Selling Out

Synopsis

Competition is fierce amongst the students as they take part in a song writing contest, which will see the winning song released and turned into a music video. Even Mrs Berg gets in on the action.

Jesse is spending a lot of time thinking about his childhood and how his grandfather inspired him. He writes his song as a tribute to his grandfather. Everyone is excited when Jesse's song wins the contest and he enlists his friends to dance and appear in the new video, with Leroy to choreograph the video.

However the record company want to change the song into something unrecognisable, which leads Jesse with a choice, to either sell out and achieve success or keep the original meaning of his song but not have it recorded.

Meanwhile Morloch pressures Shorofsky into accepting a kid at the school because his father is rich. Shorofsky is forced to choose between his professional beliefs and new music equipment.

My Review

This not only one of my favourite season 5 episodes but one of my all time favourites full stop. I love the idea of a song writing competition and how all the kids get involved and that brings some great humour to the episode, from Leroy explaining the blues to Chris and Mrs Berg performing her own composition and telling Shorofsky to imagine it with a heavy metal backing, it's excellent stuff.

Morloch is totally in character as he schemes to get Shorofsky to acccept a student for the money, even getting Lydia on board with promises of a new dance floor. There is some great banter between the teachers.

All the cast are here in this episode with the exception of Carol, although some of them, like Debbie and Ann don't have don't have particularly big roles in the episode, but they o really shine in their scenes. The focus really is on Jesse and how he deals with the dilemma of achieving success or sticking to what he feels is the right thing to do.

Shorofsky is also faced with a similar dilemma except his involves compromising his standards for money. Interestingly Shorofsky (the adult) chooses to compromise his beliefs where as Jesse (the kid) doesn't. Not sure if that was done on purpose or if it was to reflect that ages brings understanding that we all have to make compromises in life. It's also interesting that the other kids seem to be saying they would sell out in order to get the same shot Jesse has been given.

In some ways this is a pretty simple story and pretty standard fair for Fame where a cast member gets their chance at success but something goes wrong and the success doesn't happen and everything is back to normal at the end although this feels more realistic and deeper than most of the episodes that have similar stories and gives a real sense of dilemma for Jesse.

It's interesting to hear about Jesse past and see him as a child. I think this is the first and only time in the whole series that we get to see a younger version of any of the characters played by a different actor. Jesse is close to his grandfather and I think this is basically based on Jesse Borrego's real life where his parents had lots of problems and he went to live with his grandparents and they were the ones that inspired him and believed in him enough for him to become a performer.

There's lots of real location filming in New York and that always improves episodes. There is certainly some nice locations used here and visually the epiosde looks really good. Also the background music gives the episode a very distict flavour.

I love the song "The Other Side Of The Road" and feel it's one of the best songs performed by Jesse. The setting at the end with the night sky and lights and the boat going past really is stunning. I love the emotion of it all too from the way Jesse performs and the look of pride on Nicole's face and Holly wiping a tear from her eye.

I also love the up-tempo version of the song that the dancers perform when the Jesse isn't too happy with what is happening. Actually I'd loved to have heard the whole song performed this way too but time doesn't allow for that.

I find it hard to actually fault this episode and the only things I'm not too keen on are the annoying know it all producers and the "Brother Brother" song as it seems pretty weak compared to the other songs in the episode. Also Jesse seems to be out on the streets to be inspired by his culture in order to write his song. However when he starts dancing it's some of the fame dancers who are dancing with him. Some of them are new people and I assume we're not supposed to recognise them and think they are just people who were living in that area and joined in with the dance. However it doesn't work for me and looks odd. It wouldn't be very realistic for Jesse to take his class mates with him on his voyage of discovery!

The only other nit pick comes with Shorofsky's story. This is the fourth episode of the season and here we are with auditions for new students. Surely this would have been done during the Summer, which must have happened as Dusty starts at the beginning of term so would anyone really be auditioning now?

Finally Dusty tells the guys to imagine a very revealing dress but that's not what she ends up wearing!

Episode Pictures