Official Facts of Life Timeline
SEASON ONE
Blair: 9th grade, Natalie: 7th grade, Tootie: 6th grade (Sue Ann and Nancy are probably in 9th grade, Cindy in 8th, and Molly in 7th).
Tootie was a baby and the oldest girls weren’t exactly sophisticates. I have the impression that in the writers’ and producers’ mind, Blair, and the other girls that were supposed to be about her age in the house (Sue Ann, Nancy, and Cindy), were older.
I think these girls are meant to be more like juniors or seniors in high school, but given the rest of the known timeline, they are freshmen.
Kim Fields was ten years old when she filmed this season, and she wore roller skates to make her look taller. A ten-year-old playing a girl who is supposed to be around twelve isn’t that unreasonable.
That could be the face of a sixth grader. Whether that girl should be living with the girls in the first picture is a separate question. I am not familiar with the norms of Peekskill boarding schools in 1979. It also makes the fact that a record store sold Tootie and Natalie bongs even more creepy.
Though there are too few details to confirm for certain the ages of the other girls in Season One, using their relative ages, we can speculate that Sue Ann and Nancy are in ninth grade (which makes Nancy’s long-term, serious relationship with Roger kind of hilarious and/or creepy); Cindy is in eighth grade (it is mentioned in “Running” that she is younger than Sue Ann, but she seems to be older than Natalie); and Molly is in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade. I think she’s probably Natalie’s age, but she could be as young as Tootie.
SEASON TWO
Blair and Jo: 10th grade, Natalie: 8th grade, Tootie: 7th grade
This is, of course, Jo’s first season, and it begins as the girls are beginning a new semester. It seems insane for me to think about a seventh- and eighth-grader tagging along with two high school girls to sneak into a bar, and it also seems insane to me that a couple of sophomores are going to try to pass themselves off as legal, but that’s just because I’m getting old. I tried to pass myself off as legal when I was a sophomore and 21-year-olds look like fetuses to me these days.
SEASON THREE
Blair and Jo: 11th grade, Natalie: 9th grade, Tootie: 8th grade
This season again opens with a return from summer vacation, indicating the start of a new school year. The season opener is the episode in which the older girls, excluding Tootie, have a party with the wine Blair brought back from her summer in Europe, and it makes perfect sense that the three high school girls would exclude the middle schooler. It’s weird, though, that Tootie is the amazing actress who always gets all the starring roles at this young age.
Also, in episode 3, Blair’s friend, who had dropped out the previous year to have a baby, comes and visits. She got pregnant, therefore, as a sophomore, by a senior boy (or a boy already in college). Isn’t it strange how there seem to be those sharp divisions between ages that aren’t that far apart? Once my friends started to turn 30 I seemed so much less older than them than I used to.
This season also features the Eastland/Bates mountain campout, which Tootie is expected to attend as an eighth grader, and Tootie’s trip to New York City where a pimp tries to recruit her. Yikes. We also have Natalie tutoring Blair in chemistry in episode 21. How humiliating is it to get tutored by a freshman when you’re a junior?
SEASON FOUR
Blair and Jo: 12th grade, Natalie: 10th grade, Tootie: 9th grade
Season Four gives us our first solid signpost of age, because the end of this season features Jo and Blair’s graduation from Eastland. The season begins with the school year in progress, but later discussions of how long ago events were confirms that Season Four is the start of a new school year.
In episode 5, in which Blair develops a crush on a mentally challenged delivery boy, it is clearly the middle of winter. The actor who played the mentally challenged delivery boy, incidentally, would appear in an episode in Season Six as a completely different character, specifically, Blair’s cocaine-addicted boyfriend.
Whatever happened to Thomas Byrd?
SEASON FIVE
Blair and Jo: freshmen in college, Natalie: 11th grade, Tootie: 10th grade
The season opens with the girls adjusting to the new school year, with Jo and Blair at Langley college and Tootie and Natalie hating their roommates at Eastland. We also have Mrs. Garrett – and the setting of the show – moving from Eastland School to Edna’s Edibles in downtown Peekskill. Jo dates a rich boy and Blair pledges Gamma Gamma with Jami Gertz as Boots St. Clair.
It seems a little odd that Blair, a freshman in college, dates Cliff, a second- or third-year medical student, but it’s not impossible, especially for the fabulous Blair Warner. He does propose to her in episode 20, though, which means he asks her to marry him after they’ve been dating for less than a year. Yeah, I’m judgy.
SEASON SIX
Blair and Jo: sophomores in college, Natalie: senior at Eastland, Tootie: 11th grade
In my opinion, the most important season, if not the best. The girls return from summer vacation in an awesome season opener, so we know that we’re in a new school year. Tootie’s boyfriend Jeff is now in college, so he is a year younger than Blair and Jo, a year older than Natalie, and two years older than Tootie. It also means he worked very hard as an illiterate high-school senior in Season Five, episode 5 so that he could catch up enough to be enrolled in college now. Jo has a relationship with one of her professors, and Mrs. Garrett enrolls in a Shakespeare class at Langley. Natalie graduates from Eastland but makes the decision not to go to college. Most importantly, Jo begins wearing her hair down.
SEASON SEVEN
Blair and Jo: juniors in college, Natalie: 18 and she likes it, Tootie: senior at Eastland
The season begins with the girls returning from summer to find that Edna’s Edibles has burned down. Tootie’s graduation is discussed, and Tootie also learns to drive, which is not unreasonable for a 17 or 18-year-old who has grown up in a boarding school outside of a city.
Also, this is the first George Clooney season.
I had that haircut too
SEASON EIGHT
Blair and Jo: seniors in college, Natalie: second year like a rolling stone, Tootie: freshman in college
At the end of last season, Tootie wanted to join a traveling production rather than go to college, and when she didn’t get cast, she wanted to move to New York and share a tiny rat-hole apartment with Natalie. They moved back in to Chateau Garrett and apparently Tootie went to college, since she’s rushing a sorority in episode 13. Blair and Jo graduate from Langley at the end of the season.
But wait! Chateau Garrett becomes Chateau Stickle as Mrs. Garrett runs off with her safariing boyfriend-turned-husband, and her sister, Beverly Ann, moves in with the girls.
Episode 3 is weird; it’s the only time since Tootie met Jeff that she dates someone else (and his name is Rudy. Out of all the names in the world, why give him one that rhymes with his girlfriend’s?). They consider whether to go all the way, and then they don’t, and then we never see or hear from Rudy again and Tootie and Jeff get back together later in the season anyway.
Blair takes the LSAT! She thinks she doesn’t need to do well on the LSAT because she’s a Warner, but then she learns the hard way that she can’t buy her way into a T14. Jo stays up with her all night the night before the LSAT to prepare for it.
This season also features the silly-but-amusing Twilight Zone episode, and one of my very favorites, “The Little Chill,” in which Nancy, Cindy, and Sue Ann come over to visit.
SEASON NINE
Blair and Jo: just out of college, Natalie: year three of finding herself, Tootie: sophomore in college, I guess
Awww, this is the final season. It opens with Jo in Malibu, which I think happened because she went out there for a job. The job fell through and she was embarrassed to go back, I guess. I remember she tries to sleep on the beach and allows herself to get arrested so she can spend the night indoors in lockup. She ends up house sitting for Richard Moll from Night Court. Gee, that doesn’t date the series at all.
But it ain’t a series if it ain’t in Peekskill, so eventually Jo goes back and gets a job at the community center and Blair goes to Langley Law which ends up not mattering because she puts her law school dreams on hold to buy Eastland as the series ends.
Also: Jo gets married, I guess to a dude she’s been with for less than a year (his name is Rick and he just sort of shows up), and Natalie loses her virginity to her boyfriend Snake!
Lisa Whelchel refused to appear in that episode because the pre-marital sex thing conflicted with her religious values. The rest of the cast, especially Mindy Cohn, were totally on board with a virginity-losing episode. I agree with them. It was about time.
And so the series ended, with Jo 22 or so and married to Rick, who takes off an a world tour as a concert pianist. Blair, also 22 or so, has purchased and become the headmistress of Eastland. Pretty impressive. Natalie plans to move to New York to live with David Spade, Richard Grieco, and some other, less-famous people, and Tootie is scooting off somewhere with Jeff (who has graduated from college by now) to act.
