Head of the Class



A highly successful Sitcom of The Eighties. Imagine Saved by the Bell for primetime.

Howard Hesseman (of WKRP in Cincinnati fame) starred as Charlie Moore, a substitute teacher who is hired to teach history to a class of gifted students at a Manhattan high school. He is not gifted himself, but he thinks outside the box and is full of epiphanies, and so he has much to teach his class even as he finds himself clashing with the school's stuffy, by-the-book principal. Three months later, the Very Special Episode came in which the original teacher returned from his medical leave. This being a successful American sitcom, after spending most of the episode trying to impress the guy, Charlie is himself; in being himself, he does impress the guy, who was looking for a worthy replacement so that he could retire. This naturally infuriated the principal further, but it finally ensured that there could be a stable status quo.

The series ran for five years with almost no cast turnover. This did stretch credulity after a time, but it didn't cause problems until the network was forced to replace the teacher with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute in the fifth year.

Oh, and Robin Givens played a student here before she married Mike Tyson. Also launched the likes of Dan Schneider, responsible in some way for most every recent live-action hit on Nickelodeon, and Brian Robbins, who went on to produce and direct shows with Schneider and without (as well as work with the enemy sometimes). Unlike Brian Robbins, Dan Schneider has yet to direct a big-screen movie, which may be a wise move.


 * Aesop Amnesia
 * An Aesop: Done Once an Episode.
 * And Knowing Is Half the Battle
 * Be Yourself
 * Bollywood Nerd: Jawaharlal
 * Bonnie Scotland: The replacement replacement teacher came from there, which made for an interesting Revolutionary War episode.
 * Bottle Episode: Pretty much every episode took place in that one classroom and the hallway just outside it; occasionally they also used the school theater.
 * Brilliant but Lazy: Applies to various characters, depending on how you define brilliance.
 * The Bus Came Back: Janice shows up again in the series finale to get her high school diploma; she had just graduated from Harvard.
 * The Danza: Billy Connolly as Billy MacGregor.
 * Dawson Casting: Dan Schneider was born in 1966. You do the math.
 * Tony O'Dell was born in 1960. Dan Frischman, playing one of the students, was born in 1959, making him 27 years old when the series began.
 * Basically most of the cast other than Tannis Vallely (Janice), who was the first one to leave (she was really smart).
 * Dean Bitterman: Dr. Samuels
 * Devil's Advocate: In a school debate club meet, Alan has to extemporaneously defend a position he is personally against. He wins the debate.
 * Egg Sitting
 * Enemy Mine: Invoked Trope by Mr. Moore on one occasion. The students were fighting each other, so he became a bad teacher, giving them a greater enemy that would force them to put aside their own differences.
 * Famous Ancestor: In one episode, Mr. Moore has the class research their family trees, and Darlene discovers that she is a direct descendant of Thomas Jefferson.
 * Famous-Named Foreigner: Jawaharlal Choudhury is obviously named after India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. It is very unlikely that an Indian or an Indian-American in his teens in the mid-1980s would have a name like Jawaharlal.
 * Final Season Casting: See Suspiciously Similar Substitute below -- but not similar enough to keep the show going beyond that point.
 * The Fool: Because the teacher himself didn't always seem to know what he was doing.
 * Frozen in Time: If these kids are so smart, why have they been in high school for five years?
 * Word of God was that the final two seasons took place their senior year - season 4 was 1st semester, season 5 was 2nd semester.
 * Grew a Spine: In one episode, Jawarhalal is suddenly well known for agreeing with everyone about everything. Then the class goes to see Mr. Moore's off-off-off-Broadway post-post-Modern production of Hamlet. Everybody hates it except Jawarhalal, who defends it to everyone. They're so caught up in trying to prove him wrong that until the end of the episode they never ask him why he likes it and don't notice that he's disagreeing with them, counter to his personality.
 * High School
 * High School Sweethearts: Eventually, Eric and Simone; the final season shows them getting briefly engaged, then deciding to wait until after college.
 * Hot Vice Principal: Miss Meara.
 * Ivy League for Everyone: Justified in that it was a show centered around geniuses.
 * One Degree of Separation: Howard Hesseman <-> Dan Schneider, provides the link between everyone connected to WKRP in Cincinnati (and by extension Loni Anderson's longtime husband Burt Reynolds), and approximately 40% of all currently-working comic actors of the millenial generation.
 * Note that Schneider himself worked with Kevin Bacon (in The Big Picture), as did Hesseman (in an '80s TV remake of Mister Roberts).
 * Peking Duck Christmas: Both Mr. Moore (alone for Christmas) and Dr. Samuels (escaping his in-laws) find themselves at the same Chinese place on Thanksgiving. They bond.
 * Put on a Bus: After the third season Janice graduated, Jawaharlal's family moved back to India, and Maria transferred to the New York High School of Performing Arts; Mr. Moore quit teaching after Season 4 to pursue an acting career full time (despite a Very Special Episode earlier in the run where he decided to stop acting and dedicate his life to teaching).
 * Real Life Writes the Plot: More than once.
 * Save Our Students: Somewhat of an inversion, in that Mr. Moore's kids are academically gifted and high-achieving but socially and emotionally underdeveloped.
 * School Play: Little Shop of Horrors, Grease, and Hair
 * Snap Back
 * Spin-Off: The eminently forgettable Billy, which ran for half a season in 1992.
 * Status Quo Is God
 * Strawman Political: Of various flavors. And it's just not a 1980s sitcom without a blatant Alex P. Keaton ripoff, er, neo-conservative among the students.
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute: After Howard Hesseman quit the show, his Charlie Moore was replaced with Billy Connolly as new teacher Billy MacGregor.
 * Teen Genius: The majority of the teenage cast, although arguably Janice (who was really a pre-teen genius) and Arvid in particular.
 * Vacation Episode: The class went to Moscow, the first American show to film there.
 * Very Special Episode
 * Viewers are Morons and executives want to assure them that it's okay.
 * Whoopi Epiphany Speech: This too was done Once an Episode.
 * Working Through the Cold: Arvid, in the episode where he has the flu and refuses to stay home from school.
 * You Are in Command Now