A Tough Act To Follow

Danny is devastated when drama teacher Greg Crandall dies suddenly of a heart attack. Danny particularly lashes out at new drama teacher David Reardon and faces being expelled from the school. 

Meanwhile Reardon's estranged Father turns up at the school looking for a reconciliation.

Also Julie feels uncomfortable when some of her friends from Grand Rapids are coming to visit New York.

The season of death continue with another heavy episode about the sudden death of Mr Crandall and series deals with the real passing of actor Michael Thoma. I like this episode as it focuses on the main cast and how they deal differently with their loss and the emphasis of the story is on Danny, who finally gets a proper storyline. 

Coco is still missing but the rest of the cast are involved and it’s a particularly strong episode for Morgan as we learn more about Reardon’s character and background. The problems with his father mirror nicely the main storyline. Morgan is really good in the scene with Danny towards the end where he makes him read Crandall’s evaluation of Danny. It’s a powerful scene.

I still feel this episode should have occurred earlier in the season and be seen as an introduction to Reardon but obviously they wanted to leave a little space between Michael really dying and them killing off Crandall.

I like the use of Danny’s dream so that they could actually show a clip of Michael Thoma but don’t like the fact that the Danny in the dream realises it is a dream. 

Danny waking up at the exact time that Crandall dies is also a nice touch. Lots of people report seeing people they are close to at the time of their passing and it highlights how close Danny and Crandall were. 

Danny doesn’t deal particularly with the death very well at first and I guess we all deal with death differently.

Mrs Berg is particularly good in this episode. One minute she is being really funny with Sherwood and the next minute is really emotional as she has to tell the kids of Crandall’s death. It’s really touching and wonderfully portrayed by Ann.

Julie also gets a little more to do and there is some nice continuity with the pilot in the first season with having her old boyfriend Lester visit.

I really like the music in this episode and particularly “Just When I Really Needed You”, this is a great song for Val and another track that never made it on to the albums that were released for this season. I like it far more than "Face To Face" or "Take That First Step" and wished one of those tracks had been replaced on the albums with this song. 

Also “The Secret” is a good song for Carlo and fits nicely into the story, although I prefer the live version where Gene sings too. Then at the end of the song as Danny looks to the sky and Debbie’s voice comes on dedicating the episode to Michael Thoma it’s a really powerful and emotional moment.

All the way through this episode they kept talking about the student court taking place on Friday night so when I originally watched this episode I was waiting for Carlo to sing the song of the same name but of course it never happened.

There are a couple of things I don’t understand in this episode. The first is student court, we don’t have anything like this in the U.K. or we didn’t when I was at school. We never actually see it in this episode so I still don’t fully understand how it works but Dwight appeared to be the one bringing all the charges against Danny, being in the halls without a permit, having been drinking and hitting him but then at the end he gets Danny off by saying they were rehearsing a scene. Obviously if this were true why would he bring the charges ion the first place? Whoever runs this student court doesn’t seem to question the story Dwight comes up with.

Also when the teachers are talking about Danny in the teachers lounge, Shorofsky mentions a social workers report stating that Danny and his father didn’t communicate. What is this social workers report for? Social workers would only get involved in a family over here if there were reports of abuse or neglect or a child was at risk or in danger, so this left me curious what is supposed to have happened in the past to Danny that has never been mentioned?

A couple of nit picks:

- Dwight always seems to be on hall patrol so how does he keep up with his studies as he must miss so many lessons. He doesn't seem like the brightest person in the world so I would have thought he would need to be attending those lessons not missing them. Also how come he's always in different positions in the school. There have been times he's stated that he always has a certain position at certain times of the day, which implies he spends most of his day on hall patrol.

- David is wearing completely different clothes when he is arguing with his father to the ones he is wearing when he returns to the school later that evening for Danny’s student court. Yes he could of changed but as he was only going back to school I'm not sure why he’d do this.

- Danny gets Reardon into going into the make up room towards the end to speak to his father. Mr Reardon Sr states that Danny called him to come over but where would Danny get David’s father’s phone number from?

Original  air date in U.S.A 16th December 1982

Original  air date  in U.K. 14th July 1983,  Repeated The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992,  Now 80s 27th February  & 03rd March 2022                                             

Original air date in The Netherlands 18th August 1983

Original air date in Italy 09th February 1984   

Original air date in Belgium 21st  January 1988   

Original  air date in France 30th April  1987