Welcome Back, Kotter is an American sitcom starring Gabe Kaplan as a high-school teacher in charge of a racially and ethnically diverse remedial education class nicknamed the Sweathogs.

The rigid vice principal, Michael Woodman (John Sylvester White), who was formerly Kotter's social studies teacher, dismisses the Sweathogs as witless hoodlums.

[citation needed] Gabe Kotter is a flippant but well-meaning teacher who returns to teach at the high school he attended as a student.

Kotter has a unique insight of the potential of these purportedly "unteachable" pupils, as well as the difficulties and scrutiny they encounter on a daily basis, as he was a "founder member" of the original Sweathogs.

During season four, Gabe Kaplan had contract issues with the executive producer, which resulted in Kotter's character appearing in only a handful of episodes.

She is occasionally upset with the amount of time he devotes to his students (inside and outside of the school), and she is troubled that he allows them to visit their apartment regularly.

In the two-part story "Follow the Leader", the Sweathogs' constant intrusions lead Julie to separate briefly from Gabe and even seriously consider divorce.

She makes several references to her "world famous tuna casserole", a common meal at the Kotter dinner table, which Gabe and the Sweathogs deem inedible.

In a season one episode, Woodman is shown to be a gifted teacher, willing to wear historic costumes and role-play in front of the class during his lessons.

At one point, Washington challenges Barbarino for leadership of the Sweathogs and even replaces him for a time until the group grows tired of his dictatorial style.

[citation needed] She reprised the role in its third season in a 1978 episode, "The Return of Hotsie Totsie", in which it was revealed that she dropped out of school because she became pregnant and had to become a stripper to support her infant child.

A recurring non-Sweathog character in the earlier seasons, Borden is a straight-A student and editor of the Buchanan Bugle, the school newspaper.

Introduced as a regular character in the fourth and final season, Beau is a handsome, friendly, blond, silver-tongued southerner who transfers from New Orleans after being kicked out of several other schools.

The producers sought a heartthrob who was not a direct knock-off of the "Italian Stallion" trend that was permeating Hollywood in the mid-1970s, and who would improve ratings in the South, where the show's New York setting was seen as unrelatable.

[10] The city was going through a tumultuous school busing program that involved widespread protests and riots, and the local affiliate felt Kotter's fictional integrated classroom would exacerbate the situation.

[citation needed] Teachers in other cities had concerns about how Kotter would be portrayed, so producers allowed a union representative on the set to ensure the show protected the image of those in the profession.

Kaplan opposed the idea, at one point asking a reporter if there was a junkman on the set of Sanford and Son to protect the reputation of junkmen.

[citation needed] Censor concerns about depiction of juvenile delinquency faded after the Sweathogs' antics proved to be silly rather than criminal.

Kaplan later attributed the decline to the age of the actors playing the Sweathogs, all then in their mid- to late-twenties, claiming that they were no longer believable as high school students.

Kaplan's idea to bring the show in line with the age of its cast was to have Kotter join the faculty of a community college attended by the Sweathogs,[12] but this storyline never materialized.

[citation needed] Much of the writing staff turned over after season 3, and Travolta, who had already starred in box office hits such as Carrie, Saturday Night Fever, and Grease, and began to focus more time on his film career.

[citation needed] Vinnie got a job as a hospital orderly and his own apartment and the Murphy Bed that came up and down at inopportune times became a running gag.

To help fill the voids, Stephen Shortridge joined the cast as smooth-talking Southerner Beau De LaBarre, and Kotter's wife, Julie, became a school secretary and occasional fill-in teacher, despite having one-year-old twin daughters.

[citation needed] Also in season 4, Della Reese was introduced as English teacher and Buchanan High talent show coordinator Mrs. Jean Tremaine.

Knowing the series was in a nosedive, producer James Komack attempted to spin off a newly married Arnold Horshack into a new sitcom (see § Spin-offs).

[citation needed] The show enjoyed ratings success during its first two seasons, spawning a host of merchandising tie-ins, including lunchboxes, dolls, trading cards, comic books, novels, and even a board game, advertised as "The 'Up Your Nose With A Rubber Hose' Game" in a commercial with a class full of Sweathog look-alikes featuring Steve Guttenberg as Barbarino and Thomas Carter as Boom Boom Washington.

The Sweathogs — or at least an impressionist's version of them — even made a crossover appearance with characters from the Happy Days universe on one track (the disco-themed "Fonzarelli Slide") of a 1976 TV-promoted oldies compilation album.

The short-lived Mr. T and Tina starred Pat Morita as Taro Takahashi (Mr. T for short), a brilliant Japanese inventor whom he portrayed in one episode of Kotter.

In the mid-1990s, Hegyes announced on The Jenny Jones Show that plans were in the works to create a spin-off featuring the Sweathogs, all grown up, minus Travolta's Barbarino, but the project never got off the ground and little information about it was ever made public.

In 1997, Ron Palillo, Robert Hegyes, and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs reprised their respective roles in a dream sequence in the Mr. Rhodes episode "The Welcome Back Show".