If “My So-Called Life” Had Streamed and Not Aired

By Kendra Stanton Lee

When Claire Danes debuted as pensive, grunge girl Angela Chase on “My So-Called Life,” she was on the edge of 14 years-old. In that same year of 1994, I was, as well. I was not a fan of “My So-Called Life;” I was a rabid, obsessed, maniac about the show, hefting the 8” television set from our mildewy basement into my bedroom for my weekly appointment with the teen squad of fictional Liberty High School.

When the ABC series was canceled that same year, I lost a window on the world. Unlike the character of Angela, I attended an all-girls high school run by nuns, and “My So-Called Life” had become the narrow portal through which I could glimpse non-uniform school fashion (Flannels! Slip dresses! Choker necklaces!) and beautiful boys who leaned against lockers to apply their eye drops. 

“Still, the ratings, a metric that was the death of shows in a pre-streaming era, were not enough to renew the program for another season. No one asked us what we wanted. ”

Beyond the superficial, though, “My So-Called Life” delivered something rare and artful on primetime, a rendering of a Rust Belt suburb in which multiple generations are trying to disinherit what they were taught by the generation before, while deciding what it is they believe about themselves and their place in the world. Of note, the show also featured the first openly gay actor playing an openly gay adolescent. The narration by Danes anchors the storytelling, like listening to a friend read a page from her diary. Angela Chase drew me out of myself and “My So-Called Life” transported me to another place.

My friends and I were all hopelessly devoted to the show. Still, the ratings, a metric that was the death of shows in a pre-streaming era, were not enough to renew the program for another season. No one asked us what we wanted. We weren’t Nielsen or advertisers or anyone who was an arbiter of entertainment. I suspect the outcome would have been entirely different had “My So-Called Life” been released on a streaming service, while social media levied the cheers and grievances of the vox populi.

Now, of course, I can hang out with my old pal Angela any day of the week on Hulu or on ABC.com, bingeing episode after pitch perfect episode. I’m still devastated by the writing, the performances, and the overall risk-taking the show endeavored to make in a time when the ink was still wet on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell legislation and the O.J. Simpson trial dominated public consciousness. I recommend wading deep into the waters of this one and only season of so-called life for, like, a binge, for, like, three reasons, or whatever.

Abandoning the Coming of Age Cliche

Adolescent characters, especially on television, often strike me as untrue. I wonder if the writers remember being a teenager, at all. They seem to forget the adolescent paradox of wanting both to be patently invisible and fully known and seen. The action of “My So-Called Life” occurs mainly in the girls’ school restroom (private quarters) and the hallway (way the hell out in the open). In every scene, Danes’s portrayal of Angela throbs and aches, but she somehow does so in a way that is understated, enlivened by the marvelous writing of Winnie Holzman. Danes’s precocious performance still takes my breath away. 

“[TV writers] seem to forget the adolescent paradox of wanting both to be patently invisible and fully known and seen. ”

Whereas the much-beloved “The Wonder Years” that aired for six seasons on ABC delivered a masterful main character narration by Fred Savage, it did so from a present day omniscience looking back at the awkward fumblings of a junior high and high school boy. “My So-Called Life” invites us into Angela’s cultural critiques in real time, gifting us with musings that the likes of Holden Caulfield could appreciate: “My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, ‘How was that drive-by shooting?’ You don't care how it was, you're lucky to get out alive.”

Jordan. Catalano.

“My So-Called Life” seemed to abandon the football player/cheerleader one-note narrative of other shows we had seen in which teenagers had been played by late twentysomething actors, but it still offered plenty of shallow bait. Angela’s romantic interest in Jordan Catalano, played by Jared Leto, pulled his dreamy blue eyed vessel ashore for us every week. 

I remember before the bell rang for first period, my girlfriends traded the latest Teen and People Magazine, with pictures of Danes and Leto and other co-stars rehearsing on set or sharing a peek at their bedroom at home. Stars, they were just like us! But we were insatiable most over the advancing storyline of Jordan and Angela. It still holds up. 

Their relationship is one born of public hand clasps, private stairwell trysts, so much longing and so few actual spoken words. Upon rewatching, I wasn’t certain I bought the forgiveness that seems to follow the potent betrayals of this courtship. And then I remember that I am a 40 year-old woman who saves extra napkins in her Subaru. Jordan glances at Angela. Angela tucks her hair behind her ear and returns the glance. This is the frothy, fickle business of teenage love and lust. 

For the love of nuance

The mystique of 'My So-Called Life' points even to the secondary and tertiary characters. Take the character of Tino, who exists only as a shadow and never actually appears. Tino is regularly referenced as one who calls shots, knows people, makes things happen, and then causes everything to fall apart. And the character of Bryan Krakow who is not quite the nice guy who finishes last in a John Hughes movie, but is also not as antagonistic as Angela surmises him to be. Bryan Krakow is all of us in high school, a little bit used, a whole lot curious. He wants to be recognized, but he also wants to hide behind his yearbook photographer’s camera as he captures a youthful moment to remember. 

There are certainly some heavy-handed moments and subplots in “My So-Called Life,” such as with Wilson Cruz’s character of Ricky Vazquez who seems to carry all the tokens the show can afford: Latinx, gay, orphaned, abused, and flamboyant. But there is so much delicious subtlety and intrigue throughout that we must forgive this show’s prescience. It was just ahead of its time. 

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Kendra Stanton Lee is a writer and teacher in Boston. Her reporting and essays have appeared in Slate, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe. For more of her writing, visit www.kendrastantonlee.com.