Vote for why you think it jumped
Exit...Stage Left (Vinnie Babarino)
Bo (who looked like Ted McGinley) joins the cast
Where did Kotter go?
A Very Special...(Horschack gets serious)
Day One
Shark Bytes
Hello my little friends. I remember when your accident was announced to a stunned group of marshals and so I was interested to find your website today recipe So it goes. recipe, Kiss all of you
Hi there To both of you - may the future be bright, happy and filled with continued blessings from above recipe I used information from that site its great. recipe, See you at the latest at Le Mans.
O, super project. What an amazing story! I was aware of the Goodwood incident, of course, but not of the detail recipe I tell my friends about it! They like sites like that: recipe, My very best to you...
Perfect site! Karen is herself a wheelchair user, and together we attend races, but have found that most circuits are very unfriendly if you do not know where to go, or what to do when you get there, and finding the correct information has been difficult at times, so with this in mind we thought we would set up a web site to help disabled people find the relevant information 'under one roof' on how they could become involved in motorsport either as a spectator or as a recipes I think Ill visit this site often. recipe, thanks.
I was 14 when this show came on tv and watched it faithfully for a couple of years. My friends and I loved it and even got my mother to watch.
We did tire of the "up your nose.." jokes and Horshak's laugh and Vinnie's stupidity but, hey, this was a sitcom, not emmy material - we wanted to root for the sweathogs, who represented 'dumb luck'. It was a 'feel good', low-brow comedy to be taken very, very lightly.
And I have a confession to make, for the first time ever - I've never told anyone - until now: I secretly liked Epstein; I thought he was cute!
There I said it! I feel better now LOL.
We did tire of the "up your nose.." jokes and Horshak's laugh and Vinnie's stupidity but, hey, this was a sitcom, not emmy material - we wanted to root for the sweathogs, who represented 'dumb luck'. It was a 'feel good', low-brow comedy to be taken very, very lightly.
And I have a confession to make, for the first time ever - I've never told anyone - until now: I secretly liked Epstein; I thought he was cute!
There I said it! I feel better now LOL.
I have bittersweet memories about this show. I was a pre-teen to young teen during Kotter's original run. At that age, I enjoyed the adolescent humor and didn't really care much about the acting or writing on the show. It was a mainstay of my weekly viewing just because I loved the Sweathog jokes.
As I grew up, my appreciation of humor and acting and writing all matured and I began seeing this show through different eyes -- it was a lot of cheap jokes aimed pretty low, framed by poorly written material delivered for the most part by second-rate performers. Kaplan's stories about his family were generally good, and most of the primary actors did a decent job with what they were given. However, most of the material was just hideous. It was, as I said, mostly adolescent humor without any deeper context.
It's interesting to note that I really hated John Travolta for a long time because of Barbarino. Even as a young teen, I found Barbarino to be completely obnoxious. I completely tied my perspective of Travolta's talent to his work on Kotter. It wasn't until years later -- Pulp Fiction, to be exact -- that I began to have an appreciation of his true abilities. While he hasn't completely lived up to his potential since that time, he's certainly proven that first impressions can be very wrong.
As I grew up, my appreciation of humor and acting and writing all matured and I began seeing this show through different eyes -- it was a lot of cheap jokes aimed pretty low, framed by poorly written material delivered for the most part by second-rate performers. Kaplan's stories about his family were generally good, and most of the primary actors did a decent job with what they were given. However, most of the material was just hideous. It was, as I said, mostly adolescent humor without any deeper context.
It's interesting to note that I really hated John Travolta for a long time because of Barbarino. Even as a young teen, I found Barbarino to be completely obnoxious. I completely tied my perspective of Travolta's talent to his work on Kotter. It wasn't until years later -- Pulp Fiction, to be exact -- that I began to have an appreciation of his true abilities. While he hasn't completely lived up to his potential since that time, he's certainly proven that first impressions can be very wrong.
If jumping the shark means that a good show has gone bad, then Welcome Back, Kotter may never have jumped because it was never very good to begin with. Sure, there were some funny moments and amusing characters, but it got stale very quickly. The very thin plot lines were just about the only thing that ever changed, and even a couple of those were recycled and redistributed among the cast. The show tried too hard to give tag lines to every character, which also got old. Barbarino with his "What? Where?", Boom Boom Washington with his "Hi there!" Epstein with his faked absence notes from 'Epstein's mother' and Horshak with that abominable laugh and his always raising his hand yelling "Ohh! Ohh-ohh-ohh!" And all the childish insults: "Up your nose with a rubber hose" and "Twice as far with a Hershey bar" were funny at first but, just as "Sit on it!" was funny at first on Happy Days, those old jokes got as stale as the rest of the schticks.
It wasn't a terrible show by any means, IMO, just that it got tedious as each succeeding show was identical to the previous week's in most ways. I also have to say that Marcia Strassman was a horrible actress. She delivered all her lines in the same calm, quiet, monosyllabic voice, even when she was supposed to be angry or ecstatic. Too often it was evident she was reciting rehearsed lines. Gabe Kaplan was a pretty funny guy and this show was a vehicle for him to launch a career that never really took off. Sure, most of his jokes were corny, but they were harmless fun and a few were pretty good. Even his character became old hat after a while, too. Same old one-liners, punchlines and puns. He started to sound like a bad Vaudeville comedian in short order.
Somewhere in all that mish-mash, Welcome Back Kotter did JTS. I won't go so far as to say that my opening statement is necessarily true. This show was funny and popular enough when it first began that it could be considered 'good'. It never evolved into anything fresh, though. Each week it fed off itself and never seemed to progress from square one.
I guess if I had to vote, I would say WBK jumped the shark when John Travolta departed, although, to be honest, it wasn't a great show while he was still on board.
Peace.
It wasn't a terrible show by any means, IMO, just that it got tedious as each succeeding show was identical to the previous week's in most ways. I also have to say that Marcia Strassman was a horrible actress. She delivered all her lines in the same calm, quiet, monosyllabic voice, even when she was supposed to be angry or ecstatic. Too often it was evident she was reciting rehearsed lines. Gabe Kaplan was a pretty funny guy and this show was a vehicle for him to launch a career that never really took off. Sure, most of his jokes were corny, but they were harmless fun and a few were pretty good. Even his character became old hat after a while, too. Same old one-liners, punchlines and puns. He started to sound like a bad Vaudeville comedian in short order.
Somewhere in all that mish-mash, Welcome Back Kotter did JTS. I won't go so far as to say that my opening statement is necessarily true. This show was funny and popular enough when it first began that it could be considered 'good'. It never evolved into anything fresh, though. Each week it fed off itself and never seemed to progress from square one.
I guess if I had to vote, I would say WBK jumped the shark when John Travolta departed, although, to be honest, it wasn't a great show while he was still on board.
Peace.
I remember my friends loving the show and I would watch it and think "This sucks" Bad show, bad writing, bad acting.
yeah i hear ya' mr.wayne,but,be that as it may ,new york still kicks ass and the rest of you are a bunch of rednecks
I remember thinking "geez those New Yorkers must all be retarded idiots" when I was a kid in school. It wasn't only the fact that Barbarino, Horshack, Washington and Epstein were incredibly stupid. It was the fact that Kotter and that sour little dwarf of a vice principal were nearly as dumb as the kids.
"His wife had a nice pair of bazookas"??? Are you kidding me? Marcia Strassman didn't even have a pair of cherry bombs on that skinny chest!
This show had a few positives. The opening and closing credits with the John Sebastian theme song and shots of Brooklyn were memorable. Gabe Kaplan's uncle stories were occasionally amusing. His wife had a nice pair of bazookas unencumbered by support. The characters of Barbarino, Epstein and Washington worked. Horshack was an embarrassing douche bag. If this show was realistic, he would've been pounded like a tough steak by the other hogs every time he opened his mouth or did that seal laugh. Epstein's notes from his mother, signed "Epstein's mother", were hilarious the first few times, but the joke became stale. This show should've run for 1 season, 2 seasons tops, and then been mercifully retired.
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