ABC; Warner Bros
Back to School With Antenna TV’s Marathons of ‘Head of the Class’ and ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’
To help liven up stay-at-home guidelines, the Antenna TV network is offering up another pair of weekend marathons, this one designed to bring you back to the classroom with two of television’s funniest high school-set sitcoms, Howard Hessman‘s Head of the Class and Gabe Kaplan‘s Welcome Back, Kotter. Between April 11 and 12, fans can enjoy a total of 48 episodes of these shows.
Head of the Class originally ran on ABC from 1986 to 1991. Fresh off of WKRP in Cincinnati, Howard Hessman is history teacher Charlie Moore, who takes center stage among a cast of younger co-stars as his academically-gifted students (consider it the opposite of something like Welcome Back, Kotter), including Robin Givens, Alan Pinkard and Dan Schneider, the latter of whom would go on to a highly-successful career as a writer/director/producer for Nickelodeon. In the show’s final season, Howard left and was replaced by comedian Billy Connolly.
Welcome Back Kotter, also an ABC show originally, ran from 1975 to 1979. The premise of the show — which introduced John Travolta to the world — has Gabe Kaplan playing Gabe Kotter, a teacher with a sense of humor who takes a job at his alma mater, James Buchanan High School, located in Brooklyn, New York. He’s given a classroom of juvenile delinquents known as the Sweathogs, and assigned by school assistant principal Michael Woodman to keep them “contained” until they either drop out or somehow manage to graduate. Instead, Kotter, who was one of the original Sweathogs in his youth, tries to connect with them to make them better people in the process.
What follows is a guide to the episodes being featured during this marathon.
Head of the Class (April 11, between 12:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m.): “Pilot,” “Volleyball, Anyone?,” “Critical Choices,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” “Video Activity,” “Science Fair-Weather Friends,” “That’ll Be the Day,” “The Big Squeeze,” “Parents’ Day,” “Love is Debatable,” “The Refrigerator of Filmore High,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Little Shop ‘Til You Drop,” “Exactly Twelve O’Clock,” “Back to School,” “From Hair to Eternity,” “Recruitment Day,” “Where’s Charlie,” “Dead Men Dn’t Wear Pocket Protectors,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Pocket Protectors, Part 2,” “It Couldn’t Last Forever,” “It Couldn’t Last Forever.”
Welcome Back Kotter (April 12, between 12:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m.): “Pilot,” “The Great Debate,” “Basket Case,” “Mr. Kotter, Teacher,” “Arrivederci, Arnold,” “One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “The Telethon,” “Career Day,” “Inherit the Halibut,” “Sweatside Story,” “The Fight,” “Hello Ms. Chips,” “Caruso’s Way,” “Radio Free Freddie,” “And Baby Makes Four,” “Just Testing,” “Barbarino in Love,” “Barbarino in Love,” “Epstein’s Madonna,” “Sweatwork,” “What Goes Up,” “The Kiss,” “X-Rated Education,” “A Little Fright Music.”
