Ian's Girl

Synopsis

Ian is feeling homesick and when his old band mates arrive in town including his ex-girlfriend he is torn whether to stay in New York at the school or go home to London. His decision isn't helped when Shorofsky enters Ian into a classical guitar competition, which Ian isn't interested in. Meanwhile Lou runs for the presidency of the Bowling operators association and needs the kids help with his campaign.

My Review

Up until 2017 when I wrote this review, I had never seen this episode. I was never a fan of Ian's British accent and having seen the clips at the start of the episode I was instantly put off knowing we'd have a whole group of people with dreadful accents. So this review is my first time watching and I think it's safe to say that this will never be a favourite episode of mine. It's doubtful that I will ever watch it again!

Ian's British chums seem to be a cross between street urchins circa 19th Century Charles Dickens books like "Oliver Twist" and punks of the late 1970s. The band even play "No Feelings" written and recorded by the Sex Pistols in 1977, Ten years before this episode aired. By 1987 punk was well and truly over and had been pretty much since the start of the 80s. Young British 80s bands were not playing this kind of music. Maybe had this been a season 1 episode they could have gotten away with it just but not 5 years later.

Anyway there is no depth to these characters, even the ex girlfriend Joanne isn't given much to do and to be honest I don't really feel any connection between the characters. The script tries to add drama in making Ian choose between his friends, the so called love of his life and the school. Having seen later episodes before this one I already know that Ian doesn't leave but even if I hadn't known there is nothing on screen that even makes me think he's likely to. He's had a bit of an argument with Shorofsky and that seems to be the only thing that pushes him in the direction of leaving. Besides none of the other characters even seem to care. Compare this to Bruno leaving the school at the start of season 3 or the possibility that Jesse might be departed in Season 4. Those episodes had emotion and drama and made the audience feel something but this episode doesn't even come close. Even Reggie doesn't seem that bothered. We've already established a connection between Ian and Reggie but there's not really much evidence of that on show here.

Ian's love song to his Ex girlfriend "After dark" is pleasant enough and I guess we get some continuity with the episode "Judgement Day" where we discover Ian can't read music and Shorofsky offers to tutor him and now he's not only reading it but writing it too.

The secondary plot of Lou running for the presidency of the bowling operators association does very little for me either. I guess it's a way of involving the other characters and them having to come up with a campaign for him but it all just feels really weak to me and the "Image" song is pretty uninspiring too.

The show does feel really tired at this point, well for much of season 6 if I'm honest but here there just isn't anything that I can identify with as being Fame. Where is the inspiration? The excitement?, The energy? The fully rounded three dimensional interesting characters that we really care about? The songs that make us want to sing along to and get up and dance to?

Episode Pictures