Diff'rent Strokes: Movin' In

Movin' on up, like and unlike the Jeffersons.

Diff'rent Strokes: Movin' In
NBC
November 3, 1978
Sitcom
DVD
C+

It's kind of odd that I own the first season of this show on DVD, since it was one of many programs I watched almost every episode of but that didn't stay with me in the way that, for instance, Welcome, Back, Kotter did.  But as I recall, years ago there was something like a "buy two get one free" deal on TV show DVDs, and this looked like the best of the lot.  Obviously, the show was corny even at the time, but that bothered me less when I was ten.  And watching it now, I have to put blinders on, pretend I don't know what happened to these kids, and not find Arnold's line about Kimberly "What's she smokin'?" too tragically ironic.

As for this premiere, well, I can see why it replaced the failed Joe Namath sitcom The Waverly Wonders.  It's not very good, but it's passable.  There are errors in logic (like why Willis has to be so obvious about his plans to run away) and continuity, not just with later episodes but with the opening credits that show the boys' arrival from Harlem in a limo.  Still, the adults deliver the lines, even the contrived ones, like the old pros that they are, and the kids are cute.  There's family-hour conflict that's mostly resolved at the end.  But to be honest, I'm looking forward more to the episodes with guest stars, since I vaguely remember they had some interesting ones.

There's a Brady Bunch reference, and in fact the writer Ben Starr did three Brady scripts.  This is his first of twenty-four for DS.  Herbert Kenwith would direct most of the first season.