Welcome Back, Kotter: Whodunit?

This post is part of the 10^th Annual Favourite TV Episodes Blogathon, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts. Read the rest of the nostalgic posts HERE!

I remember SO clearly when the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter premiered on television.

It took place in a public high school in Brooklyn, New York. At the time I was a public high school student in Queens, New York.

The day after the first episode aired, my high school was abuzz talking about the show.

It wasn’t just because the boys all thought they were Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta) or because the girls had acquired overnight crushes on Travolta.

Let’s just say, my friends and I could RELATE.

No, most of us were not low achievers, or as they were called on the show, “Sweathogs,” but that school seemed incredibly familiar to us, and the situations funny and relevant.

The premise concerns one Gabe Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) who returns to the high school he attended 10 years previously as a teacher. Once one of the “Sweathogs,” he now teaches a group of Sweathogs: Barbarino, Freddy “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes), and Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo).

For me, one of the most exciting things about the show was that Epstein was a Puerto Rican Jew—just like ME!

Like I said, relatable.

Since Gabe Kaplan was a stand-up comedian, the show usually featured a cold opening where he tells his wife Julie (Marcia Strassman) a joke. Then it would be on to school for the latest adventures of Mr. Kotter and the Sweathogs, where Mr. Kotter can’t seem to help butting into the lives of his students.

In the episode “Whodunit?” Barbarino, Washington, and Epstein are kidding Horshack because he had a date with Rosalie “Hotsie” Totsie (Debralee Scott). They try to find out if he “scored” while bragging about their own supposed sexual adventures with “Hotsie.” Rosalie berates the boys for the way they talk about her and promises she’ll get back at them.

When Gabe arrives at school, Rosalie puts on a big show of being inconsolable, so of course he must find out what the problem is. After an elaborate game of charades, he finally realizes she’s saying she’s pregnant and one of his students is the father.

Shaken, Gabe goes into the classroom and starts making speeches about fatherhood and responsibility. This does not impress the students. After class, he makes the boys stay behind. Rosalie announces she is pregnant and one of the boys in the room is responsible. All the boys except Arnold find reasons to leave quickly.

Arnold offers to marry Rosalie, telling her wants to give her baby his name, an old and respected name that means “the cattle are dying.” Touched, Rosalie refuses, saying she wants to marry the father of her baby.

Gabe insists that Rosalie come home with him after school. He awkwardly waits with her for Julie to come home. Just as Julie walks in, Rosalie is thanking Gabe with a kiss. Gabe begs Julie to talk to Rosalie so they can find out who the father is.

Rosalie hedges while Julie questions her and they get no answer. The next day, Gabe makes all the girls leave the classroom and once again questions the boys, forcing each one to confess that they never really had relations with “Hotsie.”

Gabe finds that the girls were all listening at the door. He makes all the boys line up against the wall and insists Rosalie name the father. She walks up and down the line and then asks if they all denied it. All the boys confirm this. She then declares since nothing ever happened, she’s not pregnant.

When Gabe asks why she pretended, she says going through life as “Hotsie” Totsie was very difficult, and she wanted revenge on the boys. Since they were all on record as never having had sex with her, she’s now a “lady.”

After class, she thanks Horshack for being a gentleman and asks him out. She also tells Gabe that she involved him because he is always interfering with his students’ lives.

At home, Julie brings up the possibility of having children. Gabe says they need to wait “a while.” Julie agrees, then he asks her to call his mother to explain why she’s not pregnant.

I love this episode because it takes some very serious topics (teen pregnancy/rumors used against girls) and makes them very funny. Rosalie is a hoot, finding a clever way to restore her reputation while making her tormentors very uncomfortable for a couple of days. Including Gabe, who she criticizes because he believed the rumors, too.

I could have lived without the implication that Rosalie was attempting to seduce Gabe when he took her home. It’s definitely a cringe moment but unfortunately that was not that unusual in 1970s sitcoms. They save it a little when Rosalie confesses she wanted to get back at Gabe for making the same assumptions about her.

Not to put Kaplan down, but he wasn’t a trained actor, and his acting is the weakest part of this show. His genius was in creating the premise in the first place. The talented young actors were the ones who really made it work. Although Travolta was the only one to go on to become a huge star outside of television, the others had very busy careers after the show ended. Scott, who was a recurring player on the show outside of this one episode, ended up on the cult nighttime soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

It’s not surprising the show didn’t last that long. Travolta’s rising star meant he wasn’t going to stay long and the fourth and final season saw him doing only a handful of episodes as “special guest star.” People complained that the actors were way too old to play high school students. Off-screen drama caused Kaplan to break his contract and he stopped appearing regularly on the show.

There were some attempts to create spin-offs, but they all failed.

It’s sad, because those first couple of seasons were so great and felt so real to me.