Life is hard. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from TV, it’s that “you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both” and then you’ve got The Facts of Life – AKA, the unofficial 1980s rulebook to getting through it all. Set at the prestigious Eastland Boarding School for young women, The Facts of Life is a spin-off series of the 1970s smash hit Diff’rent Strokes that follows the Drummonds’ former housekeeper Edna Garrett as she takes a new position as the housemother in a girls’ dormitory. Though in Season 1 she oversees many young students, Mrs. Garrett’s supervisory focus quickly narrows to four main girls: the wealthy Blair, tomboy Joy, energetic Natalie, and chatterbox Tootie. As the girls go about their daily endeavors, from dating to working and stalking Jermaine Jackson (that’s you, Tootie), they discover that life is full of bumps and hurdles. Overcoming and accepting those difficulties, however, is the key to life; a lesson that we – even as adults – are still learning.
Photo: Embassy Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
