‘Welcome Back, Kotter’ Somehow Got Away With Full-Frontal Nudity
Legend has it that the only way for a kid in the ‘70s to catch some nudity on TV was to pray for a brief glimpse on a scrambled pay-per-view channel. But for sharp-eyed viewers, full-on nekkid ladies were hiding right in plain sight on network television — during Family Hour, no less.
What sitcom dared to defy the network’s standards and practices department with a brazen display of bare skin? It was none other Welcome Back, Kotter in its pilot episode, as reported by Looper. The installment, cleverly named “Welcome Back,” was actually the third to make air in September of 1975. Gabe Kaplan plays his alter-ego Gabe Kotter, a former Sweathog made good who returns to his old high school to help education-challenged kids. He quits in frustration when he can’t get through to the new generation of Sweathogs, but they break into his apartment (!) and convince him to stick around.
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Where does the nudity come in? The first time Kotter meets his new students, a kid in the bottom left corner of the screen is studying a Playboy centerfold. It’s not the center of the action—possibly the reason the censors missed it—but there’s Miss June in all her glory, wearing latex sleeves and little else. Lest you think it’s a quick cutaway, two students ogle her boobs for a full seven seconds before the show cuts away to another shot.
Amazingly, the episode was never censored, showing up in after-school reruns and VHS compilations for decades. See for yourself—the episode is available for free on Tubi and you’ll find the jaw-dropper at the 3:45 mark. Sure, your phone or computer is capable of much dirtier images if that’s our thing, but this is the only one that features John Travolta and Gabe Kaplan. (Don’t get any bright ideas, DALL-E.)
Kotter was full of surprisingly sexual content for a sitcom that led off a night of ABC programming. The episode that followed, ‘Whodunit?,’ featured high school student Rosalee “Hotsy” Totsy trying to figure out which one of the Sweathogs got her pregnant. In another, Sweathog Freddie wants to marry his classmate girlfriend at least in part so they can “be together.” In the ‘California Dreamin’ episode, new student Bambi (the character is 15 years old? 16?) tries to seduce Mr. Kotter. These are the first 12 episodes, folks!
In case you didn’t know it, Kotter was Euphoria for young Gen-Xers. Some claim that we’re now in the era of Peak Television, but it’s hard to beat Kotter for Peek TV.
