The Facts of Life - Season 5, Episodes 25 & 26

"You mean to tell me that this season finale is going to be little more than a rehash of old flashbacks?"

"The Way We Were"
Original airdate: 5/9/1984

Episode summary: Season 5 comes to a lazy end with the writers phoning it in by doing little more than featuring a series of superfluous flashbacks from Seasons 1-4.

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Recap: Mrs. Garrett bursts into the Facts gals' communal bedroom to shriekingly remind everyone that the painters will be arriving any minute, and that they need to strip their beds and empty the closets ASAP. Blair enters the room in search of her peach pumps and says she's (sorta) looking forward to being a maid of honor and/or bridesmaid in five different weddings this summer, and desperately needs to find the peach pumps that match the peach organza dress she'll be required to wear for one of the weddings. Jo takes a break from the engine she's been cobbling together and says she needs to go buy a valve...and Blair tosses her car keys at her and asks her while she's out if she could please stop by the dress boutique and pick up her peach organza dress. 

Natalie sorts through a large trunk and comes across Blair's Harvest Queen tiara, an Eastland yearbook, and Tootie's rollerskates...and that last thing prompts a series of flashbacks of Season 1 Tootie rolling around on the dumb things while grinning hammily at the camera and blurting out sassy one-liners. Blair marvels at how gorge she looks in her yearbook photo and reads the accompanying caption that describes her as having "grace, beauty, and a natural talent for leadership". She frowns and says, "Then something happened" ... and we get a series of flashbacks of the something that happened, aka Jo's Season 2 debut and the Facts gals' subsequent arrest at the Chugalug bar.

Natalie peeks under Jo's bed and tells Blair she may want to see what's under there...and Blair gets down on her knees and squeals happily as she pulls out her peach pumps. In the process, she accidentally bumps into the table that has Jo's engine atop it, which causes the entire thing to crash onto the floor and fall apart...and some of the littler pieces fall through the heating vent. Natalie pales and reminds Blair that Jo has been working on that engine for two weeks...and as Blair hastily picks up the engine pieces, Tootie contorts her face worriedly and moans, "There's gonna be troouu-ble."

Blair gathers up all the engine pieces she can find and does her best to put it back together, then breezily says surely Jo won't notice if some of the pieces are "a tiny bit mixed up". Natalie's like, "Dream on" and says there's no way Jo won't notice that the engine has been reassembled by someone with zero knowledge of engines and get really pissed off - but Tootie says that maybe Jo will be reasonable and not mind rebuilding the engine...and this remark leads to a series of Seasons 2-4 flashbacks of Jo acting like a vindictive tool at the slightest of provocations.

Jo returns from her errand with Mrs. Garrett trailing in behind her carrying Blair's organza dress. Blair sheepishly tells Jo she accidentally knocked over her engine and did her best to put the pieces back together...and Jo looks mildly annoyed but says it's no big deal; however, when Blair adds that a few of the pieces might have fallen through the heating duct, Jo goes from mildly annoyed to visibly irked. Blair offers to write her a check to reimburse her for the lost parts, but Jo gets all snappy-bitchy and accuses her of always using money to solve life's problems, then rails about how she's never had to work for anything in her life. Blair gets upset at Jo for not simply taking the damn check to cover the engine's lost parts - just as Jo (accidentally?) flips the organza dress onto the oily engine parts, resulting with the dress getting a giant oil stain. Blair's all, "The fuck..?" and accuses her of doing that to retaliate for the engine...but Mrs. Garrett assures her that the stain can be removed, and that the most important thing is to restore their friendship, preferably before the end credits roll. Jo and Blair both deny the existence of a friendship, and Jo pissily declares that after this season's finale she's moving out of the Edna's Edibles building. 

"I feel I deserve an A for my attempt at putting this engine back together."

"You deserve an F for fuckwittedness."

After the commercial break, Mrs. Garrett presents Blair with the freshly laundered organza dress that no longer has a stain on it...and says that since this disaster was so easily resolved, it's time for her and Jo to take back all the harsh words they exchanged during the previous scene and be friends again. When Jo and Blair continue to snarl angrily at each other, Natalie implores them to ponder the implications of ending their friendship with this spat...then unhelpfully reminds them that, unlike her and Tootie, they've been at each other's throats since Jo's Season 2 arrival. This leads to a sequence of flashbacks of Jo and Blair exchanging barbs - which, in turn, leads into a series of flashbacks of the various arguments Natalie and Tootie have had over the years.

When none of the flashbacks inspire Jo and Blair to kiss and make up, Tootie calls their spat "really dumb" - then suddenly realizes she can't find Jessie (her boyfriend's cat she's been cat sitting) and starts railing at Natalie for not closing his travel cage properly. The Facts gals frantically search the room for the missing feline...who turns up a few seconds later when he's carried in by a wheezing/sneezing Mrs. Garrett, who irritably reminds everyone she's allergic to cats. 

The Facts gals hurriedly clean up the mess they made of the room during the search for Jessie, sniping at each other in the process. Mrs. Garrett shrieks at them to shut up, then begs them to not let petty arguments ruin their friendships to the point that they're departing for the summer hiatus irreparably pissed off at each other. When no one makes a move to make up with each other, she throws in the towel and mutters, "Who am I to give advice?" and stomps out. The Facts gals are all, "Huh?" and point out that Mrs. Garrett never doesn't interject herself into their bidness...and this leads to a flashback sequence of all the solemn faced heart-to-hearts Mrs. Garrett has had with each of them over the years. 

Tootie declares that no one is leaving the communal bedroom until all of their contrived disputes have been settled...and Natalie concurs and puts her arms around Jo and Blair, urging them to think about all the flirty, non-hetero fun they've had on the show. This - $%#@!! - leads to yet more flashbacks, culminating with the episode when they all threw paint at each other so they could continue the show's winning formula of the four of them living under the same roof and working in the kitchen to pay off whatever damage they needlessly caused.

The Facts gals are all packed up when Mrs. Garrett bursts in to shriek, "The painters are here!" and is pleasantly surprised that the room has been emptied out. Natalie looks alarmed and says they packed up so fast that so much of their stuff got inter-mixed in different boxes...and Blair glances over at Jo with a hopeful expression on her face and [rhetorically] asks, "What's the difference?" Jo agrees and says they'll straighten everything out when they return to film the [OMFG nooooooo!!] Season 6 premiere, and everyone's like, "Hurray!" as they happily scamper out of the room.

"Oh no! The boxes have all of our stuff intermingled."

"You know as well as I do that we'll never be able to quit each other."

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