Posted: Jul 6th 2005, 4:07 am
I first heard about MSCL from this Sassy interview with Claire Danes a few months before the pilot aired. The article was enough to convince me to watch the show from the beginning, despite the fact that some of the print ads I'd seen for the show were confusing (some focused on Patty & Graham, others featured Angela and Jordan).
I was 19 when the show began airing, and I watched it religiously every week. Even though I had a VCR (that thing that came before TiVo), I insisted on being home to watch every episode. I remember I made my friend leave the mall while we were Christmas shopping because I couldn't miss even the very beginning of the episode.
I don't think that the show helped me in any personal situations because at that point in my life, I'd already had a few boyfriends (one of whom was bad news and reminded me so much of Jordan) and, not to make myself sound wise beyond my years, but dealing with that kind of stuff helped me see what I did and did not want in my relationships. I'd already spent two years in the dorms and I'd learned from a lot of my mistakes. I wish I could say that watching the show helped me understand my parents better, but it didn't until years later. The one thing that this show changed for me was my belief that there were no shows brave enough to show what teenagers really felt and went through.
I graduated from high school in 1992, so I was in college when MSCL aired. I think that MSCL captured certain things about the 90s very accurately, but you have to keep everything in context. Yes, there were people who dressed like Angela, Rayanne, Sharon, Brian, and Rickie, but they did not represent every type of clothing that was worn at that time. To put in another way - when people watch reruns of Friends or Seinfeld in the future, will you tell them that everyone dressed just like Kramer of Phoebe?
As far as social groups, I believe that has less to do with the 90s and more to do with high school in general. At most schools in most time periods, there were, are, and will be the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, the outcasts, and everyone else. There will always be parties, kids who smoke, people who feel left out, people who love yearbook, people who ditch, etc. MSCL portrayed high school in a far more convincing manner than most teen movies do (although I know there are the keggers in huge suburban houses when the popular kids' parents are conveniently out of town). For some people, high school IS a John Hughes movie. For other people, it's more like Freaks & Geeks.
Like Kristin, I had different friends in different groups, partly because I was involved in a lot of different activities at a large school. With almost 900 kids in my freshman class, it was pretty common to have six different classes with no overlap in the people in my classes (meaning that whenever I was sick, I had to call six different peoplet to see what I had missed). There were definitely people who I was closer to, but going to such a large school provided the opportunity to move fluidly from one group to another. I sometimes felt that I didn't really belong to one particular group, but I never hated high school.
I was 19 when the show began airing, and I watched it religiously every week. Even though I had a VCR (that thing that came before TiVo), I insisted on being home to watch every episode. I remember I made my friend leave the mall while we were Christmas shopping because I couldn't miss even the very beginning of the episode.
I don't think that the show helped me in any personal situations because at that point in my life, I'd already had a few boyfriends (one of whom was bad news and reminded me so much of Jordan) and, not to make myself sound wise beyond my years, but dealing with that kind of stuff helped me see what I did and did not want in my relationships. I'd already spent two years in the dorms and I'd learned from a lot of my mistakes. I wish I could say that watching the show helped me understand my parents better, but it didn't until years later. The one thing that this show changed for me was my belief that there were no shows brave enough to show what teenagers really felt and went through.
I graduated from high school in 1992, so I was in college when MSCL aired. I think that MSCL captured certain things about the 90s very accurately, but you have to keep everything in context. Yes, there were people who dressed like Angela, Rayanne, Sharon, Brian, and Rickie, but they did not represent every type of clothing that was worn at that time. To put in another way - when people watch reruns of Friends or Seinfeld in the future, will you tell them that everyone dressed just like Kramer of Phoebe?
As far as social groups, I believe that has less to do with the 90s and more to do with high school in general. At most schools in most time periods, there were, are, and will be the jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, the outcasts, and everyone else. There will always be parties, kids who smoke, people who feel left out, people who love yearbook, people who ditch, etc. MSCL portrayed high school in a far more convincing manner than most teen movies do (although I know there are the keggers in huge suburban houses when the popular kids' parents are conveniently out of town). For some people, high school IS a John Hughes movie. For other people, it's more like Freaks & Geeks.
Like Kristin, I had different friends in different groups, partly because I was involved in a lot of different activities at a large school. With almost 900 kids in my freshman class, it was pretty common to have six different classes with no overlap in the people in my classes (meaning that whenever I was sick, I had to call six different peoplet to see what I had missed). There were definitely people who I was closer to, but going to such a large school provided the opportunity to move fluidly from one group to another. I sometimes felt that I didn't really belong to one particular group, but I never hated high school.