U.N. Week

Synopsis

A neighbouring School visits for U.N. Week and the students decide to tackle the real issue of a dancer defecting to the U.S. Coco takes on the part of the dancer but her friends start to think she maybe getting too personally involved.

Meanwhile when Lydia helps David out with a Broadway audition but the students misunderstand the nature of their relationship and Dwight finds a new friend.

My Review

The final episode of the season, although in the U.K. the BBC showed this out of order as the penultimate episode and “Not In Kansas Anymore” was the final episode, which some how seems far more appropriate than this one.

This episode is okay and there is lots of good humour particularly with Mrs Berg, the Teachers and Lydia and David’s rumoured affair.

On the whole I find it a pretty boring episode. We never did anything like having visitors from other schools and spend a whole week on one project like this at my school so it was hard to relate to. Even the Lydia and David story feels like they have run out of ideas. In recent episodes we've had rumoured relationships for Julie & Troy, Julie & Bruno and now Lydia & David it all gets a little repetitive. Why not just do some of these relationships for real? They could even have had an ongoing relationship for Lydia and David throughout the season. Although I suspect the network wouldn't have been happy with a mixed race relationship!

In the scene where the teachers pretend to break up, why is Doris in the dance class anyway? All the other people there are the advanced dance students and Doris isn't in that class. Also why is Doris the only student to actually dress up to represent a different nation? I would have thought that in the School of the Arts lots of students would have loved the opportunity to create a character from another country and dress up to portray that character.

I struggle to really get involved with Coco’s story and I'm not sure it is a strong enough issue to build an episode around. Even Coco completely being taken over by the role doesn't really do much for me. Erica is great but the story does little for me.

Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson guest stars as a love interest for Dwight and that part of the episode is quite sweet.

Kelly makes her final appearance but I'm not really sure what her purpose is in this episode.

Morgan gets a chance for the first time to sing and perform on “Trouble” but I'm really not keen on the song. I’d read that when he was cast the producers didn't know he could sing and he went to them to ask for a chance to perform on the show but by then most of the songs had already been written and fitted into the episodes however they managed to fit something in for him at the end of the season.

It is a little confusing after David has auditioned and the guy, played by the shows assistant choreographer Otis Sallid, only wants David if the dancers are part of the package. They didn't really do too much in the song so if he really liked David’s performance and wanted him in the show then it wouldn't have been very difficult to bring in other people to do the background stuff. It all seems like a pretty weak reason to stop David getting the job.

The scene I like the most is Coco and Julie in the dressing room having a debate. It adds nothing to the story but for me it just seems very natural and demonstrates how good friends the 2 have become, which is a nice change from their fighting in season 1.

When this episode was filmed the future of Fame hung in the balance as NBC had decided to cancel the show. As the season wrapped the actors didn't know if they would be back or not. The last scenes filmed were Lydia watching David perform. Morgan then rushed off the set as he didn't like goodbyes.

Episode Pictures