On Monday evening, Mark-Paul Gosselaar (my favorite dual-apostle named 90s star) appeared on Jimmy Fallon's late night talk show in full Zach Morris get-up, blond wig and all. You have to admire his ability to stay in character when that character was retired a decade and a half earlier. Despite a few easily botox-able forehead lines, you would swear we were back in 1992 watching Zach address the audience by speaking directly into the camera, calling a time-out and freezing his surroundings, and belting out Zach Attack's "Friends Forever" with the Roots.
Gosselaar even pulled out his trademark oversized first-generation cell phone to confirm Jessie Spano wanted to get in on the action. Just when it seemed this franchise had been milked for all it was worth, it seems possible a reunion could be in store.
So the question is, will his castmates set aside their undeserved pride and so-called artistic integrity? It's tough to follow up presitigious roles like EXTRA host and being completely unlikeable on Celebrity Fit Club. Hell, Ed Alonzo (magician Max of The Max) was a performer on my cruise ship a few years back, so I can't imagine these former Baysiders' agents' phones are ringing off their respective hooks.
While I'm not much of a Fallon fan, I certainly admire his commitment to restoring early 90s excellence in cheesy television programming. As long as I don't have to watch Gosselaar's new TNT lawyer drama (I'm generally opposed any MPG brunet roles on principle), we should be golden.
My So-Called Life was the antithesis of the "Very Special Episode". From this show's vantage point, the teenage years were a vast wasteland of politically pertinent social issues and grungy, flannel angst. It was the polar opposite of most other teen shows sprouting up during the early-to-mid 90s, according to which it seemed that high school was just one long lighthearted romp with issuettes that could be solved neatly within a period of 30 minutes. My So-Called Life epitomized the youth culture pre-Clueless-era 90s teens aspired to be in a flannel-wearing, adult questioning, angst-brimming way. In short, it was brutally honest.
Unfortunately, this brutal honesty quickly morphed into ratings disaster for ABC. It seemed people weren't interested in a real, well-rounded look at actual ongoing issues facing teens. If anything, perhaps it was too real; the show failed to create a sense of idealized fantasy like 90210 or Saved by the Bell. The characters had visible, deep-seated flaws (you know, like real people) and veered sharply from the brain-dead bubblegum pop themes of its contemporary teen programs (Zach and the Gang join the glee club!) . If anything, it was the adeptness with which the show presented characters as real multifaceted people that seemed to alienated potential viewers who were used to more one-dimensional characters.
Most teen shows at the time could cleanly divide their characters into stereotype molds: the jock, the nerd, the brain. Characters were becoming mere caricatures of actual human traits and sensibilities. In My So-Called Life, characters were, well, somewhat reminiscent of actual teenagers. They were moody, hormonal, and self-questioning. They were teenagers.
If you flipped through the channels during prime teen programming blocks, other channels would be showing unlikely self-actualized and well-adjusted teenagers negotiating through easily remediable situations. If you ever have been or even have met a teenager, you know the chance of coming across those qualities in a real life high schooler was about as likely as finding Zach Morris and Kelly Kapowski shooting up heroin together in the bathroom of a sleazy alleyside bar. In short, the teenage best-years-of-your-life fantasy may have been dominant and all-powerful in the ratings, but My So-Called Life's mirror to society manages to remain relevant and poignant over a decade later.
While most teenage TV shows featured actors well past their high school years (a la the audacity to cast a 29-year old Gabrielle Carteris as 16-year old Andrea Zuckerman on 90210), My So-Called Life cast an actual teenager as its star. At 15, Claire Danes was arguably more qualified to play a teenager than the joke-worthy 20-somethings pretending to be 15 in other teen-focused shows. Danes' character, Angela Chase, was the archetypal teenager. She was constantly questioning her own identity and the phoniness around her in a Holden Caulfield-type manner. If nothing else, she was incredibly, heart-breakingly real.
Watching My So-Called Life episodes now, it's easy to see why it wasn't a huge draw for most teenagers. In the show, Angela is impulsive, moody, rebellious, unreliable, deeply flawed, and suffers from devastatingly unrequited crushes. It's likely it hit a little too close to home for many 90s teenagers who were less than thrilled to be confronted with a reflection of their own inadequacies. Nonetheless, watching the show as an adult offers a whole new lens of perspective:
Is it just me, or did the movie Thirteen completely rip off this initial plot? I suppose the ditch-your-nerdy-goody-goody-best-friend-for-the-more-exciting-wild-and-crazy-friend is a fact of coming of age, but it certainly offers a dark insight about the flakiness and value-fluidity of teenagers seeking to find their place. Angela's completely self-focused attitude epitomizes the me-centric outlook of most teenagers, but it's not exactly an attractive quality. It seems that audiences like their main characters to represent what they are not but wish they could be, whereas My So-Called Life illuminated what they were but wish they were not. A little introspection can be a dangerous thing.
The supporting characters also offered a complex spectrum of issues generally not addressed by prime time programming. Angela's new best friend, Rayanne, is a promiscuous substance abuser with a wealth of emotional problems. Her sidekick Rickie Vasquez is openly gay (virtually unheard of for teen roles) and comes from an abusive household. The object of Angela's affection, Jordan Catalano (played by a hearthob-worthy Jared Leto) is an illiterate songwriter (I know, it makes no sense) who has been held back academically twice. After watching a few episodes, it was clear we weren't exactly dealing with the Brady Bunch here. Obviously these kids had problems that spanned a larger context than an hour-long weekly episode and thus plots were less episodic and more ongoing, making it more difficult for new viewers to jump in midseason.
The show was cut short when it was canceled prematurely in May 1995, leaving its small base of viewers with an as-of-yet unanswered cliffhanger. My So-Called Life was certainly ahead of its time, and perhaps if it had debuted a decade later it could have flourished into its full cliffhanger-answering potential. At the time, ABC executives underestimated the spending power of teenagers, particularly teenage girls) as a viable consumer demographic. Just imagine all of the value-inconsistent franchise product marketing that could have been.
If you were never among the original viewers or didn't pick up on it during the show's syndication on MTV, you are in luck. The show is available on DVD in all its angsty 90s glory. Sure, you may never find out if Angela chose rebel Jordan or brainy Brian, but at least you can know what all of these passionate message board contributors have been heatedly debating for the past 14 years.
Fear not, Children of the 90s will be back in full force tomorrow. I am out at a work conference, but in an effort to adhere to my regular posting schedule I am proud to present another pre-scheduled installment of classic (read: reposted) CotN for your perusing pleasure:
Goosebumps
If you thought some of these other delightful 90's commodities were franchising machines, you've yet to meet the monster of all monopolies. That's right, I used "monster" as a shockingly low-grade horror book pun. Just deal with it.
Children growing up in the 90s had a fascination with all things spooky. Shows like Are you Afraid of the Dark? and all sorts of novelized ghost stories cast a spell over young consumers and instilled in them an unquenchable hunger for all varieties of horror media. The king cresting this horror wave was R.L. Stine, a virtual book-miller churning out book after book laced with a satisfying mix of satire, humor, ripped-off story lines, suprise endings, and fright.
R.L. Stine wrote innumerable pieces of young adult fiction, but most memorable and exhaustive were those in his Goosebumps series. In an age where book series dominated the youth literature marketplace, Stine was among the few series creators who actually authored all of his own books without the use of ghostwriters. I guess you could call R.L. Stine the leading ghostwriter. Okay, even I can't handle that one. Moving on.
Goosebumps books were a gratifying balance of things of that our parents did and did not approve. On one hand, we were reading chapter books and unquestionably though unintentionally gaining some sort of literary adroitness. On the other, we were scaring ourselves silly with undiluted, unwholesome trash that was prime fodder to give us bad dreams and night terrors. It was like tricking your parents into thinking you were learning something, while deep down you knew you were up to no good.
R.L. Stine openly acknowledged that many of his Goosebumps plot lines were lifted from old-school horror exploits such as the Twilight Zone. Thankfully, as children in the mid-90s had limited or no knowledge of the existence of 1960s sci-fi television series , they eagerly absorbed these plot lines as fresh and new. Regardless of the story origins, the books were fairly un-put-downable. Stine was the master of plot twists, particularly at the end of a story. Even once we had read enough books in the series to recognize when we were being tricked or misled, we always took the bait and were outraged to find all of our supposedly sacrosanct suppositions had been for naught.
The best (and let's be honest, worst) example of this is Goosebumps #26: My Hairiest Adventure:
While of course the major underlying premise of these books are their absurdity, this one ostensibly reigns supreme and unleashes some fairly ridiculous plot meandering (if you haven't read the book or simply can't yet recall, that "unleash" is another marvelous pun. Really, I swear.) In short, a group of kids find an expired bottle of self-tanner and naturally decide to engage in a group lather session. Soon thereafter, they discover that they are sprouting hair all over their bodies and (mistakenly) believe the tanning solvent is to blame.
Suddenly, he starts seeing dogs all over town sporting the same hair/fur and eye colors as his previously human companions. Not only is this a bit spooky, it certainly explains why we had to read page-long description of Lily's clear green eyes and sandy hair. To think I'd erroneously speculated that Stine had developed a crush on his charming 7th grade female character.
Long(ish) story short, our lovable and assumably human protagonists aren't really kids at all...they're (wait for it!)...dogs! Yep, dogs. The details are so ridulous I don't think I'll extrapolate any further and rather just pause that with that Stine-esque chapter-end cliffhanger and leave you to your own book-finishing devices. Suffice it to say, we were surprised, if not a little confused.
Such was the way of Goosebumps. Just when we believed we had it all figured out, Stine would throw in an alien friend or a giant blobular monster to throw us off the trail. The real beauty of these books were their window to escapism; they did not need to be grounded in reality or even make sense. We loved them unconditionally, and were even willing to accept dozens of unwarranted sequels.
Of course, like any profitable 90s franchise, books were never enough. Some of our favorite stories were adapted for TV by the now defunct Fox Kids network:
That's right, because what's more ominous in a series intro than manuscript pages flying dramatically out of an author's briefcase? We all understood that it was based on the book series, but thankfully producers chose to drive the point home with outlandish literality. Not to mention that the dog's glowing eyes look suspiciously like they were sloppily drawn in Microsoft paint. This baby's got Fox written all over it.
Despite the low-budget TV series, board games, and video game adaptations, the tried and true Goosebumps formula was in the books. While as adults we can certainly recognize the chintzy stories and plot twists, we can still appreciate our childhood worship of these books as sacred. Their adeptness at simultaneously entertaining us and scaring us out of our minds always kept us hungry for more.
So lay back, grab your tattered old copy of Night of the Living Dummy III, and take yourself back to a simpler time. A time when you were able to suspend your disbelief at the implausibility of not one, not two, but three families falling for the same dummy-comes-alive trick all over again. So long as each chapter formulaicly ends with someone letting out a bloodcurdling scream for no reason other than to set up a cliffhanger for the following chapter, all is right in the world.
Amazingly comprehensive reviews of Goosebumps books: Blogger Beware
Image via break.com
