Head of the Class: Difference between revisions

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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 [[Status Quo Is God|stable status quo.]]

 

 

 

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* [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle]]

* [[Be Yourself]]

* [[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.

* [[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-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?

* [[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 Modernism|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]]

* [[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.

* [[Snap Back]]

* [[Spin-Off]]: The eminently forgettable ''Billy'', which ran for half a season in 1992.

* [[Status Quo Is God]]

* [[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.

[[Category:American Series]]

[[Category:Head of the Class]]