4-23: Graduation: Part 1

If you are reading this, you probably know that I’ve been in law school. I started the blog during the lag time between the end of my summer internship and the beginning of school last summer, then progress dropped off last semester, because it was a horrible semester. This semester I finally did #3lol right, and I was able to keep up a weekly post pretty regularly.

On Friday I graduated. I put on the goofy cap and gown and walked across the stage of the Chicago Theater.

That whole ritual with the expensive robes and silly hats and solemnity and all is pretty weird, but it was kind of exciting to get to be on stage at the Chicago Theater. Not as cool as it would have been singing with Follies Band, but still pretty cool.

I’ve been trying to recap a graduation episode for over a week now; it seemed apropos. My complete series DVDs are in my mountain home in Colorado, so I can only recap episodes in seasons 1-5, for which I had backup DVDs in Chicago. So I will be recapping Blair and Jo’s high school graduation, and that DVD has traveled with me from Chicago to the Denver metro area to New Mexico, where I am now for my neice’s high school graduation. It’s a busy time. The important part of this paragraph is that I have backup Facts of Life DVDs.

Our episode opens in the familiar Eastland cafeteria the day before graduation. Natalie is in charge of graduation tickets and Tootie is in charge of the diplomas. At first that seemed awfully convenient to me, y’know, our two main characters who aren’t graduating just happen to have important graduation duties. But really it makes sense. I mean, if you need some underclass suckers to do shitty work that no one wants to do, why wouldn’t you hit up the two who are particularly close to two graduating seniors?

Neither my high school nor my college graduations had tickets. People just showed up. I had something like ten or eleven people at my high school graduation, including two uncles and a cousin. So I thought this whole ticket thing was a contrivance when I first saw it. But now we have tickets for my law school graduation, so I guess it’s a real thing. But Eastland only entitles each graduating senior to three tickets. Only three tickets? That’s insane. I’ve got the tiniest little skeleton crew that has ever attended a graduation of mine, and I still need four tickets. Apparently Eastland hates families.

Indeed, one girl, whom Blair is promising perfect beauty by graduation (take a shot for gender stereotypes), needs one more ticket for a grandparent. Blair says she’d share hers but her cousin (Geri!) and both of her parents are coming. Blair promises to exploit her connection to Natalie for it and gets shut down. After a few silly “don’t cry and ruin your makeup” jokes (shot), Blair promises to find her a ticket somehow.

Mrs. Garrett enters, carrying groceries and looking harried. Jo is on Mrs. Garrett’s heels, practicing her terrible valedictory speech:

“When we leave these hallowed halls and step into the corridors of the future, we must fill that gym locker of life with splendid achievements.”

Yikes. But it’s cool that Jo is the valedictorian.

Jo, however, is nervous. Her mother has told the whole neighborhood that she’s valedictorian and she’s worried about letting her parents down with a crappy speech. So far, it does suck, but I don’t think her parents will care.

Mrs. Garrett is worried about how she’s going to get fifteen Jello molds with fruit done. Mr. Parker has left her to do everything on her own and she’s getting fed up with it. That may or may not become important later (spoiler: it will). Jo goes on with her speech:

“As we look back, what have we truly learned, and why have we learned it? How will knowing the Kansas-Nebraska Act help us get a job?”

In the kitchen, Alex, the goofy princess that came to Eastland eleven episodes ago, makes a mess stirring something.

As a princess, she never really done anything for herself, so an ongoing joke is that she’s incompetent at anything she tries to do (insert silly joke about the cupcakes being runny because they haven’t been baked). Mrs. Garrett suggests that Alex go outside to meet the bread delivery. One problem down, but Jo continues:

“If we look behind the curtains of fate…”

Mrs. Garrett suggests that Jo might go practice her speech on Alex. I don’t blame her. This thing is just getting worse and worse.

Jo follows Alex into the dining room, where the bread delivery boy, Roy, is already waiting.

I don’t believe I’ve recapped an episode with Roy before. Roy the bread delivery boy is a recurring character whose dimension is that he’s annoying and has a huge crush on Jo, and he won’t stop trying to get her to go out with him despite the fact that she is clearly uninterested. Loren Lester still looks exactly the same and has consistently been a working actor.

Jo and Roy have an exchange that is typical for them, where he says inappropriate things, and she tells him to go away and/or threatens physical violence. He assures her that Langley college is only four deliveries away and he’ll keep seeing her; Jo takes that as a threat rather than a promise. After a brief exchange between Roy and Alex, Roy tells Jo that he has a graduation present for her. Jo is gracious about it, but when she asks where it is, he straight up sexually assaults her.

I often talk about how the show was both very progressive for its time and also very much a product of its time. This scene and its aftermath are a sad example of the latter. After grabbing Jo and forcibly kissing her against her will, the other girls – her best friends, mind you – proceed to make fun of her. And the live studio audience is in stitches throughout the whole thing. I’m not so naive as to think that that would never happen today, but I’m happy to say that it’s not the norm that I know.

Later, Tootie twirls around in Blair’s graduation gown, and when she asks Natalie if she looks like a graduate, Natalie says, no, she looks like a gospel singer. Yikes, but she’s not wrong.

Blair, meanwhile, enters with another client. This one consults Blair regarding her shoes, and Blair encourages the navy pumps, because “wedgies are tacky.” Blair would have had a heart attack if she saw me at graduation last week. I wore my flat Mary Janes and if I had to do it over again I would have worn my Keens. At my niece’s graduation last night, at least two girls were in Chuck Taylors. I told them both that they were awesome and should never change. My niece, unfortunately, was wearing sky-high wedgies, disappointing both me and Blair.

After a painful round of more jokes about Roy’s assault on Jo, we’re saved by the arrival of Jo’s mother, Rose Polniaczek. I had to double check whether she went by Polniaczek or whether she had a different name. I feel like it’s more common these days for women to revert to their previous name if they changed their names when they got married, and I see a lot more children with different names from their mothers. I’m not a big fan of the whole name-changing thing to begin with, but I especially couldn’t imagine keeping it if I changed it after marrying someone and then we ended up not married. And I would be irritated if my boyfriend’s ex-wife still went by his name. But whatever works for Rose.

Rose heaps praise upon her first-in-the-class daughter and also sneaks in a dig at Jo’s father. Rose has gotten them two rooms at the Off-Ramp Motel and he’d better show up. Jo wants her mom to listen to her speech (I’m so sorry, Rose). Tootie, meanwhile, is distraught that Jo has already started packing in preparation to move out.

Mrs. Garrett returns, her feet in terrible pain having made twenty-three trips between the cafeteria and the auditorium. Rose says that as a waitress, she has to deal with being back and forth on her feet all the time, and the secret is to rotate your ankles. Mrs. Garrett counters that the secret is to get off your feet. I counter that the secret is to not wear stupid shoes.

Tootie, still agonizing about the fact that Jo and Blair are not just graduating, but leaving, stresses to Blair, who is more concerned about the fact that she has to get her “change of address” cards out. I never knew anyone who sent out such cards to their friends when they moved, but I also never knew any Park Avenue heiresses.

Natalie is also unmoved by Tootie’s distress. Jo’s assurances that Langley is only twenty minutes away and they’ll see each other does not mollify her. As we approach the episode’s first commercial break, She’s damn near a complete breakdown.

We return from break to find Natalie nurturing Tootie over a large sundae as Cousin Geri joins them. Natalie has just assured Tootie that things won’t change that much, when Geri comments that she’s going to miss Eastland, and it hits Natalie that Geri will be visiting Blair at Langley instead of Eastland. Always-on-point Natalie correctly points out that Geri’s assurance that they’ll have lunch is hollow. Now Natalie’s on the downward spiral too.

Enter Blair’s mother, Monica Warner, who is an Eastland alumna. She tells Blair she has a wonderful surprise for her – specifically, that she ran into Blair’s father at the inn. Blair explains that she’s not surprised; she knew her father wouldn’t miss her graduation. Monica is clearly skeptical (“He also said ‘I do’ and he didn’t”), but is happy that he’s there. Monica offers to take Geri to the gym to show her the “exact spot where she got her first engagement ring.” In high school. Ew.

Jo comes in, looking for the typewriter (aww, how precious) to type up her speech. Blair plans on using it for something else. The two bicker, and Natalie, now fully into the despair of the girls breaking up, begins pontificating about the change on the horizon. Jo and Blair are having none of it, too up in their own stress. Tootie and Natalie remain in the dining room, despondent.

I get it, I really do. The last couple of weeks of school were bittersweet for sure. I was really glad to be done, but damn am I going to miss some of those people. Oh sure, we promise to not be strangers and we have Facebook and I’ve got an awesome house in the mountains that anyone can come visit every time, but you know how it goes. On the other hand, I am still close with my very closest friends from my past adventures, and I probably get to see them at least once a year or so, and even if we don’t see each other, we know that the bond remains and any of us can show up on anyone else’s doorstep any time if necessary. It’s better if you give notice, but OK if that’s not possible. And so it will be for law school too, I hope.

Enter Roy and Alex, who are apparently hanging out now, and they set up what is one of my very favorite scenes in the entire series. Alex, who overheard Mrs. Garrett talking about some supplies she needed, has brought her 100 pineapples. But it turns out that Mrs. Garrett wanted 100 PIE APPLES. I think that’s hilarious. I still say “one hundred pie apples” damn near every time I see a pineapple. No one ever knows what the hell I’m talking about.

We fade to Mrs. Garrett giving instructions to Blair, Jo, and the two extras they’ve already paid. Apparently they’re row leaders, responsible for assuring that all the girls in their row are dressed properly and in the right place. Blair makes more comments about wardrobe. Rose Polniaczek enters, distraught that Jo’s father still isn’t there. Blair’s mother cries, but apparently it’s only practice for the real thing. Rose and Monica then turn to discussing mascara that doesn’t run (shot!)

In comes a delivery boy with flowers for Blair. Uh-oh. Yep, they’re from her father, who isn’t going to make it after all. He’s been called away to London on business. Blair tries to calm down Monica, who is furious.

The entry of Jo’s father, Charlie Polniaczek, hardly lightens the mood, as Rose is angry that he is wearing a suit he can’t afford. He informs them that he also rented a Mercedes, and got them rooms at the inn instead of at the motel. Rose angrily says that this is why she divorced him; they can’t afford the inn and they certainly can’t afford to take everyone out to dinner, which Charlie offers to do once he learns that Mr. Warner (whom he calls “Steve” even though in the rest of the series he’s always “David,”) was called away on business. Jo tries to mellow out her parents; Blair continues to try to calm her mother down. It’s your typical event family crisis, which I’m pleased to say we had none of during my graduation. It’s different when the graduate has four decades under her belt, I suppose.

Blair and Jo storm into the kitchen, where they announce to no one in particular that they’ve had it with their families and aren’t going anywhere that night. Tootie and Natalie delight in Blair and Jo’s despair; the wheels coming off the family ordeal means that Blair and Jo will be with them that night! But Blair and Jo have had it with Tootie and Natalie too. Jo gives Tootie an earful and Blair dismissively tells Natalie to just go write in her diary, and our two graduates storm off, leaving Tootie and Natalie sad and alone with the Jello molds.

End part 1. We’ve got Blair and Jo pissed off at their parents and their two best friends, their parents pissed off at each other, Mrs. Garrett pissed off at the whole scene, Geri all WTF, and general discord at Eastland. Sounds like an average graduation to me.

Find out how it all turns out in Graduation: Part 2.