The plot of "Welcome Back, Kotter" may sound a bit familiar to Gleek (student teacher problem is, back to their alma mater). And as "Glee," the show was revolutionary - and a lot of controversy - when it was introduced in ABC prime-time line-up.
The show lasted four seasons and launched the career of John Travolta. But she has captivated the nation with its diverse racial cast and edgy story line involving high school misfits.
Perhaps this explains why "Welcome Back, Kotter" and "Epstein" have remained some of the most Goggled terms in America since news Hegyes who died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in New Jersey.
TV historian Robert Thompson explained why "Welcome Back, Kotter," a show that was pulled from the air in 1979, struck such a chord with viewers.
For starters, the show featuring Gabe Kaplan as a teacher in a group of students misunderstood created controversy even before broadcast. A subsidiary in Boston ABC initially refused to air the show. At the time, the city was in the midst of a crisis in school transport, and there were fears that the class of the show racially integrated would inflame tensions. Moreover, teachers are afraid the show would glorify and encourage students Junks high.
She finally introduced to America in a variety, a slice of economic struggle rarely seen on TV.
"Kotter" was important in this regard. You had the casting racial diversity and yet they are not a big deal out of it. They were integrated as something that was natural and time not even worthy of comment, "he said." It was a very progressive thing to do. "
The setting itself was unique. TV writers today know that high school is a rich area to mine for drama, said Thompson. "You are at this stage between childhood and adulthood; you are sexually mature, but still limited by the rules of childhood .... It does not get much more dramatic than high school, "and yet it was virtually untrod territory before" Welcome Back Kotter "came, he said.
"Maybe he did not do as well as '90210 'would later do, but for 1970 he did a great job. He nailed high school."
He also nailed life in Brooklyn, giving the New York City borough of its own identity in the shadow of Manhattan glitzier, he said. (In fact, Brooklyn has been featured in the intro of the show - see above - that John Sebastian sang the "Welcome Back" theme song.)
And then there were those accents. Not only were they not watered down to appeal to Central America, they were allowed to take the stage.
"It really allowed playing a heavy dialect," he said. "This is one of the first times was really presented as an important part of all the characters."
The entire cast had catching phases, which propagate across the nation like wildfire at a time when there was no social media to help speed up things like "your face with a pipe rubber. " Hegyes character, Juan Luis Pedro Felipo of Huevos Epstein - a proud Puerto Rican Jew, as he liked to remind anyone who would listen - is known for forging notes of "Epstein's mother."
"People do not say" Welcome Back, Kotter "for years, but if you're a certain age, he was always humming somewhere in the back of your brain," said Thompson, founding director Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
"There is this deep affection for the people who looked to be the first time around, or he has seen in reruns. When you hear some member of the gang is dead, you realize how valuable a show like this is your own memory. "
And when you think of the 1970s, Thompson said, you think disco. And "Saturday Night Fever". And John Travolta. "If I had to name 10 things that say 1970," Welcome Back Kotter "would be somewhere on that list," he said.
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