RavenGlamDVDCollector
I have it on DVD and it's high time I watched it again. I've always been on about BEVERLY HILLS 90210 and its successor 90210, but those big, big efforts often, no, more often than not, took on too much and ran away with themselves. This one has that real feeling. And it often inspires these fuzzy warm feelings, hey, just the memory of it...! I have several ShoutFactory products as I'm into "decades past" and the ad pops up regularly, and I salute it every time it appears. Angela Chase is one of my all-time favorite girls on film. Coupled with ROMEO + JULIET, I am a hugé Claire Danes fan.Just today, I voted for it on the polls as "Greatest Series Set Mainly in a High School" or something like that. At their best moments, the 90210's were great, but far from consistent. This one, you knew what you had, it was always not just good, but great. More than that, it tugged at your heart.Was unfortunately doomed because of course Claire was destined for movies. Which sunk Season Two. That was the show's only flaw. It had a star it couldn't keep.By the way, A.j. Langer, cheered for you too!I maintain that the best TV came from the Nineties. This one is a prime example.Highly recommended. Soft-hearted romantics into unrequited love especially.{and I so wanted to post that classic quote "like a toaster or something", oh! but somebody beat me to it...!}
SnoopyStyle
Angela Chase (Claire Danes) is a nice girl with a nice family. She has nice friends like Sharon Cherski (Devon Odessa) and Brian Krakow (Devon Gummersall) who has a crush on her. That is until she makes a new friend, Rayanne Graff (A.J. Langer). Rayanne has a troubled home, and gay best friend Rickie Vasquez (Wilson Cruz). Angela is drawn to mysterious Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto). Her former seemingly nice life starts to turn into something far more interesting.This is the definition of a cult hit, and the folly of TV execs who don't understand demographics. Although it was low rated (for its times), it's young audience would have today's TV execs drooling. For its times and on network TV, it was a realistic teen drama. The show wasn't flashy. Things didn't wrap up nicely with a lesson at the end of its show. It broke TV grounds. It was angst teen drama ahead of its time. It didn't hurt to have a great Claire Danes to lead it. Even then, her star power was undeniable.
BrickNash
This program came out in late 1994, right smack bang in the middle of my teens putting me on an exact age par with the characters in the series. I simply cannot express just how clever, well written and superbly acted this, at the time, highly original series was. There was NOTHING on TV that was like this, so drenched in teenage angst and drama and so many of the issues, stories and situations (to a degree) hit such a familiar note with so many people that you just cannot fault the show, on anything.Let me just state that I am a guy, and now at the grand old age of 32 I watched the series again and boy did it take 15 years off me. Many of the issues dealt with in the series could be applied to both guys and girls so although it was originally aimed at teenage girls the appeal of the show went far, far beyond that audience.On an angrier note, I think it is absolutely criminal that this poignant, emotional and sharp piece of entertainment was cancelled after only one season due to 'bad ratings'. As I recall not many of the most successful shows did that well on their first season but given a chance they shone so brightly and the same courtesy should have been shown to what is arguably one of the best dramas ever to be shown. But no, corporate greed once again stepped in and extinguished the creative spirit to save a few bucks. Well I hope they are kicking themselves now as to what the show could have become in terms of popularity.We should count ourselves lucky that the existing series was made in the first place, but after 19 episodes of getting attached to characters with whom most of us can say we identified with one season just doesn't seem enough.I wonder just how much this 32 year olds outlook on life would have changed with that second season!
refresh daemon
I seem to have a thing for watching high-quality series that get canceled far too soon. My So-Called Life is such a series. One of the things about this series that really caught my attention is the complexity and utter realness of the characters. It was frustrating at first because I was so used to characters being neater, less full of complications and contradictions and when I watch the various characters on this show make decisions that are honest, even if mistakes, I found myself wishing that they'd make cleaner, nicer decisions and stay true to the box that I put them in.And so I really have to hand it to the writers and the actors for putting together such a remarkable group of believable characters. The one nagging issue I really had with this show is that it was so clearly written. Whereas the characters were so very real, the stories that were told always seemed to balance on the edge of being contrived. And while I understand the attempts at style, I found the structures that the stories imposed on the characters, such as looking at parallelisms, intersections, as well as the occasional supernatural story clashed so strongly with the realness of the characters that it was hard for me to accept the stories, even as the characters realistically reacted in their framework.I think that the stories told in the episodes really started to feel less contrived towards the last episodes that were produced and felt the character arcs really pick up. One thing I love about the stories is that there is no real villain, but rather just people, with reasons to like and dislike each other. Sometimes I felt that the resolutions did border a little on pat, but nonetheless stayed believable. I did wish that certain character arcs, especially Ricky's, would've been a little less static.And despite all my criticisms, when I was watched the end of the last episode, I was surprised by how much more I wanted. I wanted to see where these characters would go. Here was a series that told stories about people that were real. This was not the lifestyles of the rich and angst-y of the present or the soap-opera hyper-drama of yesteryear, but stories about real grounded characters and even if the stories themselves sometimes stumbled over their own cleverness, everything was so... sincere, that it was hard to hate even the contrivances.So, the loss of this show was a loss to the television landscape. Fortunately, it's been preserved on DVD for future generations of fans of serial storytelling to enjoy. 8/10.