“Like a sleeve caught in some implacable and uncomprehending machine, his need to be understood had become lodged in her blissful but dangerously indifferent body. He would be dragged through a crushing obsession and spat out the other end without her pulse flickering or her thoughts wandering from their chosen paths.”
—Edward St. Aubyn, Bad News
“When Rayanne said my hair was holding me back, she wasn’t just talking about my hair. She was talking about my life.”
- Angela Chase, “My So-Called Life”
∞ July 16, 2012 at 08:58pm
My So-Called Life Styles: Pilot
Shout out to my fellow Pittsburgh yinzers. It was nice of costume designer Patrick R. Norris to incorporate the cheerleaders’ black and yellow uniforms so subtly here. “My So-Called Life” is set in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh and naturally, Angela’s football team is the Three Rivers Pirates. Not that you would ever see Angela Chase at a football game.
One particularly interesting thing you will see more than once on this show is that the popular-girl cliques tend to be racially diverse.
And that girl’s perm. My goodness.
∞ July 16, 2012 at 08:39pm
My So-Called Life Styles: Pilot
Angela gives some fabulous side-eye to the other students and we see a flood of flannel — truly, hardly a frame goes by without seeing some kid in denim and a flannel shirt. Kurt Cobain has been dead for only four months and the youth at Three Rivers High are still in mourning.
Here’s Brian for the first time, getting roughed up by a bully as Angela keeps walking, and we watch a group of guys ogle Angela as Sharon goes on obliviously about someone from their yearbook group. Does the guy with the mullet in the lower-right hand corner look about 20 years too old to be in high school?
∞ July 16, 2012 at 08:13pm
My So-Called Life Styles: Pilot
We meet Sharon, Angela’s childhood bestie. She’s saying something to Angela about yearbook, and if we aren’t able to guess by their one-sided conversation that Sharon is one wet blanket, she drives the point home in her particularly frumpy top, ’80s jeans and that horrible scrunchie. Not that scrunchies were horrible in 1994, they were great — but Sharon wears her hair like a little girl might have at that age, and her outfit makes her look downright dowdy.
Note the first flash of Angela wearing plaid in this scene. It’s about to become one of her signature looks.
∞ July 16, 2012 at 07:32pm
Pilot: August 25, 1994
The show begins as Angela and Rayanne try to talk their way into some bus fare for school. Angela is shy; Rayanne, from the very start, is aggressive yet affable. In this first scene, Angela, wearing a back pack, pink tee shirt, floral skirt and a vest that looks like one of my grandmother’s doilies, is following the lead of her new friend. Rayanne is in jeans, a black leotard top and flannel, and a pair of ying-yang earrings — to both Angela and the viewer, Rayanne is effortlessly cool. A new school year is beginning and it’s important to note that Angela will never this outfit again.
∞ July 14, 2012 at 10:20pm
Commentary to start next week. Happy Fourth, everyone!
