Such Good Friends

Synopsis

While working on an intimate dance routine, Leroy starts to develop romantic feelings for Lydia. When Tina accidentally burns down Leroy's apartment Lydia offers him a room making it harder for him to keep his feelings to himself. Things become more complicated when Lydia's old boyfriend Carl is back on the scene.

Meanwhile Sherwood is struggling to get publishers interested in her historical novel that she has spent 4 years working on and Shorofsky has problems in his love life.

My Review

I quite like this episode and apparently Leroy having a crush on Lydia was a storyline that Debbie Allen thought the show would do. Personally I think it would have worked much better in an earlier season when Leroy was actually a student. Leroy has matured so much this season and although any of us can have a crush at an age, they are more prevalent when we are in our teens and in School. All we needed to be told in an earlier season was Leroy had an attraction to his teacher, Lydia needn't have found out. That would have set this episode up much more nicely as those feeling could resurface when he finds himself living with Lydia. Here is does rather feel as though the storyline has come out of nowhere and of course it's never mentioned again. After all the number of times the two have danced intimately with each other before and it only now becomes an issue. The end is a little unsatisfying as there's no real resolution to it, apart from Leroy has to find someone else!

Also Leroy's apartment has burnt down and they make a point of saying he's lost all his clothes. He certainly has plenty of clothes changes in this episode and in future episodes we see him wearing things that he has worn in previous seasons. Then when we get to see his apartment again in a couple of episodes time it looks exactly the same as it has done previously.

This episode does feel a little empty and is carried by just 5 cast members while 8 of the cast don't feature at all. Here we focus on the teachers and Mrs Berg which is nice because the older characters are given very little to do this season. So this is a nice change of emphasis.

One thing we get to see, which is nice is Sherwood's attempts at being an author. She has supposedly been working on her book about the south for four years but of course we knew nothing about that. I'm not sure if the producers knew that Carol wouldn't be coming back for season 6 so they were setting up her leaving storyline or if this storyline was completely unconnected. One thing I do feel though is that Sherwood has been dumbed down a little in this episode. There is some great humour but I feel some of it comes at the expense of Sherwood's credibility. Are we to believe that this wonderfully intelligent sophisticated woman isn't bright enough to realise just how many times she uses the word grey to describe the setting her book. Had it been one of her students writing that she would have instantly had to correct them. Things get worse when even Mrs Berg gets the better of her. Sherwood Then states that no other book about the South has caught the drama, the adventure, the romance and Mrs Berg quips "Miss Sherwood did you ever read gone with the wind?" Had Shorofsky said it I wouldn't have minded but since when has Mrs Berg been brighter than Sherwood. Then later on it's Mrs Berg is the one to point out what kind of novels are selling, which gives Sherwood the idea of writing a different kind of novel. As I said it's really funny stuff but it does all rather stretch credibility.

Shorofsky too has a little plot with a new love interest, although that story doesn't really go anywhere and again has no resolution and is not mentioned again in the future. Although we do learn here that he can speak Chinese!

I really like "Love's A Journey" and it's a great song for Gene. The staging with the lighting and use of the shadows works really well too.

The "Such Good Friends" instrumental is very indicative of the synthesised music of the time. We hear it a lot through the episode. It's just a shame that they did add lyrics to it for the end performance for Gene and Debbie to sing together.

Episode Pictures