![\"\"](\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2014\/z111514welcomeback_kotter.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Welcome Back, Kotter<\/strong><\/em> burst onto the scene in September 1975 and was an instant hit. The initial idea was to focus on a young newly married teacher [Gabe Kaplan<\/strong>] returning to teach remedial students [called Sweathogs<\/strong>] at his former high school where he had been a remedial student. The show’s breakout stars turned out to be the Sweathogs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n So the focus changed.<\/p>\n Soon the spotlight was on the students with their teacher in a co-star or even supporting role. The teacher’s wife usually had a scene in the shows opening and again in the closing where she got to laugh at an old joke told by teacher. There were stories of an unhappy set.<\/p>\n Things became more complicated when Kaplan<\/strong> butted heads with the show’s producer and John Travolta<\/strong> [one of the remedial students] made it big in the movies. Both Kaplan<\/strong> and Travolta<\/strong> didn’t even appear in many of the last season episodes.<\/p>\n The show ran four seasons and for the first two and maybe the third it was “must-see” tv. Sadly during the the fourth and final season the audience graduated even if the Sweathogs<\/strong> didn’t.<\/p>\n The AV Club<\/strong><\/a> posted a piece by Noel Murray<\/strong> titled 10 Episodes That Show How Welcome Back, Kotter Was Like a Class in Comedy History<\/strong><\/a>. While that may be a bit of an overstatement, the article did bring back some fun memories of Kotter and his Sweathogs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome Back, Kotter burst onto the scene in September 1975 and was an instant hit. The initial idea was to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,63,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-humor","category-tv","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11046"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11048,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046\/revisions\/11048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}