After reading about Simpsons, KOTH thread with no child left behind, I got to thinking about TV shows through the decades.
Which TV shows have actually had a kid left behind? Usually there’s some lame plot (like on the Simpsons,) where the kid is going to be left behind, but then takes a test and he barely passes and then gets promoted to the next grade.
I know on Leave It To Beaver, Lumpy got left behind. On Degrassi Junior High, Joey got held back, and on Arthur, “the Brain,” got held back in kindergarden, which explains why he’s so big and maybe why he’s so smart.
I remember on Good Times, there was an episode where JJ was going to be promoted even though he clearly failed, and Florida and James were upset, because they said, the point of school is to learn not to complete a grade, and if JJ wasn’t ready it wasn’t fair to send him out in the world uneducated. I don’t recall if JJ was actually held back or not. (Though in real like Jimmy Walker seemed about 40 at the time :))
Red Dwarf’s Arnold Rimmer, who is sniveling and cowardly, meets his successful and self-assured counterpart from a parallel universe, Ace Rimmer. Their lives diverged when one was held back a year in school and one was not. The twist is that ACE was the one who was held back – the humiliation inspired him to get his shit together.
Sean repeated something early like grade seven or eight because he got in trouble or something.
Spinner was expelled his senior year because he bullied a guy who later shot up the school. Same for Jay, only he didn’t go back. Spinner repeated senior year and may do it again, but I haven’t seen that far yet.
Jimmy was shot and missed too much school and repeated senior year with Spinner.
Alex didn’t actually get held back, but she re-took her senior year voluntarily to get get GPA up.
Ashley was hanging around Degrassi too, recently (I’m on season 7 right at this exact second), and should have graduated already. I don’t know why she’s still there, but she is.
I think, too, that when Ace was held back, it gave him the time he needed to mature. Instead of competing with kids who were a little more mature than he was, he was able to compete against kids of his own maturity level.
On Everybody Loves Raymond the family had a big discussion about leaving one of the twins back. It turned out that Ray had been left back in kindergarten.
I believe he was, as he wound up in the same graduating class as his sister, who had been a year behind him. Unless I’m massively misremembering things.
Also, Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer had to repeat his senior year. Convenient, as it let him still hang around with the rest of the characters instead of having to go off to college.
It’s not so much that he had to repeat the entire year as it was that he had neglected to take a required class–I expect it was gym. I’ve always seen him as taking that one class and spending the rest of the day wandering around thinking about Willow, headbangers, and raw meat.
I’m guessing that it was just an excuse in this case, to have him hanging around. But in real life, he’d probably just be able to make it up in summer school or something, no?
Sure. Except that Skinner was a dick. I can see him going out of his way not to let Oz make it up over the summer just becuase he enjoyed having that power.
Alternatively, Oz may have deliberately missed the opportunity because he wanted to the year around Willow, if only because her life was fairly dangerous and that’s the kind of thing he would do – be protective but not speak openly of his motives. Or maybe he was just working a ton and saving money.
