Go Softly into Morning

Nicole is killed in a car accident when drinking gets out of hand at a party.  As all the teachers and students try to come to terms with their loss, Jesse and Danny are finding it the hardest. The School puts on a benefit in memory of Nicole to raise awareness about drinking and driving.  

How Could they?! How Could they kill off Nicole?!!

This episode is very difficult for me to judge. It has never officially been broadcast in the U.K. The original run was cancelled after season 4 and then when the show was picked up by a cable channel in the early 90s this episode was skipped for some strange reason. 

Over the years I’d seen bits of it and did have a really bad copy that was virtually unwatchable, so I didn’t get to watch it properly until I got a copy in 2009. By this time I knew they had killed off Nicole, which I always thought was a very bad decision and the fact that Nia doesn’t actually appear in the episode made it worse. Before I watched I’d got to the point where I could accept they had killed Nicole so had been looking forward to a really emotional episode but without seeing the accident or Nicole having a death scene It all just felt unreal.

Although we hear Nia singing via the school radio, they don’t even have flashbacks of Nicole to highlight what we have lost. I do like the song “To see Your Face Again” which is my favourite song sung by Carrie but surely mixing flashbacks of Nicole as we see the faces of the students and teachers remembering her during this song would have really added to the emotion, but for some reason they choose not to do it. I’m of the view, if they are going to kill a character, lets make it as emotional as possible.

Also we seem to be seeing a lot of extras during some scenes, like during the talk from SADD, we only need to see our main cast here as those are the ones that we care about. Those are the ones that are affected by Nicole's death. I mean where was Leroy in this episode? Even if we only saw him briefly, surely he would have been affected by her death too. Also it would have been nice to see Nicole’s Mother. She was in a number of episodes back in season 4. I always think it is strange that the Police were the ones that contacted the school, surely they would just tell Nicole’s family and it would be down to them to contact everyone else.

It's almost like the writer, Renee Longstreet (who is one of the Executive Producers this season) doesn't even know the character. To try to add some emotion there is a scene set in the Teacher's lounge where Shorofsky, Mrs Berg and Reggie go through the things from Nicole's locker and reminisce. Sadly they don't talk about anything the viewer has actually seen and instead make stuff up, like Nicole's elephant sleepers she always wore before a show!!! Surely there are lots of moments that actually happened on the show they could talk about so the viewer is connected to the scene too.   

Also the final dance in tribute to Nicole would have been so much more powerful if some of our main cast were involved. Maybe Leroy and Lydia could have done the dance.

As for the story itself, I struggle to believe that Nicole would get into the car with someone who had been drinking. She is way too sensible and isn’t scared to speak her mind, so I don’t buy it. Her family have plenty of money so she would have taken a taxi. We’ve seen her travelling by taxi in previous episodes. As the other characters talk about Nicole they all mention how sensible she was. They try to use Shorofsky to explain how difficult it is to say to a friend you aren’t going to get in their car because they’ve been drinking but I still don’t buy Nicole would actually do it.   To me it would have worked better if the drunk driver had actually run Nicole over. 

Another problem with the story is the character of Micky Garth. We've never met him before and now we only know him as someone who got drunk and caused the accident. It would have been so much more powerful if it was someone we knew. Maybe Chris or maybe Ian, someone we could relate to and know they aren't actually a bad person but got carried away and made a mistake. 

The one thing I do like is the powerful scene at the end between Danny and Jesse and there's some great acting from Carlo and Jesse. It felt so real for the characters, who are both hurting, to just hug and hold onto each other as they cried.

The Private Eye song is pleasant enough but not really my cup of tea. Although it's always great to see Debbie Allen singing.

Original  air date in U.S.A.  05th  January 1987

Never Broadcast  in the U.K.  

Original air date  in France 19th March 1996