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Writer: Bernard Burnell Mack

Air date: February 24, 1982

Watch It On: Amazon (for rent)

What It’s About: Tootie (Kim Fields) is floored when the older girls at Eastland get to go on an unsupervised trip to New York to see a Broadway show. Although her parents refuse to give her permission, she sneaks out and travels to the city on her own, planning to meet her classmates at the theater. Unfortunately, the show is sold out, and the other girls wander off and Tootie finds herself stranded in a Times Square coffee shop after her wallet and coat are stolen on the subway platform. True to Facts of Life form, she happens upon a nice young gal named Kristie, who happens to be a teenage prostitute — and tries to recruit Tootie into the business.

Why It’s So Good: Every episode of The Facts of Life was a Very Special Episode, and the third season of the series definitely went to dark places; other episodes in the season tackled racism and sexual assault. I can only imagine how this show would have been received had it aired during the current Peak Think-Piece Internet Era. The show, while having good intentions, never quite nails the issues it tried to discuss — such is a major flaw of the half-hour sitcom. (A tip to current showrunners: stick to the jokes, and maybe avoid the rape.)

Dealing in moral panic rather than realism, “The Runaway” definitely exemplifies The Facts of Life as a whole. New York City was a seedy place in the early ’80s, and the idea of uprooting four privileged teenage girls from their upstate boarding school and dropping them into the center of grit and sleaze seems like a natural, if downright exploitative, premise for an episode of television (especially an episode of a series written and produced by men and targeted toward other teenage girls who naturally would seemingly relate to its characters).

On the one hand, you have the hilarious tropes of The Facts of Life evident in the broad multi-camera comedies of its time. Jo (Nancy McKeon), the hard-broiled Bronx native, is unfazed by the fact that she’s surrounded by pimps and prostitutes and easily points them out to Blair (Kim Whelchel) and Natalie (Mindy Cohn). Blair, in her snobby, upper-crust fashion, is as appalled by the presence of these degenerates as she is by the discovery of a hair in her diner menu. Natalie, on the other hand, is fascinated; her reaction to the prostitutes is awe, as if they are exotic creatures straight out of a movie. (Her response is similar, I bet, to the show’s writers’.)

Tootie, of course, is oblivious, and easily falls into the trap set by kind-hearted teenage prostitute Kristie (who she believes to be an actress) and the menacing pimp, Mike. She sees the glamour beneath the dirt of the New York City lifestyle, overwhelmed by Kristie’s dress, beautiful hair, and fur coat. It’s up to the brassy waitress, Bernice, to make it clear to Tootie who — or what — Kristie and Mike really are. “Those two nice people are going to take you to a nice apartment, give you a nice warm drink, and you’re gonna wake up three days later,” she tells Tootie. “Do you want to be for sale, like Kristie?”

The Best Moment: The many faces of Mrs. Garrett (Charlotte Rae).

(Yes, that is a young Lauren Tom of Friends fame as Miko, Eastland’s one Asian student.)

One More Thing: Taking a cue from Taxi Driver‘s Jodie Foster, “The Runaway” paints a particularly grim portrait of a sex worker — in this case, a teenager who was presumably coerced into selling herself and still believes that she will be one day be able to get out and achieve her dream of being an actress. Kristie is a complicated character who isn’t fully developed, and the writer and producers of the show don’t seem to know exactly how they feel about her. On the one hand, she’s pitiful; she’s as naive as Tootie when it comes to the real world, presumably misled by Mike and assuming she has any agency of her own. On the other hand, she’s vilified — she’s as awful as Mike, simply because she’s using her body to support herself in New York. The episode’s major fault is that it only “saves” Tootie from danger — a danger that, let’s be honest, she wasn’t really in to begin with.

The last shot of the episode is particularly bleak. After Tootie has the revelation that Kristie is not her friend and is a prostitute (because those things must be mutually exclusive), she’s rescued by the Eastland girls and Mrs. Garrett in the nick of time. As she’s escorted out of the coffee shop, she takes a last look at Kristie — as if Tootie were Lot’s Wife. Of course, Tootie does not turn into salt; she’s whisked back to her boarding school. Kristie, on the other hand, is left to fend for herself, which is a typical response to the sex worker who needs to be “saved” from her plight. For the most part, those who have any interest in depicting that experience have little interest in fixing the problem because their condemnation takes precedence.

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Photos: NBC