Words

Sherwood is horrified to find the books that  belong to her brightest student have been censored by the girl's step father. 

Bruno and Shorofsky class on the content of the latest school show.

Meanwhile Coco is in dilemma when her boyfriend Julie is planning on leaving town and wants her to sleep with him before he leaves. 

In the U.K. this episode was shown out of order as episode 6 instead of episode 9. I think the idea behind this episode is very good but the execution of it doesn't quite work for me and the story of Jenny McClain’s step father censoring everything she reads is just so full of holes. 

It seems incredibly far fetched to believe that one man would possibly be able to censor every single book, magazine, TV programme, piece of music etc.. for both Jenny and her sister. Surely the time involved to actually do that would become a full time job. He literally has to read every page of a book to be able to cross out what he believes is inappropriate. This wouldn't just be English but surely every subject and any personal reading that Jenny wanted to do. If Jenny is in a play did he censor the script too? If so how did she learn her part? How does she do her assignments if she doesn't have access to the reading material but not only does she do them but she is a really good student so presumably gets high grades? To a certain extent it would have been more realistic if he’d banned the books completely but that would then bring me to a whole load of other holes in the story!

Also aren't these school books he’s damaging? When the next person got the books surely they would highlight that passages had been crossed out, so everyone would know about it. From the story it’s not clear how long Jenny has been at the school but being in the same class as our main characters I can only assume she is in her 2nd or 3rd year so I struggle to believe this has taken so long to be noticed. Wouldn't the people sitting next to Jenny see that pages had huge chunks blacked out? What if Jenny was asked to read out loud in class how could she if she doesn't have all the words in front of her. 

At the end Jenny just goes to the school library and gets the books again. Couldn't she have done that in the first place and then leave them in her locker at school and read them in her spare time at school? Her step father can only censor the things she gives him so if she doesn't let him have them he can’t stop her reading things he doesn't approve of. 

On the whole I think the writers really needed to re-think what they wanted to achieve by this episode and come at it from a different angle.

However, based on what the actual episode is I always find it difficult when a student is there for just one episode and gets a story. For me this could have worked better if they’d have used one of the dancers as the student so at least they wouldn't just disappear in the next episode. Or even better make Jenny a semi regular, she seems nice and I'm sure they could have linked her to other stories, or use someone like Dwight as he appears to be relatively new to the school it may have worked better with him.

It is nice for Sherwood to have a strong story line and we see just how passionate she is about books and literature and her students. There's some great acting from Carol Mayo Jenkins. The last scene before the song where she reads Jenny’s letter is very touching.

The one thing that I did like is that Mr McClain seems to be a normal rational person and they avoided turning him into a raving mad man. He actually makes a very valid point that in films and TV programmes we do have some form of censorship to stop children and young people seeing inappropriate material but even 25 years later there is still nothing official in place for books. All he was doing was what the authorities do with other forms of media.

I'm also not keen on the Coco story line. Where has this boyfriend suddenly come from? How long have they supposed to have been together? He’s never been mentioned before and we don’t really get the answers to those questions in this episode. He’s just there, loves Coco has a few personal problems and is joining the navy to try and sort them out but wants a night of pleasure with Coco first! 

To be honest, to me, Coco always seemed way too focused on her career and becoming a star to become distracted by relationships and boyfriends. She has never shown any interest in boys at all in the past and doesn't again in the future so that makes this story line even more difficult for me to take to. 

I also question the reason behind Coco turning down Julio’s proposition. Would a 16ish year old girl like Coco really say no to a boyfriend who she loves and who loves her and is going away? Would she not be scared that if she says no he’ll go off with someone else? Was this decision made because of what is right for the character or what the TV network bosses wanted and they didn't want Fame to show teen sex? We have exactly the same issue come up in Season 5, when after being together for a year Jesse wants to make love with Nicole but in the end she is making him wait a little longer. That certainly didn't feel right for the characters either, so I have my suspicions about this episode too. If I am right then it’s ironic that an episode that deals with censorship could also be a victim of it. I guess we’ll never know for sure.

As for the music Albert is singing again and that’s twice in only a few episodes, he co wrote “Did I ever Really Live” and I really like it. This song has been cut from the DVD version of the episode, presumably for copyright reasons on the lyrics who were written by Allan Sherman.

I'm not a fan of Sing For You America as it’s a little patriotic for me and not being American it doesn't say anything to me.

Also, I really dislike the Indian deer dance thing, which seems to go on for ages and really comes across as filler. I was interested to read in Michael Hoey's "Inside Fame..." book that the Deer dance was something Debbie Allen had fought for as she wanted to do something different. Executive Bill Blinn had continually said "No" as he thought it didn't have enough energy for a TV audience. Debbie eventually got her way but the producers still didn't think it was the right thing to include on the show. In my opinion they were right.     

One good thing in this episode is that the guest stars don't take over and they are only there to enhance the stories of out main cast. Lori Singer is again missing from from this episode. Out of 6 episodes shown by the BBC Lori was missing from 2 and only had a very small part in the other 4.

Original  air date in U.S.A 25th November 1982

Original  air date  in U.K. 08th June 1983,  Repeated The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992,  

Now 80s 13th  & 17th Feb 2022                                           

Original air date in The Netherlands 11th July 1983

Original air date in Italy 12th January 1984  

Original  air date in West Germany  04th June 1985

Original  air date in France 28th December 1987

Original air date in Belgium 31st  December 1987