Friendship Day

Doris becomes a control freak and feels unappreciated, when she tries to organise the Friendship Day dance. Bruno and Julie are secretly planning something for the dance, making heir parents think they are going to have sex. 

Meanwhile Reardan asks Sherwood to critique his poetry and Danny ask Leroy to teach him to dance better in an attempt to get noticed by Michelle.

Out of all the episodes in season 2 I think I've seen this one the least amount of times so I didn't remember everything that happened and it’s actually a better episode than I remember it being however I don’t think the writers knew what they were doing..

I did get a little confused by this episode right from the beginning. Sherwood states that “Friendship Day is upon us and it’s the one day each semester….” We don’t actually use the word semester in the U.K. our academic years are divided in Terms. I’d always assumed that the Semester was the equivalent of a Term or there about but now I'm not so sure because that would mean they had Friendship Day a few times each year. Again we don’t have anything like Friendship Day in the U.K and we've never heard about it before on the show. Actually we never hear about it again either! 

Further to my confusion Dwight asks Shorofsky if the teachers will be dressing up like last year. Which makes it sound like these events are yearly so is a semester also the name of each academic year in America? Not only does Dwight’s remark confuse me about the word Semester it also confuses me about how long he’s been at the school. We see him for the first time at the start of this season in the same episode that we see Reardon for the first time. Here Reardon states this is his first Friendship Day, so does that mean that Dwight was already at the school but we never saw him?

Also in the first episode of this season Doris finds out his name for the first time, thinks it’s unusual or funny (I'm not sure) and asks if he’s named after Eisenhower. This implies to me that he was new and she’d not met him before.

However the story gets even more confusing when Bruno has to explain to Julie why Doris is acting weird over the organisation of this Friendships day. He states that last year Doris messed up the plans and there was no entertainment except for Dwight and his sousaphone! Surely Doris would have known who Dwight was if he’d saved her plans from becoming a complete disaster. Also why is Bruno explaining last year’s events to Julie? Where was she? Are we to believe that Julie hasn't yet been at the school for a year, even though we are approaching the end of the 2nd season? Even if she was away sick or something and missed Friendship Day last year, being such good friends with the group she would have heard all about what happened and wouldn't need Bruno to explain it all to her. Phew even explaining my confusions is getting confusing.

Judy Farrell who plays Julie’s mother co wrote this episode so maybe she was confused about the timeline but I would have expected one of the producers to pull up the discrepancies in the script. Julie’s Mum hasn't actually had much to do this season so it looks like in order to give herself some plots she decided to write an episode!

I do think that some of the things that happen or we are told about don’t actually fit in with Doris’ character. Doris works so hard at everything she does that I don’t believe she would have messed up the plans for the last Friendships Day. She would have worked herself into the ground to make sure everything was perfect. Even if something had gone wrong like a power cut or instruments not in the right place, this is the school of the arts and the kids would do something like “We Got The Power” like they did when the power was out in Season 1, or Doris would have simply sung herself. 

I also don’t believe that she would have left the party early because she was feeling unappreciated. Doris would have found a way to get someone to thank her for her hard work. Originally Michael is to be Doris’ date I'm not convinced Doris would feel confident to ask one of the top dancers out for fear of rejection and I'm not convinced he would have agreed to be Doris’ date either, I'm sure he would have been holding out for one of the fit female dancers.

"Murphy’s Blues" is a good song and Lee states in the sleeve notes for the Ultimate Fame CD that he had to write this song quickly as the episode was running short and they needed him to come up with a song by the next day.

Sadly Coco is missing but Mrs Berg is hilarious as usual especially when Bruno’s Dad thinks she and Mrs Miller as sticking together because they are both women and he said “ shouldn't you say goodbye sister”. Mrs Berg doesn't put 2 and 2 together and is confused because they aren't sisters. 

There are a couple of nice touches of continuity where Leroy seems to be at the dance with Stephanie so it looks like they are still in a relationship even though it doesn't actually get mentioned any more.  Also Doris mentions working at the summer camp for deaf kids and being able to sign which comes up again in the 3rd Season’s "Signs" episode.

There is a scene where Mr Martelli and Mrs Miller are cooking at the school and Mrs Berg takes them to a room with ovens and says it was a home economics room when the building was a normal school. I'm not exactly sure when this would be because in later seasons we have characters who have supposedly graduated from the school years before. Like Trevor Kane in season 4 and Michael Tafner in the very last episode. Both of these men must have been in their 50s so I’m guessing they graduated about 30 years before, both of them knew Mrs Berg so she too has worked at this school for a long time. So these ovens had to come from the 1940 or 1950s they don’t look that old and if you don’t use the room why waste money on updating them. If there are that old, how safe would it be to use them?

Mrs Berg adds that they only now use the room for plays with kitchen scenes. Well firstly why don’t they use it for lessons? I thought the kids had to take a programme of full academic subjects and surely being able to cook is more important than some of the other subjects they take? I'm also intrigued about the plays they do. If there is a play in the auditorium, the cast and the audience then have to wander around the school for any scenes needing a kitchen and then back to the auditorium for the rest of the play? None of this conversation adds anything to the episode and we don’t need an explanation as to why the school has a classroom with ovens in it, we would just assume it was for the kids' lessons. So to explain something that doesn't need explaining and only raises extra questions is pointless.

I do feel sorry for Julie as her reputation seems to be in question again. Last week there were rumours about a relationship with Troy and now this week it’s Bruno. Sadly she doesn't actually get a proper love interest this season and the writers seem a little stuck for ideas as to what to do with the character.

"Better with a Friend" is a nice ending to the episode and Lori gets a small chance to sing

Original  air date in U.S.A 17th February 1983

Original  air date  in U.K. 24th August 1983,  Repeated The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992, Now 80s 20th  & 24th March 2022      

Original air date in Australia 17th June 1983                                  

Original air date in Italy 29th March 1984   

Original  air date in West Germany  02th July 1985

Original air date in Belgium  03th March 1988      

Original  air date in France 14th May 1988