Monday, April 29, 2024

WELCOME BACK, KLODDER

WELCOME BACK, KOTTER
ABC 1975-1979

WELCOME BACK, KLODDER
MAD #189, March 1977
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Angelo Torres

This sitcom was a vehicle for stand-up comic Gabe Kaplan, who had a show based on one single routine he did a few months earlier. The premise was that Gabe Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) is now a teacher and has returned to the school where he grew up ten years earlier, and now teaches the gang of juvenile delinquents that he once belonged to known as The Sweathogs. He lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn with his wife Julie (Marcia Strassman). When he's not teaching the Sweathogs, they often come to his home at night. The show opened and closed with Gabe giving one-liners like Groucho Marx or Henny Youngman.
The Sweathogs were Juan Epstein (Robert Hegyes), Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo), Freddy “Boom-Boom” Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) and Vinnie Barbarino (John Travolta)
Some of the running bits was Epstein bringing in faked written excuses to get out of tests signed “Epstein's Mother”, and the Sweathogs always saying “up your nose with a rubber hose” (sanitized for TV from Kaplan's original “up your hole with a Melo-Role”. The principal of James Buchanan High School was Michael Woodman (John Sylvester-White)
Woodman slightly resembled then mayor of New York Abe Beame.
From TV Spinoffs Yet to Come by Tom Koch and Harry North, in #206, April 1979
From MAD's “Whatever Became Of...” TV Characters Edition by Mike Snider and Bob Clarke, in #266, October 1986.

WELCOME BACK, KUTTER
Cracked #133, July 1976
a: John Severin
Another example of Cracked parodying the same shows and movies over and over.

HOW THE KOTTER GANG SPENT THEIR SUMMER VACATION
Cracked #137, November 1976
a: John Severin
From If the Carter Family Became TV Regulars in Cracked #150, art by...who else?...John Severin.
From The Final Episodes of Soured Sitcoms by Frank Caruso in Cracked #232, November 1987
This is only the first part. Tomorrow are Crazy and Sick's versions of the program.

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