Nothing Personal

Just 2 weeks before the first year students concert lead dancer Paula is injured and Cleo asks to take over. Reluctantly after some persuasion from Leroy, Lydia agrees.

Chris is given an assignment by Sherwood as extra credit for English class to work on the school newspaper. Chris' first job is to review the first years concert. Chris doesn't like the performance and deliberates about what to write. Sherwood advises him to write the truth, which Chris does in his own trackless way. The resulting article devastates Cleo and she leaves school and makes a living waiting tables at Lou's Lanes.  Teachers and students punish Chris for his actions. Who knew the truth would hurt so much?

Meanwhile, Jesse and Nicole have split up (again) and in order to make each other jealous they both try seeing other people. Nicole places an ad in the School paper and Jesse unknowingly responds to it.   

This is one of my favourite episodes as its good fun with lots of humour and a nice moral dilemma which gets out of hand.

Although Chris and Cleo seem to have the main plot, to me it feels more like ensemble episode. One of the things I really like that all the kids are finally in an episode together, which is the first time since episode 2. Shorofsky, Morloch and Mrs Berg are missing but there's lots of stuff going on so I don't really notice their absence too much.

To me this episode is similar to season 1's "The Crazies" with the kids learning lessons about truth and honesty. Here things seem to get far more complicated as different characters have different opinions of what the right course of action is.

I do feel sorry for Chris probably more than Cleo as things for him  get out of hand quickly and he really didn't want to be involved in the first place. Lydia punishes him and the kids hurt him. It's interesting that people believe Chris has made a mistake but then deliberately take similar actions themselves and think at the time it's the right thing to do. They deliberately hurt Chris, when he didn't deliberately hurt anyone.

I love how Doris deliberates about walking out of Chris' performance. She obviously doesn't agree with the other kid's actions but eventually follows the pack. It's nice that by the end of the episodes Doris, Leroy and Lydia realize that their actions were wrong and learn something from the issues.

The idea of a school paper is a good one, although as they seem to be putting together an issue per week I'm a little confused how all the students involved can fit the work in with there studies and all the shows they are doing. This seems particularly true of Dwight who's got his hall monitor duties to do too.

Nicole and Jesse's story is great fun although I'm not convinced either of them would take too much interest in placing an ad in a newspaper. We see them both surrounded by a group of people from the opposite sex so if they wanted to do something to make the other jealous I don't know why they just don't go out with one of them. Obviously the writers wanted to link their story to the school paper too. I do enjoy their relationship and all its ups and downs as it's something totally different for Fame as in the past all relationships have started and ended in one episode but this feels a lot more realistic.

We have the start here of Dwight's crush on Holly which I always enjoyed. His letter to the personal add is really sweet and I love his scene with Holly when she's trying to find out who the letter is from but he can't find the courage to tell her the truth. However, I'm a little confused here because Dwight is very much part of the group here and is out with them at Lou's Lanes for both the scene where the kids walk out on Chris and for the finale however in "Who's Afraid of The Big Bad Wolf" later in the season he's not part of the group and doesn't know how to act around people.

I like Janet's "Dream Street" song and the little video using the rest of the cast that they put together. A lot of Janet fans think that this was an official music video done by the record company instead being part of a Fame episode. Her little speech about one day becoming a big star couldn’t have come more true for Janet.

It's a nice feel good ending and I do love Billy and Janet's duet on "Blast the Music", which is a great upbeat song.

 A point of trivia, is at the start of the episode the extras who are part of the bowling team are all wearing shirts with "Blinn's Trophies" written on the back as a tribute to departed executive producer "William Blinn". I wonder if that was the idea of Debbie Allen who is directing this episode?

Original  air date in U.S.A 01st November 1984

Original  air date  in U.K. 22nd April 1985,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Broadcast Autumn 1992

Original air date in Italy 30th August 1986

Original  air date in France 29th January 1996