Hold That Baby

When Chris is left baby sitting his nephew Spike for a couple of days he learns a lesson or two about what is important in life. 

Meanwhile, Nicole, Dusty, Reggie and Jillian form a band. With Miltie as manager they soon discover that they can't agree on anything!

Mr Dyrenforth learns Mrs Berg's true value when she has to go out of town for a few days and he has to cope alone! 

This episode always feels like a light weight bit of filler to me.  There's nothing really wrong with it and for me it is actually one of the better season 6 episodes and has some nice humour but it doesn't really do very much, it's just Chris trying to look after a baby and getting everyone at the school to help. Who knew they could fill a whole episode with nothing really happening. All for Chris to learn a lesson at the end that maybe family is more important than show business.  Well until the next time he's left being selfish and only thinking about his own career.  Chris has learnt these kind of lessons before but his character never seems to really grow from these lesson.  I find it strange that they'd suddenly invented an older sister for Chris as  we'd never heard of her before. Chris' back story is that his mother had died. I  feel that in real life the older sister would have taken on more of the Motherly duties and would have raised her siblings. So where was she when Chris was having problems with his father at the end of season 3, and there was no one to take care of his younger sister and brother?

Anyway,  I do really like the story involving the girl's band and I wish that was the main story, in this episode, with more emphasis on them disagreeing and falling out, making that more dramatic, rather than most of it being thrown away in humour. The Chris story of having to look after his nephew could be the B story. I think the girls band idea could have actually played out over a number of episodes, where we see them getting together and maybe even having a little success and then the arguments that could occur as they want to develop different styles of music and the falling out lasting longer. It is after all a story about going after Fame so it would have been nice to see some of the compromises that young people have to make in order to try and achieve that fame. Sadly it's all a little too rushed here.

Yet again we get to see a different side to Reggie's character and she really is turning into a different person this season. We haven't seen her disagree about the more commercial music she's performed in the past. Here she refers to Nicole as Mrs Barry Manilow but in season 5 she was happy to sing and even write this kind of music. It would be nice to actually have her being different from when she first arrived at the school and arguing about the style of music from the beginning. I guess it could be argued that as she now has a friendship/relationship with Ian that her tastes are changing but I'm feel I'm really making excuses here for the inconsistencies in how the writers present her character. I feel more of the real Carrie Hamilton was coming out at this point in time and Carrie actually co-wrote the song "East of Eden" which I do really like. It has a great 80s New Wave feel to it.  Also "Only Love Will Hold Fast" works well for the girl group and I like that too and it's a nice contrast to "East of Eden".

Original  air date in U.S.A.  10th  November 1986

Original  air date in U.K.  The Children's Channel  Broadcast Early 1993

Original air date in Italy 11th January 1989

Original air date  in France 14th March 1996