The Facts of Life (TV Series) - Attempted Spin-offs

Attempted Spin-offs

The various attempts at spin-offs were backdoor pilots, which were shown as episodes of The Facts of Life.

• "Brian & Sylvia" — A season two episode in which Tootie and Natalie go to Buffalo, New York to visit Tootie's Aunt Sylvia, a black woman (played by Rosanne Katon) who has recently married a white man, played by Richard Dean Anderson (the future star of MacGyver and Stargate SG-1). Ja'net Dubois of Good Times played Ethel, who was both Tootie's grandmother and Sylvia's mother. The episode never developed into a series, and in the season five episode "Crossing the Line", Tootie mentions Brian's and Sylvia's interracial marriage, and says that the two have since gotten divorced.
• "The Academy" — A season three episode set at Stone Academy, an all-boys military school that was near Eastland. In this episode, the girls at Eastland attended a dance with the boys from the military school. The boys included actors Jimmy Baio, Ben Marley, David Ackroyd, Peter Frechette, and John P. Navin, Jr.
• "Jo's Cousin" — Another season three episode, in which Jo visits her family in the Bronx, including her cousin Terry, a fourteen-year-old girl (played by Megan Follows) going through adolescence in a family full of men. The family included actors Grant Cramer, John Mengatti, Donnelly Rhodes, and D.W. Brown.
• "The Big Fight" — A season four episode set at Stone Academy, a boys' military school. Natalie comes to visit a boy who tries to impress her with his boxing. This episode includes the same cast from the season three episode "The Academy."
• "Rumor Has It..."/"Peekskill Law" — Two season nine episodes which center around Blair's law major at Langley College. In the first, Blair's law professor Richard Katt (Franc Luz) is introduced, a teacher whose ethic in the classroom stood in contrast to his reputation for sleeping around with many of his students. Blair and Katt were sharp debaters in and out of class, but nothing could prevent Blair from becoming nervous about the time she spent with him in his office after hours. Katt's wife subsequently walked in on one of his sessions with Blair, assumed they had fooled around with each other, and threatened to leave her husband. In the second episode, after Katt had resigned from the college in the wake of his rumored affair with Blair, he was now working as an attorney at a law firm where Blair was coincidentally working as an intern. The two found themselves working together on a high-stakes financial fraud case, with their sharp, aggressive banter a centerpiece yet again.
• "Big Apple Blues" — A season nine episode in which Natalie spends the night with a group of eccentric young people living in a Soho loft, and decides to remain in New York to begin her life. Two of the tenants in the loft were played by David Spade and Richard Grieco.
• "The Beginning of the End/Beginning of the Beginning" — The two-part series finale sees Blair buying Eastland to prevent its closing. Blair finds that the school is in such dire financial straits that she is forced to make the school co-ed. Blair then essentially adopts the Mrs. Garrett role as she presides over the school, and is forced to deal with the trouble-making students in a plot line that is highly reminiscent of the season two premiere. The new Eastland students included Seth Green, Mayim Bialik, and future Oscar-nominee Juliette Lewis.