The Deal

When Caruso's is threatened with being closed down Bruno makes a deal with the owner of the lease to try and get Alicia Morgan an audition for the school of the Arts. 

Meanwhile Mrs Berg and Mr Shorofsky are involved in a project leaving others, including Mrs Berg's husband to believe they are having an affair.

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear! Someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to put opera in Fame! I guess looking back at the first 2 seasons where we'd had Julie playing mainly classical music on her cello, this idea could have worked. Julie and her cello had become one of the iconic images people had of the show and it had encouraged others to suddenly start learning to play the cello. So in order to make the show diverse they came up with opera. For it to work, it really needed to be in addition to the normal uptempo, feel good pop music we had on the show. That's what they did with Julie. Her classical performances were never the lead pieces of music in the show they were there alongside the other songs that were performed.  So mistake number one was to have such a long operatic performance in this episode. There's no faulting Phoebe Yadon-Lewis' voice but for me opera does not work for the majority of the young Fame audience. Personally I find it boring and can't relate to it at all. Maybe if they'd have had some fun with it and had her sing a pop song in an operatic way then fine but I don't like this.

Before I'd watched this episode I had high expectations as I'd heard that they were finally replacing Coco with a new student and I assumed cast member because I'd already seen the "You Can't Fly if You're High" cast photo that features Phoebe. For me the show had taken such a knock back when Erica left and I was hoping a new female character would give the show a much needed boost.  I was expecting a change to the opening titles, which didn't happen and left me a little disappointed from the start. Then the credit "Introducing Phoebe Yadon-Lewis..." came up I expected the titles would be changed in the next episodes, which of course didn't happen and Phoebe isn't even in that episode! However, on first watch I didn't know that so I was still excited to see what the new character would be like.

Sadly it wasn't long before I was disappointed again as I realised that Phoebe was no replacement for Erica and Alicia was no replacement for Coco. Maybe it's due to the opera connection but I really didn't warm to the character and didn't actually feel Phoebe was the best actress in the World. I assumed she got the job because she could sing opera rather than her all round acting, singing and dancing abilities.

It might have helped if she'd been introduced in a better story but the main storyline here is dreadful! The so called bad guy isn't going to renew Caruso's lease, big deal. Caruso would have known it was due for renewal and that there could always be a chance that it wouldn't be renewed. That's the way of the World so to try and make it into some gangster story where the bad guy is being really cruel and unreasonable just doesn't work. By the end of the episode even the writers have forgotten the point of the story and it never gets resolved. Bruno makes some ridiculous deal to get Shorofsky to audition Alicia so that Caruso's can be saved but that fails. Yes Alicia gets into the school at the end but it has nothing to do with Bruno or Caruso so why wouldn't Sal go ahead with his business plan and turn the area where Caruso's is into a Parking lot? He says it's worth a lot of money to him and as he doesn't get any help with Alicia then it doesn't make sense that he would suddenly change his mind. Whatever happened we never get told and the Caruso's continues to exist. To me it's just dreadful writing.

It also doesn't help that most of the cast have nothing to do. Gene and Debbie don't appear and Carlo, Valerie, Cynthia, Billy & Carol are relegated to supporting players. It's nice to see Bruno actually have something to do but it's a frustrated that they can't come up with something stronger than this for him. At one point when Bruno tells his friends that Caruso's is being closed he asks "What are we going to do?" It's suggest the kids will come up with some great plan to save the day but sadly none of them are involved in anything that we see on screen. 

The issue of Alicia's audition is also frustrating. In previous episodes and ones still to come, people become new students at the drop of a hat and it doesn't matter that the official auditions are months away. For example in season 2 the new school year had already begun but that didn't stop Shorofsky auditioning and accepting Troy into the school. We see it over and over again with the most recent example just a few episodes ago in "Bottle of Blues" where Sandy Bailey rejoins the school! So I'm not sure why Shorofsky is saying "No" here. He mentions something about it wouldn't be fair to other students but when he then changes his mind Alicia doesn't even have to audition, Shorofsky just listens to a tape! How unfair is that? Other people may actually be very talented but mess up their auditions and not get into the school. So this all becomes nonsense to me.   

Also the timeline gets confused again. When Alicia tells Dwight she wants to audition he says she's 4 months too late. We'll this episode aired in April and the last Auditions were in February in "Appearance" which is 2 months ago. 

If you hadn't guessed already I really don't like this episode and it is one of my least favourites. Up to this point it was the worst episode that had been broadcast. During the original broadcasts I was video recording season 3 but I didn't re-watch this episode as I disliked it so much. Even the end is dreadful as we have a dance performance that is totally unrelated to anything else in the episode. It's very arty and to me is not the normal dance routine we get to see. Maybe the writers thought the audience needed more culture but it doesn't work for me. Also I have to add the dancers are very skimpily dressed!

The best part of this episode is the Shorofsky/Mrs Berg storyline, with everyone thinking they are having an affair and Mrs Berg wanting her husband to carry on thinking that so he'd give her more attention. It's also left to Shorofsky to sing a song that more of the audience can relate to with the lovely "We" which Albert co-wrote. 

   In the U.K. this episode was shown out of order and came before "Catch A Falling Star". 

Original  air date in U.S.A 29th April 1984

Original  air date  in U.K. 15th June 1984,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Autumn 1992

Original air date in Italy 15th August  1986

Original air date in Belgium 18th August 1988      

Original  air date in France 13th May 1989