An Ode to My So-Called Life
Because has any series ever portrayed teenage life better?
The year was 1994. Thirteen year old me would lace up my Doc Martins, don my loose tie-die top over some black leggings, attempt to conceal whatever zit had decided to take up residence on my face and with a Prince or Pearl Jam cassette blasting in my walkman, I prepared for another day of being misunderstood.
The early teens are brutal. I had somehow fallen into a group of friends at school and managed to be almost bordering on kinda popular, but yet forever the outcast simultaneously. My quirky sense of style and love of Nirvana weren’t particularly in vogue among my crowd. But I didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to be into what everyone else was into. Flying that freak flag can be a lonely place.
And then the first episode of My So-Called Life aired and I. Felt. Seen. Holy shit. I was Angela Chase and she was me. Here was a girl who was just trying to figure herself out, teetering on the edge of acting up and behaving badly but never quite having the balls to actually do it. She had a friend, Rayanne Graff, who was a bit of a wrong ‘un and Angela’s mother could barely hide her disdain for her. I too, had a friend who my mother always ‘had a feeling’ about. And she was right, because OF COURSE SHE WAS RIGHT. How do mums always know?
For my money, there has never been a more accurate portrayal of the teenage experience than My So-Called Life. I re-watch the series at least once a year and get angry all over again that it was cancelled after one season.
Angela, played by Claire Danes, was not a traditionally beautiful girl, one of the many reasons I found her so relatable. Her crush, Jordan Catalano, played by Jared Leto, was devastatingly handsome, impossible not to audibly swoon over every time he came on screen. He was cool and unaffected and played in a band. I too, had a crush who was impossibly good looking and played in a band because OF COURSE HE DID. Unlike Angela though, my crush never looked in my direction. So the Angela and Jordan storyline gave me hope - maybe one day my crush will actually play attention to me, long enough to kiss me, and maybe I’ll be wrangle some sort of relationship out of that, even though he’s being quite clear that he doesn’t want that but rejection is a love language all its own. I rooted for Angela so hard. However tumultuous her relationship with Jordan was, man, she did it. Awkward girls the world over cheered her on because just once, we wanted that to be us.
Her strained relationship with her new friend Rayanne and her battle over ditching her lifelong bestie, Sharon was a classic teenage friendship drama we could all relate to. At that age, feeling we’ve outgrown a childhood friend while gravitating towards someone who can take us for a walk on the wild side is almost a rite of passage. But Rayanne, in all her weirdness, with all her problems, was loveable and charming and well-intentioned. When you watch it back now, you know it’s one of those seasonal friendships that is bound to fizzle out but we all know that feeling of the new friend crush - that obsession with all the coolness they can bring to our humdrum little lives.
Growing up, I was one of the only people in my circle being raised in a two parent household. Angela’s relationship with her parents, her constantly being annoyed with them for no reason whatsoever, oh man, hard relate. Seeing her battle her privilege as she waded into the issues of her friends - be it Rayanne’s drinking or Ricky’s abuse at the hands of his homophobic uncle - inevitably being out of her depth and having to call in the help of her parents, who she resented so much, yet trusted to know what to do, I knew that battle.
Claire Danes is notoriously one of the best cry-ers in the game. Her chin wobble? Undefeated. And when Angela cried, it was like a diamond bullet straight to the heart. You felt it. Every time. The moment where she sticks to her principles and lets Jordan know she’s not ready to sleep with him, knowing that spells the end of their whirlwind romance - I defy anyone to watch that and not feel like their soul is actually being crushed. Or when Sharon’s dad had a heart attack and her and Sharon have that moment where they admit they want to be in each other’s lives - goddamnit it, hand me a fresh box of Kleenex every time. Or the episode about Ricky’s homelessness - ahh forgeddaboudit, it’s impossible to hold it together during that one. But the toughest one though? When she finds out Rayanne slept with Jordan. Listen, if I couldn’t jumped through the screen and punched Rayanne myself, I would’ve.
By today’s teen drama standards, My So-Called Life is tame. Very tame. Last year, I watched Euphoria and sat slack jawed through episodes about sex (so much sex!), drugs (HARD drugs), one character becoming an online sex worker, guns, gangs, violence, sexuality, gender politics. Our 90s lives seem so simple in comparison. I don’t envy teens of today. Whatever struggles we may have had, at least they didn’t end up all over the internet.
So raise a glass to Angela Chase and co, who captured a moment in time so brilliantly. It was simple, innocent, pure. Our emotional turmoil wasn’t dismissed as silly or overdramatic. It was respected and handled with the gravitas it deserved. A seminal series that gave voice to the teenage experience in a way we hadn’t seen before.
And perhaps most importantly, it gave us weird girls a hero.
In next Monday’s paid issue of The Murmuration, we’re exploring friendships and how they change at this age:
“There are many other factors that can trigger a friendship breakdown; morals and ethics no longer aligning, money and class, distance, lack of shared interests or simply just drifting apart. But how do we navigate these changes with grace, especially in the case of a friendship ending and it really feeling like a loss?”
The paid issue brings you essays and think pieces every Monday about the big issues that affect us as women 35+. It’s $5 a month or $50 for the year. You can subscribe by clicking here - come join the flock!
If there are any issues/topics/themes you’d like to see talked about here, drop me a line and let me know. I’m also looking for awesome women age 60+ to interview for a series I’ll do here on the wisdom the generation above us can pass down. So if you know a woman 60+ with an interesting story to tell, let me know about her so I can get in touch.
Have a glorious weekend. Until next week, smile at strangers, spread good vibes, be nice to people.
YES to this... I re-watched MSCL recently after listening to the My So Called Podcast - it made me look at things differently; Angela’s relationship with her Mum, Jordan’s completely inappropriate conduct in the car scene - but it still perfectly sums up teen life for me (and I definitely still model my wardrobe on Angela’s!) Iconic.