Jo, Blair, Natalie and Tootie all had boyfriends, and here they are.

Today was going to be my first recap post, but I’ve received an inquiry of sorts from a follower which I will address instead. hobbywizard says:

“I don’t recall any of them having boyfriends…ever.”

hobbywizard, darling, your recollection is faulty. While it is absolutely true that the focus of the show was more about the relationships among the girls/women than their relationship to men, there were plenty of boyfriends of varying regularity throughout the show’s run. In fact, the first entry was going to feature a rundown of boyfriends, but I found the task too monumental for the intro post, plus it just would have taken up too damn much space. But it’s perfect for a post of its own!

Wait wait, wasn’t Jo gay?

When I mention how much I like the show and how my own “WWJD” mantra stands for “What Would Jo Do,” I am often asked whether Jo was gay. Not according to the show, nope. In fact, her love interests were relatively stable and she was the only one (besides Mrs. Garrett) to marry a dude on the show.

It bears noting that all of our heroines were decidedly heterosexual, and homosexuality or even bi-curiosity was never hinted at in any character (which makes it slightly less progressive, arguably, than Sweet Valley High).

The pilot of The Facts of Life takes a sideways glance at lesbianism, sort of. It’s not the show’s proudest moment. The 1979 pilot treatment was the only time the show even hinted that homosexuals existed. On the one hand, this is extremely sad for a show that’s as progressive as this one was. On the other hand, it was 1979-1988, so I’m willing to give the show a pass for not covering everything.

Anyway, the pilot: Part of the conflict of the episode has Blair calling Cindy “strange” because she likes sports, prefers sweat pants to dresses, and is “always touching and hugging girls.” Cindy admits to Mrs. Garrett that she doesn’t really dig on boys. Mrs. Garrett tells her that it’ll happen, that one day that clock will start ticking [barf], which, in the end, it does [double barf. Such a wasted opportunity].

But, a sausagefest of partners is what we have. So with honorable mentions to the Nancy character’s “Roger” and Mrs. Garrett’s litany of gentleman friends, here are the dudes who hung out with our four favorite Eastland students:

Jo’s Dudes

Eddie Brennan: We first meet Eddie in “Teenage Marriage,” a season 2 episode. He is also a reformed delinquent from Jo’s old neighborhood, and he has now dropped out of high school and joined the Navy.

The 2-part episode has Jo conflicted about the prospect of marrying Eddie; of course she chooses not to or the next seven seasons wouldn’t have happened! Despite the decision not to marry, they stay together, and Eddie appears again in the season 3 episode “Sweet Sorrow.” At the end of it, they break up/agree to see other people, in part because Jo finds she enjoys the company of a Bates Academy boy. We don’t see Eddie again until the heart-wrenching season 5 episode “Seems Like Old Times,” in which Eddie returns (he’s earned his GED by now and has earned some college credit) and the chemistry is still there in spades, except for the whole problem of his marriage and deception regarding same. We never see him or hear about him again after that. If there is one character I wish would have made another appearance, it’s Eddie.

Rick, AKA the guy she married: Damned if I can remember his last name. In the last season, Jo married the boyfriend she’d been toting around for a couple of seasons. I recall him sending a dude in a chicken costume to surprise her, then proposing because he was about to head off somewhere with the Peace Corps.

Others of note: In one episode in season 4, Jo dates a dude named Doug that she works with at a motorcycle shop, but they break up at the end of the episode when she realizes that he can’t handle her being a more competent mechanic than he is. In season 5, she dates a rich kid named Bill that she meets in college (they’re together at the end of the episode but we never see him again), and in season 6, she dates her professor. She also strikes up a relationship with a musician named “Flyman” (played by erstwhile musician Michael Damien) in a couple of season 7 or 8 episodes, the first of which involved our heroines jetting off to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break. Oh yeah, and she hooked up with a fellow biker in Paris. And a dude named Kevin who lived with them briefly.

Natalie’s Dudes

Snake: Snake wasn’t mentioned until at least season 7 or 8 and we didn’t actually meet him until the last season. I think it was something of an inside joke that Natalie had this elusive boyfriend named “Snake” that we never saw. Until they had sex. We met him after that.

Natalie losing her virginity with Snake is a classic moment in the series. It’s common knowledge (to me, anyway) that the writers wanted Blair to be the one to lose her virginity first, but Lisa Whelchel, a devout Christian, refused not only to play a character having premarital sex, but to appear in the episode. I recall the episode opening with one of the other women being on the phone with Blair, who was purportedly on vacation or something, thus establishing her absence.

Others: Although Snake was Natalie’s only boyfriend for more than one episode (except maybe Alfred Webster, see below), Natalie had a number of boyfriends throughout the series, which is yet another point in the show’s favor. We all know she was bigger than the other girls in the first few seasons, and not much was ever made of it (apart from a contrived reference in the anorexia episode). She certainly didn’t lack for boyfriends or dates any more than any of the others, and her weight was never made an issue in her relationships.

In the season opener for season 3, when they come back from summer vacation, Natalie has a million boys writing to her from summer flings. Just a few episodes later, she’s planning on sneaking off to New York for the weekend to entertain a young man. She had one-episode relationships with Neil, a Bates boy in season 2; Alfred Webster of Stone Military Academy in season 4 (and maybe season 3; she’s his blind date in season 3 but we don’t learn that they were actually “dating” until the character appeared again in season 4); Gil, another Bates boy, in season 4 (we never did find out what happened to Alfred); and Michael, Tootie’s cousin, in season 5. She also is the only one that ends up going to the Sadie Hawkins dance in season 4 AND she also had herself a Ft. Lauderdale boyfriend in that season 7 or 8 episode. I don’t remember his name but I remember that when they met she asked him what kind of tree he was.

Tootie’s Dudes

Jeff Williams: We first meet Jeff in the season 5 episode “What Price Glory?” Jeff is a football star (because of course he is) at Bates who wanders into Edna’s Edibles. He and Tootie are immediately smitten with each other (because when the only black guy in Peekskill runs into the only black girl in Peekskill (except for episodes where race is the theme), they immediately fall in love). We find out in the episode that he is illiterate (oh my god the racism it hurts), which apparently he fixed somehow because he remains with Tootie for the rest of the series. There’s an episode in maybe season 6 or 7 where Tootie considers having sex with Jeff because she feels like he’s outgrowing her now that he’s in college. There’s a stupid episode in one of the later seasons involving an ugly necklace that’s a Williams family heirloom. Toward the end, Jeff proposes to Tootie, but they don’t get married on camera. According to IMDB, Jeff was in eight episodes. And the actor never did anything else afterward.

Zack Peters: Even though Zack was in exactly one season 3 episode, he gets his own header because he is played by the same damn actor as Jeff Williams. The back-asswardsness of the producers insisting upon hooking Tootie up with a black man is eclipsed only by the fact that they could apparently find only one black actor who wasn’t already on Diff’rent Strokes (which, by the way, spun off this show). In this hilarious episode, Tootie feels pressured to hook up with a dude even though she doesn’t really want to, so she makes up a boyfriend, Brady Bunch George Glass style.

Fred: Like the Brazilian soccer star, “Fred” is all we get out of this one. He shows up in season 2 to basically tell Tootie that she’s not black enough. Yeah, that episode will get some discussion at some point.

Blair’s Dudes

Hoo boy. This could take awhile.

Obviously, Blair was cast from the beginning as the hot one who gets all the dudes, and her involvement with dudes is a plot point from the pilot onwards. Even when it’s not fully relevant to the plot it’s sometimes brought up. I’ll do my best:

Casey: Blair’s man late in the series, Casey, ran a shelter for the underprivileged. Jo worked for him, but he and Blair hit it off romantically, I believe when Blair somehow ended up stranded looking for Jo at the shelter. They were together almost until the end of the series. They broke up when Blair wanted to get married, and Casey wanted to live together. Blair couldn’t see herself living with someone without being married, and Casey couldn’t see himself being married. I guess the rich princess marries impoverished but committed do-gooder spinoff didn’t get picked up.

Cliff Winfield: Oh my, Cliff, Langley medical student, was the BEST. We first met him in season 5, when Jo and Blair arrange to take Mrs. Garret to a strip club for her birthday (I KNOW!), and it turns out that Blair’s boyfriend Cliff is one of the strippers (I KNOW!). And as far as I recall, he doesn’t agree to stop dancing, but they stay together anyway. He shows up again later that season, when he gets his residency in Dallas and wants Blair to marry him and go with him. Blair has a dream about the future (which classically involves Jo, Blair, Natalie, Tootie, and Mrs. Garrett reuniting in 2000), decides she’d be giving up too much to marry now, and sends Cliff to Dallas alone. We never see him again, but they don’t actually break up until Season 6.

Cliff and Casey were Blair’s only long-term guys, but several episodes featured Blair and her dude of the half hour: After Blair’s breakup with Cliff but before Casey, she dated a coke addict named Nick. Season 4 gave us Leo the mentally challenged artist (played by the same actor as season 6’s Nick);  and controlling douchebag Chad. She was seeing someone in the season 3 episode where Tootie makes up her boyfriend. That season we also met Dink Lockwood; Buzz, Jo’s friend at Stone Military Academy; and Alan Cook, whom she picks up in a restaurant. In season 2 we learn that Blair plans to hook up with Nancy’s boyfriend Roger in New York; she goes out on a date with some Bates douche named “Bink” to try to talk Jo out of getting married; and she pines for Harrison Andrews before she finds out he’s a creep who takes Jo out instead because he thinks she’s going to be easy. And Blair is the only one of the core four who dated in the first season; Tootie and Natalie were too young and Jo wasn’t on the show yet. She’s involved with at least three different dudes in season 1, plus there’s one episode where she has a crush on the headmaster!

And those are just the ones who appeared on camera!

So what does this all mean?

While it’s too bad that the show couldn’t be even more ahead of its time and deal with some issues surrounding homosexuality, it really presented a view of being a girl and being a woman that was quite progressive in the 80s, and that’s a blog entry all its own.

Watch this space…