The last few years of television are littered with castoffs and cancellations that never
really got a chance. One of the most memorable shows to never fully take off and still
earn a cult audience clamoring for a DVD release is Popular. The show took the
standard high school drama premise which had been done to death and filtered it through
the strange sensibility of creator Ryan Murphy, whose Nip/Tuck is currently
creeping out audiences from coast to coast.
Popular takes the vicious social order of high school and really immerses itself
in it, maybe deeper than any other teen show. But what makes this show so interesting
is that there really is no clear advantage to being on one side of the line over the
other. The cast is split among popular kids and outsiders and sometimes members flirt
with the other side – in both directions.
Of the huge cast, the main characters
are Samantha ‘Sam’ McPherson (Carly Pope) and Brooke McQueen (Leslie Bibb). Sam thinks
she’s a fiercely independent student journalist with a strong interest in exposing the
grimy truths behind the school’s in-crowd. And Brooke feels that she’s the nicest and
most open-minded of the Glamazon cheerleaders. Both soon discover that they may be wrong
about each other and, more importantly, themselves. The show throws the two together
literally in the second episode when their parents (Brooke’s divorced dad and Sam’s
widowed mom) announce their surprise engagement. When these two rivals find themselves
living together the show doesn’t offer any easy answers. They swing back and forth
between learning to understand each other and developing a powerful mutual hatred that,
at one point, sparks a cataclysmic food fight.
If it was just teen angst, even approached from such an articulate angle, the show
wouldn’t be as interesting as it is. Instead it’s directed and acted in a
hyper-stylized way that, while not completely original (Parker Lewis Can’t Lose
did it), makes this show stand out, especially during stand-out moments like a note-perfect recreation of camp classic Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and a long musical sequence in the bizarro season finale. Some of the actors really come at the material from
a skewed perspective, especially scene-stealer Leslie Grossman as transfer student Mary
Cherry. Mary Cherry (who is always referred to by her full name) is a bizarre
cheerleader-spoof character who reveals an enormous grin or villainous scowl whenever
possible. Through Popular’s two seasons watching what Grossman would do next
became a great pastime.
The actor that sets the tone for the show first and best, however, is Tammy Lynn
Michaels as the queen bitch of the Glamazons. The pilot episode (which is far more
earnest and less stylized than the rest of the season) gets off to a slow start until
Michaels appears on screen, firing off pop-culture references (Gwynnie is the idol du
jour) and insults fast and furious. The rest of the excellent cast eventually catches
up to her in their ability to blend legitimate character development and vicious satire
but Michaels is incredible right out of the gate.
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Also deserving mention in this cast of multi-faceted characters are
Tamara Mello as animal rights activist/fast food restaurant employee Lily, Christopher
Gorham as Sam’s best friend and life-long lover of Brooke Harrison, Sara Rue as
overweight cheerleader-wannabe Carmen, Bryce Johnson as Brooke’s quarterback boyfriend
turned drama club lead Josh and Ron Lester as boisterous wigger Sugar Daddy. It’s an
excellent ensemble of young actors and over the course of the season’s 22 episodes each
one gets to create a complex, insecure portrait of a character struggling with the
desire to be popular.
Something that strikes me as interesting about the show watching it now is how the
cliques of the school are so fractured that even the popular kids barely seem to have
any friends. Granted, this could be due to the need to keep even this large cast from
getting too huge. But the result reinforces the show’s idea that there is no perfect
side to be on. The “popular” kids are as insular as the outcasts, sometimes even
moreso. When Brooke and Nicole brag to each other about how everyone wants to be them,
but from the perspective of their clique of two, it seems strangely deluded. And when
the outcasts act as petty as they accuse the jocks and cheerleaders of being they
reveal the dark heart of teenage conflict. There is a lot of back-and-forth volleying
of bad behavior here, with no one really fully coming away clean.
One problem with the show is that it does get so caught up in its countless storylines
that some get dropped along the way. A serious-sounding thread early on finds Sam and a
teacher she has a crush on (played by Chad Lowe) getting in trouble after the Glamazons
claim they’re having an affair. After a brief meeting with the principle, however,
Lowe’s character disappears for a number of episodes and then reappears as if nothing
ever happened. Similarly a great character (the drama program director) makes a huge
impression during the early episodes only to be fired soon after and never reappear.
But at this point the show is obviously still finding its way and some characters that start out minor gain
prominence after its clear they work. Mary Cherry is like that, as is androgynous
biology teacher Miss Glass (the great Diane Delano, who eventually starts playing all
sorts of other wacky characters as well.) And other aspects of the show change as well:
an opening credit Lilith Fair troubadour sequence in the pilot is absolutely terrible –
and is replaced with the more standard but far more fun 90210-style headshot sequence
thereafter. For a young show that starts kind of shaky and quickly becomes very
engaging Popular had tremendous promise. In the second season, which will
hopefully also come out on DVD, the show became a little too loopy (with Michaels’
great character losing a lot of her bite) but it all culminated in an insane
cliffhanger that was never followed up. So, given that Popular was terminated
before its time, it’s great to be able to enjoy this wonderful first season again.