Lisa's Song

The school puts on a production of "The Gypsy Queen",  a play that has a weird reputation for being haunted but most of the students find very little to interest them and think the play is dull and boring. However, strange things begin to happen to Doris who is playing the lead in the play.

 Meanwhile Miss Sherwood needs a substitute teacher to cover an afternoon class but refuses to tell Morloch the reason why she'll be away. He then refuses to authorize the substitute so Sherwood turns to Mrs Berg for help.

After a few lacklustre episodes things get back on track here with a great episode which sees Debbie Allen’s directorial debut. Although Doris takes the lead the whole cast are involved, which is the first time in quite a few episodes. Although Bruno is still missing,. which I think is 3 episodes in a row that Lee has not appeared.

I can see why some people might not like this episode because of it’s subject matter and in the Bring Back Fame show they used this episode as an example of the decreasing quality of the show and silly story lines but I love it and don’t have any issues with the story line or it not being realistic. I think if a story is written well and the characters are believable then any story no matter how far fetched can seem plausible. I’m a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer who lives in a crazy world of vampires and demons but it works for me because the characters are so good and the writing is excellent and I think the same is true of this episode.

By the time this episode first aired  in the U.K. "Fame" had moved to Friday nights in the U.K. and I went to a youth group so couldn’t watch the whole episode as it aired. With the previous few episodes I’d seen about half of the show, then would go out and would catch up on video later on. However, this episode intrigued me from the start. It is mysterious and a little chilling. I love Debbie’s reaction when Doris’ eyes change colour, it gives me goose bumps. Anyway, I kept saying I’ll just watch a few more minutes because I wanted to see what happened. In the end I watched the whole thing and then had to run out the door at top speed to meet my friends. I was late but it was definitely worth it.

Mrs Berg is excellent, I love the fact that she's a medium, and her “Rock n Roll World” dream sequence is great stuff. I like the song and the whole performance. The end is funny too as Mrs is Berg is dancing along in her own way. 

This song was never included on the last "Fame" album that was released here in the U.K., (“Sing For You”) as that only featured songs from the 2nd season but in America this song was on the album and became the title track. The Fame magazine reported that it was being used as a promo on U.S. TV to advertise the 3rd season before it started, sadly we never got to see that promo in the U.K. I always wondered if they used the dream sequence that we see here in that promo or if they were just playing the song in the background?

When it’s over and Lydia wakes Mrs Berg up I love how she keeps looking around the halls checking that the kids aren’t going to suddenly burst into song. This is a great episode for Mrs Berg with lots of fun stuff going. Actually Sherwood and Morloch have some fun lines too.

Also when Doris says to Lydia that they didn’t do a very good at keeping things quiet and she knows Lydia told Sherwood and Shorofsky. Lydia is all defensive and trying make it look like she did and says “Said who?” and Doris quips back “They Did!”

The end of the episode is very funny as Morloch is looking at Sherwood’s pictures. Shorofsky asks what he’s doing and he replies “looking at hot sweaty naked young men”. Shorofsky is totally dead pan “Still waters run deep”. Morloch then realises what he thinks and runs after him to explain

Shadows and Light is also a really great, song with a really haunting melody and it suits the episode perfectly. This is one time I don’t mind the guest star singing because Val is on there too and actually I really like the tone of Christie Houser’s voice. I love how they do the whole scene using the mirror as it’s very effective. I’m not sure if that was the idea of the writer or whether it came from Debbie as the director but it’s very good. I love how Lisa, a ghost, sings the line “Are you real or are you just a dream”.

The original version of the play was done in 1918. Now thinking back to season 2’s “Friendship Day” when Mrs Berg tells Mrs Miller and Mr Martelli that the ovens in a classroom were left from when the school was a normal school, when exactly was that supposed to be the late 1800s or early 1900s? I don’t think they did domestic science back then. Also they had some very modern looking stoves to use!

In a similar vein this episode makes me think about Shorofsky’s age. I always assumed he was supposed to be in his late 50s. Here he mentioned that he was involved in a production of the gypsy queen back in Germany when he was about the kids age, so 16 or 17. However we already know that Shorofsky left Germany before the war started in 1939. So he was over 17 when he left possibly 19 as Albert was in real life. The show is now in 1984 so that put Shorofsky around 64 possibly older which was around Albert’s real age but shouldn’t he have retired at some point during the show’s run? Were teachers allowed to stay on after age 65 back then?

Doris mentions that Holly has been to all these fancy schools but I have no idea what she is referring to. We haven’t really been told anything about Holly’s past and I don’t recall that they ever mention anything about this in the future. It seems a very odd thing to say for no reason.

 All in all a great episode though.

Original  air date in U.S.A 18th February 1984

Original  air date  in U.K. 18th May 1984,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992

Original air date in Italy 9th August  1986

Original air date in Belgium  7th  July 1988      

Original  air date in France 26th November 1988