My So-Called Life

I love....no, no, fucking LOVE My So-Called Life. I used to watch it religiously Thursday nights when it originally aired on ABC in 1994. At the time I was living in Banff, Alberta in my little suite in staff accommodation at the resort where I was working. I'd take my dinner out of the dining room, which we weren't actually allowed to do, so I could watch the show. So imagine my utter delight when I saw the DVD set of the first and only season.

Written and created by the uber talented Winnie Holzman, it was executive produced by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the powerhouse team behind thirtysomething. The series was a coming of age story of a teenage girl named Angela Chase (Claire Danes), but more than that, it was also a family drama for everybody. Angela lives at home with her mother Patty (Bess Armstrong), who runs the family printing press her father started, and her father Graham (Tom Irwin), who works for his wife, but is experiencing a mid-life crisis about what he wants to do. Angela is like most teenage girls living in middle class suburbian America, she does so so at school, prefers to spend time with her friends, is rebelling against her parents and her life revolves around her obsession with the boy she has a huge crush on.


Her best friends are Rayanne Graff (A.J. Langer), a funky, free-spirited girl with an addiction problem, and Ricky Vasquez (Wilson Cruz), a sensitive and stylish gay man with family problems. Also in and out of Angela's circle of friends are Sharon Cherski (Devon Odessa), her perky, school spirited friend since childhood, and Brian Krakow (Devon Gummersall), her honour student neighbour who has a huge crush on her. Both Sharon and Brian feel left behind by Angela's sudden change in attitude and friends at the beginning of the season. Angela's big crush is Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto), the gorgeous, but scholastically-impaired slacker.


The show was so perfectly cast and the characters were all so real, human and complex each with their own obstacles and story lines. I loved how the issues each character faced were something they struggled with throughout the series and everything wasn't solved by the end of the show, like Patty and Graham's marriage troubles, Rayanne's struggle with drinking and trying to stay sober and Ricky's living situation. The series is really only comprised of one 19 episode season. They left a cliffhanger, but unfortunately, the series was inexplicably cancelled. I loved this show and was heartbroken when it didn't come back and apparently there was even a movement of fans who tried to get it back on the air to no avail. However, with this box set it can be rediscovered by audiences again and the DVD box set has a ton of special features with writer and cast commentary on some episodes and interviews with most of the cast (pretty much everybody except Jared Leto). I've been asking around since I got the set and I'm surprised by how many of my friends have not seen it. I can't recommend it highly enough. One of the best written and acted shows ever on T.V., in my opinion. See it if you haven't!

Angela: "Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while. And admit the truth: that when you really look closely? People are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me."

More ramblings to come......