Diff'rent Strokes: Prep School

Diff'rent Strokes: Prep School
NBC
November 24, 1978
Sitcom
DVD
B-

This is the first of seven DS stories written by Alan Rosen and Fred Rubin, but the only one by Michael Russnow, who doesn't seem to have written for any other of my shows.  Mr. Drummond wants the boys to attend his alta mater, but he doesn't realize that the current headmaster, Miles Bordinay (Howard Morton, who was Slocum on That Girl), is a bigot, or at least a snob.  He gives Willis and Arnold entrance exams that they can't answer correctly because of their background.  I find it unlikely that 13-year-old Willis has never heard of the female symbol of Justice, but otherwise the episode makes the point that some intelligence tests measure "class" rather than intelligence.  Note that the school is an hour a way, so we know from the beginning that the boys won't end up going there, since they'd probably just come home on weekends, as with the absent Kimberly.