At 30, TV’s greatest teen drama remains as wonderful as you remember
Just about every episode of My So-Called Life opened with the same ecstatic image: Claire Danes, the show’s then-teenage star, racing into frame, her beaming face haloed by a red streak of newly dyed hair. This was the opening shot of the opening credits, an elegantly assembled montage of moments plucked from the series and set to the tuneful alt-rock noodling of W. G. Snuffy Walden’s original theme. But there’s a whole world of emotion in just those first couple of seconds, that expressive sprint through the parking lot. It was the show in miniature: a blur of feeling as beautiful and ephemeral as adolescence itself.
Ephemerality is one key to My So-Called Life’s eternal cult legacy. Premiering on ABC in late summer of 1994, the show lasted for a single acclaimed, modestly rated season. Three decades later (this past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of its premiere), it remains maybe the ultimate lamented casualty of network shortsightedness. Tragically cut down in the prime of its prime-time life, it promptly took on the reputation of something too sensitive and smart for TV — a teen drama ahead of its time and unappreciated during the same. You watch it today and still can’t believe anyone wouldn’t want more of it.
Set in a fictional suburb of Pittsburgh, the show follows Angela Chase, a teenager navigating the pitfalls of high school, friendship, hormones, peer pressure, and more. Creator Winnie Holzman, who had worked on The Wonder Years (another smart show about growing up) and who would go on to write Wicked, observed real classrooms to get a sense of how real kids talked and interacted. That research gave My So-Called Life a jolt of naturalism. Eschewing both the soapy artificiality of Beverly Hills, 90210 and the equally phony wholesomeness of ABC’s own Afterschool Specials, Holzman tried to depict teenage life as it was — exciting, yes, but also painful, disappointing, and embarrassing, depending on the day.
Danes was really 15 — and really in high school — when she scored the lead role. She delivers one of the most remarkably open and unaffected child performances ever, effortlessly capturing all the heightened emotions of youth, when joy and heartache are always a whisper (or a faux pas) apart. Angela’s voice-over narration, which Holzman originally wrote as literal diary entries, strikes a perfect balance between naivete and a certain nascent wisdom. She’s a smart kid who’s confused in the way everyone is at that age. In the pilot, she confesses jealousy for Anne Frank in one breath (because what teen girl wouldn’t daydream about being cooped up with their crush?), and shares a disarming insight about the burden of identity in the next.
No one on My So-Called Life was a stereotype. Not Rayanne Graff (A. J. Langer), the impulsive, secretly insecure cool kid Angela is drawn to at the start of sophomore year. Not pretty, popular Sharon Cherski (Devon Odessa), the former BFF our heroine abruptly drifts away from for reasons neither entirely understand. Not Brian Krakow (Devon Gummersall), the bookish neighbor who transparently conceals his unspoken infatuation with Angela behind a mask of defensive prickliness. Not even Jordan Catalano, Angela’s smoldering, but often thoughtless crush, played by a young Jared Leto. Today, it’s fun to joke that this emotionally limited dreamboat is the closest Leto came to playing himself on-screen, but there’s a reason the performance made him a star. He gave Jordan just enough glimmers of hidden depth to keep us wondering, like Angela, if there was more to him.
And who could forget Rickie Vasquez (Wilson Cruz), Rayanne’s sensitive and endlessly concerned bestie? By the final episode of My So-Called Life, he had become the first openly gay character on network television. The show struck a balance with this groundbreaking element, progressively treating Rickie’s sexuality as no big deal — none of the other characters are hung up on it — while acknowledging the homophobic abuse kids like him too often endure. My So-Called Life waded into a lot of serious social issues, from teen alcohol abuse to body image problems to gun violence in schools (five years before Columbine, no less). But it was rarely preachy on these topics, instead weaving them into the fabric of the characters’ lives and its rich portrait of American adolescence.
My So-Called Life cared deeply about Angela’s parents, too — about their desires and insecurities. That was, in part, a choice made out of necessity: Because of her age, Danes could only be on set a certain number of hours, which forced Holzman to fill out episodes with the parallel, complimentary drama of what was going on in the marriage of her folks, Patty (Bess Armstrong) and Graham (Tom Irwin). Anyone who grew up on the show might be startled to discover, upon revisiting it, how much it doubles as a thoughtful, mature, complicated story of midlife crisis, aka the reboot of puberty. That old saw about high school being an audition for the social obstacles of adulthood plays out across the season-long arc of these two stressed fortysomethings. Whether they were really compatible becomes as pressing a matter as Angela’s fledgling love life.
The show wasn’t perfect. It sometimes traipsed a little too far into corny YA mysticism, giving Angela visions of spirits on Halloween and Christmas. And at times, a series that began by acknowledging the friendship-killing rupture of changing social circles — which is what really comes between Angela and Sharon — stretched believability by blurring the lines of those circles. Here and there, it played like a weekly version of The Breakfast Club, where Holzman’s own brainy Brian could bond as needed with her answer to Bender or Allison or Claire. But maybe that was just a reflection of how much My So-Called Life loved its characters. It was unwilling to turn any of them — even Jordan — into a one-dimensional villain.
The appeal of the series was genuinely intergenerational. It spoke to a whole spectrum of age ranges, spreading empathy in all directions. Parents could get valuable insight into what their kids were going through — inside and outside the classroom. Teens could gain more understanding of their parents’ lives. Even Angela’s grade-school sister, Danielle (Lisa Wilhoit), gets a platform. One of the final episodes opens a voice-over window into her thought process — a gift to younger viewers for whom My So-Called Life was mostly aspirational, a preview of what maybe awaited them in the years to come.
Over the course of 19 episodes, the show built a loyal following. It’s said to be the first TV series to inspire an internet write-in campaign from fans hoping to save it from the chopping block. Their support wasn’t enough. Neither was the tireless evangelizing of TV critics or awards shows (like the Golden Globes, which gave Best Actress to Danes). Pitted against the sitcom juggernaut that was Friends, which debuted a mere few weeks later, My So-Called Life never rose high enough in the Nilsen ratings to convince ABC that it had more than a “niche” appeal. That Danes herself had trepidation about committing to the grueling shooting schedule of a second season played a part, too, in the network’s decision not to renew.
But the series found a second life on MTV, which began airing reruns after its cancellation. One has to wonder if it was just born a little too soon. The WB and UPN were right around the corner, ready to usher in a new age of television targeted at younger viewers. You can see a little of My So-Called Life in the teen dramas that followed, in the soapier likes of Dawson’s Creek and scarier likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Perhaps the show’s closest spiritual successor was another much-mourned one season wonder: Freaks and Geeks, whose more explicitly comic nature couldn’t hide its comparable coming-of-age perceptiveness.
The final episode of My So-Called Life, a poignant riff on Cyrano de Bergerac, sets up multiple cliffhangers that remain forever unresolved. We’ll never know if Angela and Rayanne mend their broken friendship, if Brian has any shot with the girl of his dreams, if Graham will follow temptation into marital infidelity. If these so-called lives went on, they did so beyond our line of sight.
Maybe there’s something right about that. My So-Called Life never had the opportunity to lose its touch or disappoint its fans. As a single excellent season, it remains a self-contained anomaly of broadcast TV, unblemished by cast departures, a sophomore slump, or any other threat to its immortality. And by keeping its characters hanging in the moment, it also preserved them in the amber of endless possibilities — the fabled promise of youth, truly limitless thanks to the ellipses of a premature ending. In that way, the show’s recurring opening shot, that glimpse of Angela joyously bounding onto screen, looks like a snapshot of eternity. Adolescence, so fleeting in real life, goes on forever here.
My So-Called Life is currently streaming on Hulu.
