Welcome Back, Kotter was an American television sitcom starring Gabe Kaplan and featuring a young John Travolta. It originally aired on the ABC network from September 9, 1975 to June 8, 1979. The show starred comedian Gabe Kaplan as the title character Gabe Kotter, a wisecracking teacher who returns to his high school alma mater—the fictional James Buchanan High in Brooklyn, New York—to teach an often unruly group of remedial wiseguys known as the "Sweathogs." The school was based on New Utrecht High School which was used in the opening credits, and also the high school that... Kaplan attended. The school's principal was perpetually absent, while the uptight vice principal Michael Woodman dismissed the Sweathogs as worthless hoodlums and only expected Kotter to attempt to control them until they inevitably dropped out. However, Kotter had attended the same remedial classes when he himself was a student at Buchanan and was a founding member of the Sweathogs.
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