The Ballad of Ray Claxton

The students are struggling with a country and western themed show as they can't get into that style of music. Jesse and Nicole are fight and a TV crew come to film the students. Ray Claxton is in Juvenile Hall and sees Nicole on TV. He writes to her and sends her a tape of his music, she loves it and persuades Lydia to use it for the School show. Ray breaks out of Juvenile Hall so he can see the kids perform his music. The story comes to the attention of the TV crew and they threaten to expose the story. Meanwhile Morloch and reporter Becky start a relationship and Holly finds a wounded pigeon she tries to take care of.    

I like this episode. Initially I was a little worried that it would be all about the guest star and was relieved that it concentrated  on Jesse and Nicole's relationship rather than be all about Ray.

Nicole and Jesse having problems in their relationship is interesting particularly as Jesse wants things to be a little loose but doesn’t like it when Nicole starts to have an interest in another guy.

Mrs Berg is great when she gives Nicole the letter and stands their looking over her shoulder wanting to know what’s in it.

I do find it a little unbelievable that Nicole would be allowed not only into the actual cell with Ray but with a whole group of other prisoners. I know it's only supposed to b a juvenile facility but it doesn't seem very secure, especially as Ray manages to escape.

Ray comes across as being a really nice guy but he did break the law and his judgement is a little impaired again by breaking out just because he wants to see his music performed. I do love Nicole when she asks Ray what he did and he says he stole a car and she looks totally bewildered and asks "why" as to her it’s such a stupid and unbelievable thing to do.

I do find it amazing that when Ray leaves the school, then gives himself up, he is actually taken back to the school to not only see the end of the show but to join in! Wouldn’t he be taken back to the juvenile hall, in fact if he was giving himself up why didn’t he just go straight back to the hall instead of to a policeman. Although it gives a nice sweet ending it doesn’t seem very realistic. However, Nicole is so sweet at the end, when she is crying as she watches Jesse and Ray sing together and it's a nice moment. By the end we do also see a much softer side to Jesse and he's not such a "macho jerk".

The music in this episode is good although I do find it a little unbelievable that the music fits exactly into the theme of the show and they change the whole show less than a week before they perform it. Everyone seems to be so into the music but surely there are students at the school who would have been able to write something instead of having to use Ray's music.

I do get confused by the timeline here as we are told the TV show will be at the school all week. Ray sees Nicole on TV in the first episode presumably the Monday, he then writes her a letter which she gets the next day at the earliest.

She seems a little indecisive as what to do at first but then visits him which is surely the following day so we are now on Wednesday, presumably after school? I don't believe people could just turn up to juvenile hall at any time to visit someone, surely it had to be arranged in advance and I can't see Nicole skipping school to visit him.

She then has to go back to school and convince Lydia and everyone to use the music and then goes back for another visit with Ray. Surely again that took more than a day?

The show is put together, Ray breaks out in time to see it and all this happens in that same week as the TV show is still there filming when Ray arrives.

I really like the Morloch in love story as we see another side to him that we don't normally see. The writers really play up the change in Morloch’s character, like him singing, noticing birds and how the sunlight reflects on the desk and it’s all great fun. It’s also a little sad when he realises that Becky isn’t as nice as he originally thought and that the relationship isn’t going to go anywhere.

I also like the TV programme story line and the little bits to camera that each of the characters do. It’s frustrating that Doris isn’t in this episode because I’m sure she’d be in her element being on TV. Danny is quite funny when he says he came to the school to get girls but so far he hasn’t got any yet.

Lydia is excellent doing her piece to camera and seems a little embarrassed admitting to being a popular teacher. However, I do feel she seems a little naive around the camera and not quite seeming to get why they have to do the retake. In later episodes we discover she’s done film work and I’m thinking of “Self Defence” in season 5 when she’s in the martial arts film that the girls go to watch and my recollection is that she says she made it a couple of summers ago so that should mean before this episode so I would expect her to be a little more savvy around the camera.

Lydia's fight with Sherwood seems a little contrived and feels like it’s just there for us to be able to see how sneaky the TV people will be. I’m sure they could have come up with something more convincing for the 2 to argue about than the students not being interested in English. They have rarely been that interested and Sherwood knows that so I find it hard that she now suddenly seems to blame Lydia for that. Then they make up as quickly as they fight.

It's interesting how the TV show is looking for dirt to make a more sensational story so that Becky can get further in her career. It's gives us a nice moral issue to ponder of what is the right thing to do when Ray is found in the school, whether or not the TV people should have been filming something private without people's knowledge, freedom of the press and whether Jesse was right to blank the tape and destroy evidence. We don’t really get any answers here but it’s nice that they touched on the issues.

Holly is finally back after missing a few episodes so that is nice although I do find the story line with her wanting to care for the bird a little too much. I'm not sure she would normally even notice a bird on the street!

It all seems a little heavy handed at the end where Leroy says things don't live well in captivity. It seems to be a not too subtle reference to Ray being in prison. Having been an expert on plumbing in “Blizzard”, Leroy now seems to be an expert on the health of birds. It’s interesting that in both circumstances he literally enters the room and instantly knows what’s wrong! The window in the dressing room that they open at the end seems far bigger in this episode than in previous ones and for it to open directly on the street makes no sense to me at all. From where the auditorium is, which I believe would run parallel to the street, the dressing room always appeared to be on the opposite side of the room so I reckon that window would open into an alley or another street running past the other side of the school. I need to go back and look at the outside of the street set again to see if that window is there in previous episodes because it really looks like an ideal place for people to break into the school. In the next episode, "Nothing Personal" it appears to have bars over it which magically aren’t in this episode so the kids can let the bird go. 

Original  air date in U.S.A 24th November 1984

Original  air date  in U.K. 15th April 1985,  Repeated on The Children's Channel  Broadcast Autumn 1992

Original air date in Italy 29th August 1986

Original  air date in France 28th January 1996