Secrets

Mystery surrounds a beating that Dwight has taken. Initially it is thought someone at school attacked him but later it is discovered that he has family problems, with his Mother drinking too much when his Father has left home.

 Meanwhile an undercover cop joins the school to investigate an increase in drug activity and Lydia is less than pleased when Morloch puts the cop in her dance class. 

The first time I saw this episode I was surprised that Erica was still in the titles and I got excited that maybe she hadn’t gone yet and we would see her saying goodbye to people but sadly this never happened. Erica remained in the titles for the rest of the season but to me this just highlighted what a huge loss she was to the show and how much I missed her.

If we didn’t get to see Erica then I wanted to see Doris or Danny or anyone talking about the letter they got from Coco. Maybe Doris could have found out Bruno had known Coco was leaving and was upset that he’d kept it a “Secret” from her, which would have tied in nicely with the episode and given Lee something to do. Sadly none of this happens and Coco seems forgotten, just leaving a huge hole in the show. I really think they should have replaced her straight away to fill the gap.

Anyway as I was already feeling sad about Erica’s departure this episode needed to be something really special to take my mind off that but sadly for me it isn’t.

It feels like half the cast are missing, Leroy, Bruno, Shorofsky and with Coco gone this episode feels very empty. The emphasis here is on Dwight, his family and Guest star Shawn Stevens playing Larry the cop. There seems to be some quite long scenes where the guests are talking but nothing seems to be happening and I have to say I find it a little boring.

I’m not sure Dwight is strong enough to carry a heavy story line, he’s great as comic relief and as a support character particularly as he always seems to come at everything from a different point of view to the main cast but I’m not sure such strong issue led stories of alcoholism and domestic violence work that well. Even though he’s parents divorce and his Mother’s drinking supposedly have been going on for months we’ve never had any indication that Dwight’s unhappy at home and has any family problems and I don’t think we hear that he has any problems in the future. The fact that his Mother ends up in hospital seems to indicate everything will be okay after then but I don’t think problems like this are that easy to solve so it’s just not very realistic.

Dwight looks very odd wearing his shirt and tie as he doesn't normally dress like that, especially for a dance class. It seems like it's only so Lydia can undress him and find the bruises. Which I have to say I felt a little uncomfortable watching a female teacher undressing a male student. It would never happen today and I'm not convinced it would have happened back then either.

Also, I really didn’t buy that the police would have someone enroll in a school because they thought there were drugs there. Maybe they do it in America but I could never see it happening over here so this just didn’t seem real to me. Again this story comes out of nowhere as we’ve never seen any of the students really taking drugs and we see no evidence of this so called increase in activity in this episode either. We don’t really see him investigating and I really don’t see the point of him being there, especially as the story gets wrapped up very quickly.

Maybe this story would have worked better had we the audience been kept in the dark about what was happening too and we see him asking weird questions and the scenes where the kids become suspicious will make us more curious. I don’t know because it just doesn’t work for me.

I wondered too about the pusher being at Caruso’s so another way of involving Bruno and then we’d get to see some of the action. Maybe, there could be a couple of suspects and we could guess which one it is.

It was interesting to hear Doris say that being high messes up a performance. Obviously in light of the real life drug taking, this statement stands out like a sore thumb although I have to say that I still can’t see the cast being high messing up any of their performances.

Making Larry a dance major really doesn’t make any sense at all and it only seems to be like that so he can clash with Lydia and give Debbie something to do. Surely a drama major would have been easier to fake for a few weeks?

Muffin now seems to be a student at the school, so when did that happen? In U.N. week she mentions she would love to go to the school but we never find out that she actually does and now she is just here. Although we’ll never see her again after this episode.

I’m also not sure why Danny is taking Dwight’s safety personally, especially when he seemed to be setting Dwight up for trouble with the gang in the previous episode. They never appeared to be friends before and Danny never seemed to be that brave before, we’ve just seen him running from a gang and how does he know it’s not a gang attacking Dwight? Again this just seems like a convenient way to give Carlo something to do.

Even the songs do very little for me. Val and Cynthia performing “On the West Side” is okay but for me not up to the standard of the other songs from this season.

I always find it a little frustrating when guest stars take over and are singing too. It’s not so bad if they duet with one of the cast but when they sing on their own I get a little annoyed that they are taking away the opportunity for one of the cast member to sing. I’m not particularly keen on “New York State Of Mind” either and the fact that his performance seems to win Lydia and Chris round also seems a little convenient.

Original  air date in U.S.A 07th January 1984

Original  air date  in U.K. 13th April 1984,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992

Original air date in The Netherlands  20th April  1984

Original air date in Italy 05th August  1986

Original air date in Belgium  02nd June 1988      

Original  air date in France 12th November 1988