Not In Kansas Anymore

When Doris falls and hits her head, while preparing the the "Wizard of Oz" show, she dreams that she's woken up in the lad of Oz herself. Meeting up with Leroy, Bruno and Danny who have become the characters in the Oz story, they must battle the Wicked Witch to free a slave and find their way to the Wizard, who they hope will help them. 

As a kid my favourite film was the Wizard of Oz and back in the 80s I was really excited to hear that Fame was doing their own version. In the U.K. the BBC kept us waiting for this episode as it was shown out of sequence as the season finale.

The first time I saw it I absolutely loved it. The casting of most of the characters to their parts was really spot on, although I don’t think Julie and Reardon really add much to the episode and sadly there’s no Coco but I’m not sure what role she’d have played anyway.

For me it seems like Carol, Albert and Debbie are having a whale of a time being allowed to be totally over the top in their roles. Although some of the episode is a little cheesy it was almost like it was meant to be that Fame remade this film, particularly as it was filmed on the same sound stage as the original film.

These days I find it harder to watch. No that’s not right because I do enjoy it when I watch it and it still makes me laugh but it’s not an episode I choose to watch very often.

The music is also great and at the time a lot of people said to me that they thought these were the best songs they had performed all season as they didn’t think the songs in season 2 matched the quality of those in season 1 and also the season 2 episodes didn’t inspire people to get up and dance as much as the first season did.

My favourite piece of music is the instrumental music they use in the dance room when the characters are walking through it just before the witch gives them a field of poison poppies. It's called "Find Your Dream" and was written by "Fame" composer  William Goldstein. That whole  scene is so effective just using pieces of fabric blowing about to create something beautiful. People can be seen in the corners of the room moving the fabric but it still works wonderfully.

It’s also great to have Valerie and Debbie doing a duet on "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".

The idea of adapting the forest to fast food jungle is simply great and wonderful continuity with Doris’ food based issues that we’ve already seen this season. Here she not only has to resist the food but she has to get the others to resist too. The “Pizzas, Burgers and Fries, Oh My”, line totally got into my head and I often quote it even now, if I feel I’ve eaten too much junk food.

Not so good continuity is that Doris has now totally got over her so called dog allergy from season 1 as even before her dream she is carrying the dog very close to her and not one single sneeze.

There are some great visual blink and you miss them parts like the “wait here for Doris Schwartz” sign and one line jokes. I love Debbie’s line when the punchkins are attacking each other and she says “I’m sorry they’ve been watching too much Magnum PI”. This is a great in joke as "Magnum" was being shown against "Fame" in America at the time the show originally aired and trashing Fame in the ratings, which led to NBC cancelling the show. So I love how they poke fun at it.

I also love the ending where Doris runs around the school saying how much she loves the place, it suits her personality perfectly. Valerie has often stated that this was her single favourite episode but it was also interesting to hear that Carlo didn’t think this was the direction that he thought the show should be going and doesn’t like it.

 Also interesting was the part in Michael Hoey's book where they state at this point in the second season the writers were scratching for story ideas, when a member of the production crew spotted a poster from the original "Wizard of Oz" and suggested it for an episode. 

Original  air date in U.S.A 24th February 1983

Original  air date  in U.K. 15th Sept 1983,  Repeated 29th Agust 1986  & The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992, Now 80s 20th  & 24th March 2022 

Original air date in The Netherlands 30th December 1983

Original air date in Italy 05th April 1984   

Original  air date in France 24th December 1987    

Original air date in Belgium  10th March 1988