Let's take a step back in time, to an era when television painted a positive picture of life in high school, despite all the societal issues of the day.
Room 222 was listed as a comedy-drama when it premiered on ABC in 1969, but, as with another 20th Century Fox series that came along a few years later, M*A*S*H, gave up the laugh track in due course. Producer and sometime director Gene Reynolds worked on both series.
Set at fictional Walt Whitman High in Los Angeles (the real Los Angeles High was the location for some of the filming), the series was built around social studies teacher Pete Dixon (Lloyd Haynes), guidance counselor Liz McIntyre (Denise Nicholas), who was also dating Dixon, student-teacher Alice Johnson (Karen Valentine), and Principal Seymour Kaufman (Michael Constantine, who had previously recurred on Hey, Landlord), as well as a culturally diverse student body.
Room 222 sprang from the fertile mind of writer-producer James L. Brooks, who'd go on to win 3 Oscars ("Terms of Endearment") and a slew of Emmys (i.e. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons, Taxi, Lou Grant) for writing or directing. The series ran for five seasons (1969-74) before moving to syndication, which is where I eventually found it, being too young to watch it in first-run.
We've previously featured a season 1 episode that included a rare on-camera appearance by Nicole Jaffe (Scooby-Doo), but she doesn't figure into this episode. Instead, we'll see future Saturday morning stars Judy Strangis and David Jolliffe in the episode "Fathers & Sons", with guest stars William Schallert (ex-The Patty Duke Show, Dobie Gillis), who was also working as a studio announcer for ABC at the time, and Ann Morgan Guilbert (ex-The Dick Van Dyke Show) as parents of a student (Bob Balaban) who apparently isn't interested in following in his father's career path. Director Terry Becker (ex-Voyage to The Bottom of The Sea) worked as a production assistant on the show during the 1st season.
Rating: A.
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