- How would Frenchie get into beauty school without finishing high school first? Did vocational schools back then not care whether someone had a high school diploma?
- In the 1950s, high school graduation rates averaged around 60-65%. Vocational schools were very often where dropouts went.
- Frenchie has a television set in her bedroom, in the fifties. At the time, only rich people would have more than one television, much less one for their child's bedroom. What gives?
- It is 1959, and judging by the rest of her house the family isn't super broke. TV sets were somewhat cheaper in the late '50s than the early-to-mid fifties so she might be able to save up or her parents might have gotten it as a reward for her or something. Or maybe she just commandeered the family set for her sleepover. Or her parents bought a television and simply didn't like it.
- When Sandy met Danny for the first time in the movie version, is she supposed to have been on summer vacation from her school in Australia? Because it wouldn't have been summer there, it would have been winter. And she would probably have had only about two weeks off school during what's summer vacation for American students. She's Australian! Why wasn't she in school? Unless they really had their whole important meaningful summer love over the two weeks she would have had off school, and then her family also decided to stay in the U.S. after two weeks, which seems a little weird. It doesn't make sense!
- Public school holidays for winter in Australia are usually 2 weeks. However, private schools typically get an extra week and often have the last Friday and/or first Monday off as well. So she could have had a 3 week trip over holidays. However, I went to a fancy private school in the 80s and it was fairly common for super rich families to just pull their child out of school for an entire term to go on an extended trip overseas. Maybe Sandy's secretly rich?
- When Danny and Sandy first meet each other after their summer fling, Danny says "What are you doing here? I thought you were going back to Australia!" to which Sandy replies with "we had a change of plans", which implies that the permanent relocation was (at least partly) out of the Olsons' hands. The wording is ambiguous here but it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that one or both Olson parents got some kind of job opportunity in America which was originally thought to be temporary but became permanent. In which case, they were possibly left with little choice other than to remove Sandy from her Australian school during term time there.
- "The rules are there ain't no rules. It's to the second bridge and back. And the one who makes it here first wins." That sounds like at least two rules to me.
- Those aren't rules, they're the parameters and win condition.
- When Danny and Sandy encounter each other again for the first time during the school year, why was Sandy surprised to find out that Danny went to Rydell High? Surely he would have mentioned the name of his school sometime during their summer romance (and she presumably would have remembered it). Danny's surprise is understandable as he had thought Sandy was going to move back to Australia, but Sandy should have known Danny would be at her school.
- Not necessarily. Does Danny look like someone who takes a lot of pride or even cares about his school much?
- In the FOX TV special, it is established that Danny told Sandy he was an honors student at a boarding school.
- There's honestly no reason why the name of Danny's school would have come up at all, or (as in the FOX special) any reason to assume Danny would tell her the truth if it did. It might have been different if Sandy and her family regularly made holiday visits to the area so she'd actually know the school he was talking about but since they likely don't make regular visits there and Sandy assumed it was just a summer holiday instead of a permanent relocation...why should Danny bother to tell her (or she bother to remember) the name of a school that would mean literally nothing to her at the time..?
- I'm autistic, but I'm sure I'm misinterpreting something. As far as I can tell, the start of the school year plays up to the "Greased Lighting" song, and everything after is leading up to the end, as it's around this time that people start talking about both the dance-off and Thunder Road. Does the story basically skip an entire school year?
- Not exactly. Greased Lightning is near the beginning but not at the beginning. The morning announcement in the first day mentions the school carnival and that the National Bandstand show is coming later in the year. Most of the year is skipped, but it seems like until about the sleepover it is early fall and then it is near the end.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Headscratchers/Grease
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