while Bill Adler does his first of two.  Twenty-three-year-old Helaine Lembeck (daughter of Harvey, sister of Michael) understandably would return a dozen more times as Judy Borden, while Dennis Bowen would be back four more times as "whitebread" Todd Ludlow.  (It's not too surprising that he played Archie Andrews in live-action specials around that time.)