This week’s post is by my friend @bigfunbeth, who is the co-owner of one of my favorite stores: @GreenwichLetterpress

“My So-Called Life, 30 Years”

“My So-Called Life debuted on April 25, 1994. It was the summer before I started high school and I was fourteen years old.

On that Thursday night in 1994, a small group of my friends convened at Jessica’s house. We all crammed onto her couch to watch the pilot debut. “An honest look at growing up in the 90’s said the ad that ran in TV Guide. Wait, we were growing up in the 90’s and who were all of these people that kind of look like people who could know? Plus, the show already had its own scandal- the main girl wants to stab her mother in the first episode, we heard? “Wait, is she really going to say that?”

After the pilot ended I remember immediately thinking, “I don’t know if I’m the same person I was an hour ago.” I looked around me. None of my other friends had liked the show very much.This felt like something that had separated me from them irreparably. We never got together to watch it again, and my hair was dyed orange by the end of 8th grade. I was Angela Chase, and at the time, it felt like I was the only one.

For the next handful of months, I was obsessed, and then, as suddenly as it had exploded into my life. It was over. There were rumors. Poor ratings. The lead actress wanted to pursue movies instead. I remember asking my mother about it like she wrote for Premiere magazine or something and had the inside scoop. There was no social media to turn to, there was no 24 hour news cycle. What had just happened to the thing that felt like my actual life just spread across nineteen episodes of TV? There was an online petition to bring it back, which at the time was groundbreaking. Then, just nothing…until MTV.

When MTV got the right to syndicate the show, I got to see my old friends again. They would cut the promos in fun and clever ways. There were all-day marathons, and one was hosted by Claire Danes and Jared Leto. I can remember the very 90’s dELIA’s looking shirt Claire wore. Her hair, OMG, it’s kind of strawberry blond now and shorter, and OMG, Jared’s hair is short now, too. I was so thirsty for content. I was starved for it, or whatever.

When the “Self-Esteem” episode come on it was like, everyone please stop talking and leave the room. He’s about to grab her hand in the hallway. For me, this was the epitome of love on screen, and I yearned for that love to happen to me in real life. As did every single person I have discussed that scene within the past thirty years. In fact, we all screwed up countless relationships holding out for that exact moment.

MTV gave the show a new audience and anyone who had missed out the first time had a chance to watch it. I remember meeting new kids in high school who now loved it and watching repeats with my sophomore-year boyfriend. There was a community growing around this show and it was like, cool. It was actually just cool. People were connecting with something that felt honest, inspired, and real. Only if it now only existed in reruns.

I recently showed the series to my husband for the first time, who was in his 20s, when it premiered. He was so taken with how dark the show was. Not the mood, he said, but the literal lack of actual light, which he thinks impacted how it was received for the first time around. I’m like, yeah, babe, that is the light that you bask in as a teenage girl filled with angst, lust, emotion, and uncertainty.

Since I own a shop, I have to comment on the merch. MSCL had virtually nothing to offer its obsessed fans. There was an early VHS set and soundtracks on cassette and CD. My sister and I of course had the soundtrack on both mediums and were horrified to discover that “Late At Night” by Buffalo Tom was missing. Nooooo. In 2002, there was a DVD set (no bonus content) and then a deluxe version that came in a lunchbox. By 2007 there was yet another DVD set, but this time there were extras. Finally, something else we could grab onto. Creator Winnie Holzman and Claire Danes sat down together and discussed what might have happened in season two. When I first watched this conversation, I felt like crying and then passing out. It was 1995 all over again. A love triangle between Angela, Jordon, and Brian!? Sharon pregnant?!? Graham leaves Patty?!? The agony was unbearable. It honestly still is.

All of these years later, despite just that single season of TV and lack of physical ephemera, this show doesn’t just quietly linger on (cue the Cranberries) – it has a foot firmly planted in the hearts of everyone who fell in love with it thirty years ago. In fact, it’s a barometer. I use for when I meet new people. The second someone can have the MSCL conversation, I think, “This is my person, and I am their person.” Countless times I’ve acknowledged with friends and fans about how this show made us realize we were transitioning into adulthood. How, with every rewatch, you start to connect more with Patty and Grahan and drift a little farther away from lockers and boiler rooms. When I was a teenager, I thought it was gross how much sex her parents had on the show, and now I think it’s hysterical. What 40 years with kids and careers has the energy for that much sex? Plus, now, I am four years older than Patty Chase was on the show, Hold on, I’m calling my therapist…

“Patty, we’re forty!”- Camille Cherski

As for someone who lives and breathes nostalgia and often wonders if it’s a mistake, I never feel like rewatching MSCL is a waste of my time. The things that made me laugh or cry all those years ago still do, and I feel like I learn something new about human nature every time I revisit. There is so much that has already been said about this show and, what its place was in the 90’s and how it might resonate to young people today. This is not that. This is just my little ode to a time and place that was for me, My absolute So Called Life.

Stray Thoughts

• Was the Chase’s cat name Lady Di?
• Tino is the JAWS of the 90’s, much more powerful to never see him
• Shit ok, Brian IS cute!
• It’s insane that Graham tells Neal about his affair in the kitchen while Patty is within earshot.
• Andy Cherski is probably a babe.
• I love that Graham is shocked Patty can make curtains and she’s shocked he can hang wallpaper.
• “Brain Krahow?” “I like Buffalo Tom, I do!” “Stephan Dieter guy. Still funny.
• I want to be friends with Vic Racine and Mr. Katimski and share coffee with them in the teacher’s break room. I also desperately want to be invited into a teacher’s break room, anywhere.
• Weekend, Life of Brian, The Substitute and Self Esteem are my favorite episodes.
• If you can find a friend to tell off Jordan like Rayanne does, you’ve arrived.