I was an awkward teenager. That hardly makes me an anomaly, but the levels of angst accompanying that particular state of being reached the kind of heights that every misfit seems to think is unique to them. Of course, the irony is that this is a fairly universal condition among people navigating new identities and social strata, even as the hierarchies of high school appear to be carved in stone. Everything seems inflated beyond belief, every interaction a subject to be endlessly analyzed, and every embarrassment a potential reason to leave the country.
I say all this in retrospect, because I’ve found myself imparting advice to a few high schoolers and wondering what I wish I had known at their age. Besides the typical warnings against surrendering to self-doubt or taking cliques too seriously, I mainly wish my younger self had known about two of the greatest TV shows of all time: My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks.
Like many of the introverted outliers of the universe, I spent a good part of my high school years seeking some kind of refuge within fictional worlds. Books, movies, music, and TV shows became a reliable source of truth and comfort for me, a way to make sense of everything I did not yet understand and provide a foundational structure on which to base the frustrating chaos of real life. What I always failed to find, however, was a TV show that portrayed the kind of angsty and introspective existence I led.
Instead, I was faced with shows like Gossip Girl and The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which I never felt particularly moved to watch. Needless to say, my secret lives were far more likely to involve Nutella or late-night trips to IHOP than pregnancy.
When I discovered My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks about a year ago, then, I was taken aback by how relatable their central stories were. Both shows revolved around pretty unremarkable teenage girls, neither protagonist gorgeous or particularly interesting. They weren’t lavishly rich or up to their necks in operatic drama. They were just going through the motions of high school, dealing with crushes, math, and friend group dynamics in much the same way that I was a few years ago.
Unlike the majority of contemporary teen shows that are often overblown and unrealistic, these two bastions of adolescent experience derive their appeal from capturing the subjectivity of their heroines’ daily lives in a style that feels closely familiar and honest. You don’t have to throw in vampires, murders, or glamorous parties to generate conflict and create drama. Much of the conflict is internal, mirroring the way in which teenagers, especially girls, magnify every seemingly banal event into a tragedy of tremendous gravitas or a romance with the force of a thousand fires. The central tension is between the girls’ constantly shifting sense of self and the intangible ideal that society expects them to be.
The jumping-off point for both shows, after all, is their protagonists’ respective decisions to break away from their former, obedient selves and branch out by acquiring a riskier, more marginal group of friends. These transitions are not so much reflective of an irreversible decision to move to the dark side as an exploration of different identities, a leap into uncharted territory. These girls are filled with flaws and contradictions, testing their boundaries as they struggle to reconcile conflicting parts of themselves.
Apparently, portraying a smart, multilayered, ordinary teenage girl was a risky enough venture in itself, because both shows were canceled after only one season. It saddens me that I haven’t found anything similar out there for contemporary teen girls, because that’s a particular demographic that desperately needs strong role models within their sphere of familiarity. No longer a teen, I still find myself returning to these shows because they capture such universal emotions.
Back when I was writing college essays, I found that a recurring challenge I ran into was drawing truth and profundity from ordinary experiences. I struggled to identify what singular event significantly contributed to my growth, what part of my routine would give admissions committees a glimpse at my true self. Calling forth the riches of daily life, after all, is the principal task of any creator. Having an eye for the universal beauty of both everyday triumphs and failures is what it is to be consciously human, even if all that means is dancing around your bedroom to the Violent Femmes after getting over a boy.
