Fame 30th Anniversary Review

Fame 30^th Anniversary Review:

Having reviewed “Metamorphosis” a number of times in the past I decided to come at things from a slightly different angle.

I recently bought the first season DVD for a friend, who eventually watched all the episodes, but commented that he found it a little dated!

I was surprised to hear that because personally I think “Fame” has aged very well. There are other older shows that I find dated but "Fame" has never been one of them. I love the 80s period so maybe I’m just biased. So that got me thinking what the show would be like if it was being made now and how different it would be.

Firstly, I did think the cast would probably be thinner and far more glamorous. No offence to any of the cast I just think that's what TV companies are looking for. Also I’m suspecting that characters like Shorofsky and Mrs Berg would actually appear younger as the producers would no doubt feel that the audience wouldn't relate to older people!


Then of course the show would actually be shorter by 5 to 7 minutes so we could fit in far more adverts! This means we'd have no opening titles to get us in the mood for the show and no Lydia's "You Want Fame" Speech each week! So far I'm not liking a modern version, give me so called dated, every time! 

The main difference I think would be, everyone would be obsessed with technology and mobile (Cell) phones would be in abundance. I can just imagine the scene in Sherwood’s English Class with student’s phones constantly going off. “I said Silence!”

I’m sure there would be some fun to be had with Shorofsky continually protesting about how much he hates the damn phones! Also Mrs Berg struggling to send a text or get to grips with a phone could be hilarious!

At least technology would make things easier for Bruno and his family, with no more having to lug large synthesizers around as everything would be much smaller and he’d probably have everything on a lap top!

The Internet would no doubt be a major part of the drama with Coco uploading her performances to You Tube to broadcast to her growing fan club! I can imagine her feeling as though she was actually achieving her dreams the more views her videos actually got. That is until one of the teachers gave her a good talking to and pointing out that she wasn’t actually making a living out of her online videos regardless of how many hits she got!

Students would probably be using Facebook not only as a popularity contest but also to try and hook up with agents, writers, producers, basically anyone in the Business who could help them further their own careers.

It wouldn’t just be on the show that technology would come into play. No doubt in real life, we’d have an official website, Facebook and Youtube channel to broadcast every bit of promotion for the show. Then we’d have musical downloads galore, just like “Glee” does. I wouldn’t be surprised if the musical numbers increased, when some greedy executive realised there was money to be made from the downloads.

Although, I’m being cynical about that at least as fans we would have the music available properly and not have someone like me rip the audio from the episodes.

We’d also have no problems getting our precious show out on DVD as we would see each season released quickly as most current TV shows are now.    

One character maybe more would be gay opening up a load of different storylines that the original never covered. I’m guessing Montgomery would fill this role but I would actually quite like to see a gay teacher too, so was thinking along the line of Reardon.

I think Doris would be more obsessed with her body image and not just her weight but possibly wanting to have plastic surgery to change the things she doesn’t like about herself.

Whatever the difference between then and now some things would have to stay the same. We’d still want the same great character, energy, fun, determination, hard work and most of all the wonderful inspiration that has kept us interested for the last 30 years!

From watching again the only thing I picked up on that I'd never realised before was the dancers don't actually get a credit on the first season. Initially I assumed it was just on the Pilot episode but have gone back and checked other episodes and they aren't listed in any of the first season.

I know Debbie had to fight hard for the dancers to get a credit and had always thought she'd won that battle before the series aired. Now it looks like it was between the first 2 seasons as the first credit comes with the opening of season 2.