September 17, 1969—The decade that stressed engaged, relevant teaching received its ideal series: Room 222, premiering on this date before going on for five years and 112 episodes.
When the half-hour show began, I was starting fourth grade; when it finished, I was in the middle of the eighth. Each week during that formative period of my life, I looked forward to that deeply soothing opening theme by Jerry Goldsmith (who later created the jagged, disturbing Chinatown theme), because the ABC dramedy offered a view of the fascinating world of high school that my brothers knew so well and that I would soon enter—and fueled my interest in the subject taught by main character Pete Dixon: American history.
After it was canceled in 1974, the show might have gone into syndication, but it might just as well have entered the federal witness protection program: I never saw it again after it went off the air until this past winter, when I visited the Paley Center for Media (the former Museum of Television and Radio) in New York. Curious, I selected for viewing the first and last episodes in the museum’s library. The difference between the two was marked, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.
Miles Davis may have assisted at “the birth of the cool,” and President Obama never seems to sweat. But both could have been taken to Cool School by Pete Dixon (played by the superb Lloyd Haynes).
As a youngster, I usually fixated on some fact that Dixon brought up in class—something about the Declaration of Independence, say.
It came as a mild shock, then, when viewing the initial episode at the Paley Center, to discover that my fact-fixation was diametrically opposed to Dixon’s open-ended, Socratic method of classroom engagement. “The world is being revised,” he said, explaining the rationale for the students’ updated textbooks. “You’d better be doing some thinking.”
The plot of the episode, “Richie’s Story,” concerned a bright student who tried to conceal that he came from outside the district because he didn’t want to attend that dead-end inner-city school. The episode brought to the surface Pete’s compassion, as he interceded for the teenager with principal Seymour Kaufman and guidance counselor Liz McIntyre.
The first episode, I think, was one of the best in the history of television. No wonder: It was written by show creator James L. Brooks, who would go on to write and direct one of my all-time favorite TV sitcoms (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and all-time favorite films (As Good As It Gets).
In the course of 30 minutes, virtually every character was carved out shrewdly, with a careful balance maintained between drama and light satire. (Newbie student teacher Alice Johnson inquires if Pete prefers to be called colored, negro or black. “I’ve always preferred ‘Pete,’” he answered. Moreover, Dixon regards with amusement a white fellow teacher who lists all his favorite jazz musicians--all of whom just happen to be black--to impress the African-American faculty member with his liberalism.)
At the same time that the dramedy explored life at L.A.’s Walt Whitman High School—including issues regarding race and drugs becoming increasingly contentious in America—it became apparent that the creators of the show had—the pun is irresistible—done their homework on American education. What accounted for this verisimilitude?
Perhaps one key to this might be Brooks’ own background. For the two years just before he created the show, he worked as a writer and producer of documentaries for David L. Wolper, whose series and specials—often on recent history—had started filling up primetime hours in the late Fifties and Sixties. Making Pete Dixon a history teacher would allow Brooks to identify better with the character.
The immediate progenitors of Room 222—and, undoubtedly, the reason why ABC green-lighted the project—were two successful 1967 films on teachers in tough high schools: Up the Down Staircase and To Sir, With Love. But Brooks and writing partner Allan Burns, I think, were using this now-familiar character type to try out something different.
Years ago, I recall reading an essay in The Atlantic Monthly (which, unfortunately, I can’t locate in the magazine’s online archives) on the central character in series created by MTM, the studio formed by Mary Tyler Moore and husband Grant Tinker. From the sitcom starring the actress in the early Seventies to Hill Street Blues, premiering a decade later, this character is a middle manager: a calm eye in the midst of a chaotic workplace environment.
Pete Dixon, I would argue, represents a testing-out of this theme. Torn between the administration and students, he has to maintain order in a world that, as he notes, is not only under revision, but still subject to the eternal terrors involved with growing into adulthood.
He is not, of course, the only character who became a favorite with viewers over the years. There’s also secret girlfriend Liz McIntyre (Denise Nicholas); sardonic but dedicated principal Seymour Kaufman; and student teacher Alice Johnson. (In the latter role, Karen Valentine’s progress from cheerleader perkiness in Season 1 to the subdued teacher in the final season follows the same trajectory as Katie Couric’s movement from The Today Show to The CBS Evening News.)
Despite excellent scripts during its rookie season, Room 222 was almost canceled because of low ratings. Luckily, the networks had much more patience in those days with Nielsen-challenged series than they do now. So ABC gave it time, and the series won an Emmy for best new series at the end of the year. In all, it would win seven Emmys and seven Golden Globes in its first two years. (It never, however, ranked higher than 25th in the ratings.)
The departure of Brooks and the natural tendency toward exhaustion began to tell slowly on the show after a few years, with plots becoming more predictable.
For instance, in “Pardon Me, Your Apathy Is Showing” (Season 4), Kaufman allowed students to form a Marxist club, only to have one particularly excited member clamor to invite a Communist Party leader to speak to the school. The denouement involved a deus ex machina, or “god out of the machine”—an ancient dramatic device in which a force resolves the conflict all too neatly.
When the half-hour show began, I was starting fourth grade; when it finished, I was in the middle of the eighth. Each week during that formative period of my life, I looked forward to that deeply soothing opening theme by Jerry Goldsmith (who later created the jagged, disturbing Chinatown theme), because the ABC dramedy offered a view of the fascinating world of high school that my brothers knew so well and that I would soon enter—and fueled my interest in the subject taught by main character Pete Dixon: American history.
After it was canceled in 1974, the show might have gone into syndication, but it might just as well have entered the federal witness protection program: I never saw it again after it went off the air until this past winter, when I visited the Paley Center for Media (the former Museum of Television and Radio) in New York. Curious, I selected for viewing the first and last episodes in the museum’s library. The difference between the two was marked, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.
Miles Davis may have assisted at “the birth of the cool,” and President Obama never seems to sweat. But both could have been taken to Cool School by Pete Dixon (played by the superb Lloyd Haynes).
As a youngster, I usually fixated on some fact that Dixon brought up in class—something about the Declaration of Independence, say.
It came as a mild shock, then, when viewing the initial episode at the Paley Center, to discover that my fact-fixation was diametrically opposed to Dixon’s open-ended, Socratic method of classroom engagement. “The world is being revised,” he said, explaining the rationale for the students’ updated textbooks. “You’d better be doing some thinking.”
The plot of the episode, “Richie’s Story,” concerned a bright student who tried to conceal that he came from outside the district because he didn’t want to attend that dead-end inner-city school. The episode brought to the surface Pete’s compassion, as he interceded for the teenager with principal Seymour Kaufman and guidance counselor Liz McIntyre.
The first episode, I think, was one of the best in the history of television. No wonder: It was written by show creator James L. Brooks, who would go on to write and direct one of my all-time favorite TV sitcoms (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and all-time favorite films (As Good As It Gets).
In the course of 30 minutes, virtually every character was carved out shrewdly, with a careful balance maintained between drama and light satire. (Newbie student teacher Alice Johnson inquires if Pete prefers to be called colored, negro or black. “I’ve always preferred ‘Pete,’” he answered. Moreover, Dixon regards with amusement a white fellow teacher who lists all his favorite jazz musicians--all of whom just happen to be black--to impress the African-American faculty member with his liberalism.)
At the same time that the dramedy explored life at L.A.’s Walt Whitman High School—including issues regarding race and drugs becoming increasingly contentious in America—it became apparent that the creators of the show had—the pun is irresistible—done their homework on American education. What accounted for this verisimilitude?
Perhaps one key to this might be Brooks’ own background. For the two years just before he created the show, he worked as a writer and producer of documentaries for David L. Wolper, whose series and specials—often on recent history—had started filling up primetime hours in the late Fifties and Sixties. Making Pete Dixon a history teacher would allow Brooks to identify better with the character.
The immediate progenitors of Room 222—and, undoubtedly, the reason why ABC green-lighted the project—were two successful 1967 films on teachers in tough high schools: Up the Down Staircase and To Sir, With Love. But Brooks and writing partner Allan Burns, I think, were using this now-familiar character type to try out something different.
Years ago, I recall reading an essay in The Atlantic Monthly (which, unfortunately, I can’t locate in the magazine’s online archives) on the central character in series created by MTM, the studio formed by Mary Tyler Moore and husband Grant Tinker. From the sitcom starring the actress in the early Seventies to Hill Street Blues, premiering a decade later, this character is a middle manager: a calm eye in the midst of a chaotic workplace environment.
Pete Dixon, I would argue, represents a testing-out of this theme. Torn between the administration and students, he has to maintain order in a world that, as he notes, is not only under revision, but still subject to the eternal terrors involved with growing into adulthood.
He is not, of course, the only character who became a favorite with viewers over the years. There’s also secret girlfriend Liz McIntyre (Denise Nicholas); sardonic but dedicated principal Seymour Kaufman; and student teacher Alice Johnson. (In the latter role, Karen Valentine’s progress from cheerleader perkiness in Season 1 to the subdued teacher in the final season follows the same trajectory as Katie Couric’s movement from The Today Show to The CBS Evening News.)
Despite excellent scripts during its rookie season, Room 222 was almost canceled because of low ratings. Luckily, the networks had much more patience in those days with Nielsen-challenged series than they do now. So ABC gave it time, and the series won an Emmy for best new series at the end of the year. In all, it would win seven Emmys and seven Golden Globes in its first two years. (It never, however, ranked higher than 25th in the ratings.)
The departure of Brooks and the natural tendency toward exhaustion began to tell slowly on the show after a few years, with plots becoming more predictable.
For instance, in “Pardon Me, Your Apathy Is Showing” (Season 4), Kaufman allowed students to form a Marxist club, only to have one particularly excited member clamor to invite a Communist Party leader to speak to the school. The denouement involved a deus ex machina, or “god out of the machine”—an ancient dramatic device in which a force resolves the conflict all too neatly.
In this case, the thorny freedom-of-speech issues were posed but never answered, because the student, Nick (played by Barry Livingston, Ernie of My Three Sons), is savagely disillusioned when the Communist, just like any self-respecting capitalist tool, demands money for his appearance—a lot.
By the final episode, “Cry Uncle,” which aired on January 11, 1974, you can see how tired everyone is. With none of the beautifully ironic lines of the pilot episode, Haynes seems less cool than disengaged. Constantine is now close to a pussycat as Kaufman, dealing with a nephew’s desire to become a comic, in a conventional follow-your-bliss plotline.
By the end of the show’s run, you started to wonder about Bernie’s hair.
You remember Bernie, right? Flaming, frizzy hair, standing so straight up and in such profusion that it seemed to have a life of its own?
Well, the show had been around so long that you wondered if this perpetual “student” might be ready for a toupee.
From what I discovered from the Web, he might have made it through 1974 with the follicles intact, but time began exerting its inexorable toll. For proof, see this link from actress Angela Cartwright’s Web site. (Look for the shot of the actress with the actor playing Bernie, David Jolliffe, and grown-up child star Billy Mumy.)
I've recently discovered that at least the first season of Room 222 is available on DVD. I won't look forward to it quite as much as I did to my high school reunion, but it will be awfully close. And I'm glad that it's around to inspire a new generation of teachers to dare the impossible as they educate another round of kids who'd rather be anywhere but sitting still in a class.
By the final episode, “Cry Uncle,” which aired on January 11, 1974, you can see how tired everyone is. With none of the beautifully ironic lines of the pilot episode, Haynes seems less cool than disengaged. Constantine is now close to a pussycat as Kaufman, dealing with a nephew’s desire to become a comic, in a conventional follow-your-bliss plotline.
By the end of the show’s run, you started to wonder about Bernie’s hair.
You remember Bernie, right? Flaming, frizzy hair, standing so straight up and in such profusion that it seemed to have a life of its own?
Well, the show had been around so long that you wondered if this perpetual “student” might be ready for a toupee.
From what I discovered from the Web, he might have made it through 1974 with the follicles intact, but time began exerting its inexorable toll. For proof, see this link from actress Angela Cartwright’s Web site. (Look for the shot of the actress with the actor playing Bernie, David Jolliffe, and grown-up child star Billy Mumy.)
I've recently discovered that at least the first season of Room 222 is available on DVD. I won't look forward to it quite as much as I did to my high school reunion, but it will be awfully close. And I'm glad that it's around to inspire a new generation of teachers to dare the impossible as they educate another round of kids who'd rather be anywhere but sitting still in a class.
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