[Dion]

Long before Jerry Seinfeld wondered about airline peanuts, before Tim Allen grunted his first "Arrr arrr arrr!", before Roseanne Barr became a Domestic Goddess, there was Gabriel "Gabe" Kaplan, one of the very first stand-up comedians to successfully turn his stage routine into a hit TV sitcom. Welcome Back, Kotter, which ran on ABC from 1975–79, was based upon Kaplan's own high school experiences with remedial education, and his memories of one teacher who cared dearly for her students.

The premise: Gabe Kotter returns to Brooklyn's James Buchanan High School as a teacher and is assigned to the remedial class of "Sweathogs" to which he himself once belonged. Mr. Kotter is an involved and caring teacher, which one would have to be in dealing with a certain four students in his class, who wind up in trouble on a regular basis: ladies' man Vinnie Barbarino (breakout star John Travolta), the always cool Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), the tough Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein (Robert Hegyes), and the sheepish Arnold Dingfelder Horshack (Ron Palillo). Meanwhile, Kotter frequently finds himself butting heads with cantankerous vice principal Michael Woodman (John Sylvester White), who dismisses the Sweathogs as a lost cause, and tries his best to juggle his teaching with his home life with his patient wife Julie (Marcia Strassman).