Welcome Back, Kotter California Dreamin' (1975–1979) Online

"California Dreamin'" was the name of a popular song recorded by both The Mamas and the Papas (in 1965) and America (in 1978), here referring to new female Sweathog Bambi Forster (Susan Lanier), a transfer from the West coast, who insists that her friends call her Sunshine (Washington: "let the sunshine in, darlin'!"). All of the Sweathogs are instantly infatuated with the blonde stunner, who flatters each of them in turn, then makes a few moves on Kotter after class. Julie wants to know what her husband has to say about some girl called Sunshine who called four times to ask if he could go skinny dipping with her: (his response: "can I go?"). 'Magic' Juan tries out his 'Bambi' chant, Horshack's aura results in an impersonation of a Hollywood producer ("hello little girl, wanna make a movie?"), Washington walks in as Harry Belafonte ("I don't care what the white man say, Santa Claus was a black man!"), and Barbarino debuts his soon to be famous Beach Boys-type rap of his last name, complete with gigantic comb (to the appreciative screams of the female audience): "Ba Ba Ba, Ba Ba-Barino!" Everything adds up to one of the seminal moments in the entire series, though Susan Lanier, future star of the Wes Craven cult classic "The Hills Have Eyes," only made one return appearance as Bambi, in "Father Vinnie." This episode marked the debut of Julie's glasses.

They've been showing Welcome Back Kotter episodes on Antenna TV lately. I remember being 10 yrs old when it first aired and thought it was cool and funny. It still brings back memories of the time even though most if not all of the cast members playing high schoolers were in their twenties. The only realistic portrayal was of Kotter portrayed by a then 30 yo Gabe Kaplan.

This particular episode introduces a pretty blonde named Bambi to the class. She claims to be from California and goes into the ditzy blonde haired bimbo routine which gets the sweathogs all hot and bothered over her causing disruptions in class. When she makes moves on Kotter , calling him at home to ask him to go skinny dipping with her , his wife is of course jealous which makes Kotter finally decide to take action and so he goes digging into Bambi's records and discovers she has been lying about her background. So when he confronts her about it, so drops the act. Turns out she's a phony from Texas who has been shuffled around foster homes and schools for the past 11 years ,supposedly she's had a rough childhood and donned the phony act as a way to get friends mainly guys to like her which of course caused trouble wherever she went and got her kicked out of a lot of schools and foster homes.

Kotter sets her straight with the "its not worth it speech "that years down the road , whats going to happen to her in 10yrs,20 yrs when shes not young and these so called friends get wise to her act and kick her to the curb. She decides to come clean to the class and apologizes for being a jerk to them and lying to them and they forgive her and accept her .Still though at the end of the episode she starts acting like a ditzy blonde bimbo again. Bambi shows up in one more episode before she disappears for good which makes me believe that originally the producers/writers were thinking of having a girl sweathog join the main cast and then when she didn't test well with audiences simply dropped the character.

Overall I thought the episode was OK - it just didn't have any good laughs in my opinion but of course the live audience roared throughout the episode , the live audiences used for sitcoms i honestly think were told to laugh or applause when a sign flashed , even for situations that were painfully unfunny. Of note the girl who played Bambi was a 28 yo Susan Lanier - she was the girl they originally had in mind for the role of Chrissy Snow in Three's Company , if you search the internet you can find the unaired test pilot episodes where she plays Chrissy and also a different girl plays Janet , after watching them its quite obvious why they didn't make the cut(lousy screen presence and acting by both of them).