School is Out

Everyone is happy that school is over for the summer vacation but Jesse and Nicole discover Cleo alone in the cafeteria crying. They soon discover that she is moving to California and won't be returning to the school next year. The three friend reminisce about everything that has happened to them during their first year at the School of the Arts. 

Having really enjoyed this season I'd hoped the final episode would be something special but when I first saw this episode I was more than a little disappointed that it was just a clip show.

Although I do think the idea works quite well, for me I already had all these songs from season 4 on video so I would have much rather it had included songs and scenes from seasons 1 and 2.

At the time this episode originally aired in the U.K. one of our soap operas called "Brookside" was showing a huge story about a siege which I was really enjoying. This programme was airing at the same time as Fame. Normally, I would have waited until the repeat on Saturday for that programme but instead I switched over and watched that as I was more interested in that than all the clips of the songs and just flicked back during the adverts and then watched the "Fame" episode in full later.

I like the idea of the 3 new characters thinking back about the events of the school year and this being prompted by Cleo moving to Hollywood. l know Janet was very unhappy on the show and asked to be released from her contract and was really happy that the producers said yes.

There’s nice continuity with the previous episode as they refer to Nicole going off to Mexico with her real Mother and I do like how they talk about the different things that have happened during the school year as again it's good continuity. There's something quite nice about the characters just chatting together too as opposed to their dialogue being used to drive the story. It gives it a sense of realism as that's what people do in real life, reminisce about the past and their experiences.

I've always thought this episode should have been about Leroy, Doris and Danny as they were the only original 3 kids left and although I didn't know it at the time Doris and Leroy were graduating from the school. I assume that the producers were still in contract discussions when this episode was made and didn't know which cast members would be returning the following year and what storylines they would set up for them. Still I would have like the 3 originals to be involved. It is a great shame that Val couldn't have been given a proper send off, she had worked so hard on the show for the previous 4 years.

If they wanted Nicole, Jesse and Cleo as well they could have made this a double episode and have the new characters in the cafeteria and Danny, Doris and Leroy in the dressing room or something it wouldn't have actually cost very much more money to make and the older characters could flashback to the first 3 seasons.

I think it could have been a very emotive and powerful episode had they done it right and they could have briefly mentioned all the characters who had left and given an update of what was supposedly happening with them.

I image the final scene of the 3 of them walking down the corridor towards the lobby arm in arm, tears in their eyes, with the fame theme playing in the background, sad that they are leaving. It would also serve as a bit of a cliff hanger as it would look like they are all leaving the show and we’d have to wait until the new season to see who was actually back and how they would be linked with the school. I know that would have meant they would have had to have given an explanation as to why Danny is still a student but surely they could have come up with some reason.

Anyway to the episode proper, we do seem to get a lot of the songs that the new cast members performed as they relieve their first year although we do see all the other cast members singing too, except Danny! It's interesting that they seem to recall events from episodes they weren't actually in. For instance Nicole mentions how hot it had been when Lydia allowed them to have class in the streets for "Hot Times In The City Streets" in the first episode but she wasn’t in that episode and both Nicole and Cleo seem to remember Leroy having a difficult time when his father turned up out of the blue, but again neither of them were in that episode. It would have made more sense for Jesse to have mentioned these things because he was only missing from one show this season.

I guess as Cleo has only really been a supporting character it’s a little hard to get too emotionally involved in her leaving the school. Had she been one of those characters who just disappeared I don’t think too many people would have really noticed.

Some of the songs here are edited down from what appears in the original episodes like "Two To The Power Of Love" where they cut out all the clips of the other characters and also they shorten "Suspense" and "That's Dancin".

There is a clip of Lydia in the previews of this episode (from Indian Summer) saying they are going to have class but just not in school and although they do show "Hot Times In The City Streets" they don't actually show that clip in the episode! 

Original  air date in U.S.A 25th May 1985

Original  air date  in U.K. 12th August 1985,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Broadcast Autumn 1992

Original  air date in France 13th February 1996