My So-Called Life

Angela Chase is 15, and everything feels like it's happening at once. My So-Called Life premiered on ABC on August 25, 1994, created by Winnie Holzman, and it turned the ordinary chaos of tenth grade into something close to poetry. Claire Danes plays Angela, a Pittsburgh kid who dyes her hair crimson and starts running with Rayanne Graff (A. J. Langer), a friend her parents can't stand. At home, Patty and Graham Chase (Bess Armstrong and Tom Irwin) are trying to keep a marriage and a family steady while their daughter seems to be turning into someone they don't recognize. Devon Gummersall's Brian Krakow, the neighbor who has loved Angela from across the street for years, and Wilson Cruz's Enrique Vasquez, Rayanne's exuberant best friend, round out a cast that feels like it was pulled from an actual high school hallway.

The show ran for 19 episodes between August 1994 and January 1995, though ABC ordered and promoted a second season that never materialized on air. Holzman wrote teenagers who talk in circles and mean every word, and the series treats their problems with the seriousness they deserve. It's a drama with comic edges, rated TV-14, and each episode runs about 48 minutes, giving scenes room to breathe.

Critics took to it right away, and its reputation has only grown since the cancellation. The rating sits at 7.7 out of 10, but the numbers undersell the devotion. This is a show about the feeling that no one has ever been 15 before, and it makes that feeling universal. [edit]

Angela Chase opens the pilot by explaining that she has recently dyed her hair "crimson glow" and started running with a new crowd. That crowd is led by Rayanne Graff, a reckless, charismatic classmate whose home life is chaotic and whose friendship with Angela alarms Angela's parents. Rounding out the trio is Enrique "Rickie" Vasquez, Rayanne's warm, flamboyant best friend, a gay Latinx teenager navigating an unstable home situation and the casual homophobia of his school. The series is set in the fictional Pittsburgh suburb of Liberty, Pennsylvania, and its world is small and specific: the Chase kitchen, the school hallway, the parking lot, the pizza place.

At home, Angela's parents Patty and Graham are trying to hold together a marriage and a household while their eldest daughter seems to be transforming into someone they don't recognize. Patty, a controlling but loving former high-school queen bee, and Graham, a gentle, restless restaurateur-in-waiting, anchor the adult storylines, which the show treats with as much seriousness as the teen ones. Angela's younger sister Danielle and her former best friend Sharon Cherski round out the family and social circle. The central object of Angela's obsession is Jordan Catalano, a beautiful, inarticulate, barely literate classmate who can't quite commit to anything, least of all a coherent sentence. Across the street lives Brian Krakow, the awkward, brilliant neighbor who has loved Angela quietly for years and who serves as the show's narrator-in-spirit through his unrequited devotion.

The central conflict is internal as much as external: Angela is trying to figure out who she is, what she believes, and how to be a person, while her parents try to figure out how to let her do that without losing her. Each episode takes a small, ordinary event, a school dance, a substitute teacher, a Halloween party, a parent-teacher conference, and treats it with the emotional weight of a major life event, because to a 15-year-old it is one. Holzman's writing captures the way teenagers talk in circles and contradictions and mean every word, and the series refuses to condescend to its characters.

Over the course of the season, Angela navigates her first serious relationship, her parents' marital strain, Rayanne's self-destructive behavior, Rickie's precarious home life, and her own shifting sense of self. The season builds toward a climactic episode in which several of these threads converge, but the series was cancelled before its story could be fully resolved. A second season was ordered by ABC but never produced; the network cancelled the show in May 1995 before production began. The "Specials" listed in some databases are not narrative episodes but DVD extras and behind-the-scenes material.[edit]