SQUARE PEGS: THE COMPLETE SERIES [NR]
Some things are better left a memory, as most people who have recently seen this mercifully short-lived TV series from 1982 (after they like, y’know, totally freaked out over its decades-long lack of any kind of home video release) will tell you.
The series is now best known for giving The Golden Girls Movie Sex And The City star Sarah Jessica Parker her start in Hollywood. She played Smart Girl Patty Greene, a dorky freshman at Weemawee High School who desperately wanted to fit in with the cool kids, despite being saddled with The Fat Girl, Lauren Hutchinson (Amy Linker), for a best friend. Rounding out this core quartet of the disenfranchised was ever-riffing Class Clown Marshall Blechtman (John Femia) and new wave (not punk) Burnout John “Johnny Slash” Ulasewicz (Merritt Butrick).
Making life difficult for these one-note wonders were The Popular Kids, whom James Spader and Molly Ringwald would personify after John Hughes started making teen fare that really mattered a couple years later. There was the proto-Valley Girl Jennifer DiNuccio (Hollywood legacy Tracy Nelson), her dough-headed Greaser boyfriend, Vinnie (Tony Caliri) and Ethnic Princess Muffy Tepperman (Jami Gertz), whose running gag about always raising money for her Guatemalan orphan is actually even better than “Lost? Have you tried the Hare Krishnas?” in The Muppet Movie.
The series was created by former “SNL” writer Anne Beatts, and was based on her own experiences in high school (lending credence to the notion that real life is too often stultifying). She was the Tina Fey of her day, mixing it up weekly with a writing staff of mostly men. Unfortunately, there’s not much to this show, which is essentially a series of live-action “Bazooka Joe” panels with cool music. The Waitresses, based on the popularity of their still-green hit, “I Know What Boys Like,” did the theme song (which makes a Ramones song sound complex by comparison). Devo appeared (at Muffy’s Bat Mitzvah). And Beatts even got The Doors’ drummer John Densmore to appear, showing her true age and appealing to the hip parents who had tuned in hoping for some insight as to why their kids were speaking in sentence fragments and embracing a certain prepositions and adverbs (like, totally).
The one-camera comedy was rather forced (and curse you, wretched laugh track!), though Beatts had some help being unfunny by future “Will & Grace” producer Janis Hirsch and future political comedy genius Andy Borowitz (hey, everybody needs to start somewhere). Also, too much of the cast was desperately trying to break out of the After School Special rut and become the Next Big Thing. Femia is the most shameless of the bunch, with a Howard Cosell impression that was absolutely uncanny…for sounding nothing like Howard Cosell. The late Butrick’s lovable loser was grating, though he did redeem shortly thereafter by playing Dr. David Marcus in “Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.” And Gertz’s hyperkinetic twit Muffy would be the most irritating in the bunch, were it not for the fact that she was the fabulous Jami Gertz, star of the 1987 vampire staple “The Lost Boys” and the much less cool 2002 grown-up sitcom, “Still Standing.”
Perhaps if the Nielsens (not to be confused the Nelsons, Ozzie & Harriet) were kinder to the show, it would have had the chance to develop into something better. However, another similar show that ran as many episodes and came along nearly 20 years later sprang from the creative womb of its creator fully formed, and will survive far longer than this curiosity (that show was “Freaks and Geeks). And perhaps if the post-disco decade was not so fresh and the show’s creators weren’t so intent on everything they depicted becoming a fad or a catch-phrase, then they could have made the meager 22 1/2 minutes work more effectively. Instead, we are left with 20 episodes (19 if you count the 2-part Christmas show) of nostalgia that’s only as precious as we rationalize it to be.••• –Robert Newton
*SPECIAL FEATURES: Featurette - “Weemawee Yearbook Memories” (Interviews with Sarah Jessica Parker, Jami Gertz, Tracy Nelson and Claudette Wells, John Femia, Steven Peterman, Amy Linker, Merritt Butrick, and Anne Beatts; Bonus Minisode - “The Facts of Life: Sex Symbol”; Bonus Minisode - “Silver Spoons: Hey, Mrs. Robinson”
A BLAST (OF FROSTY SWEET REFRESHMENT) FROM THE PAST:
Check out this Ramblin’ Root Beer spot from 1979, and see if the young girl playing (Broadway’s) Annie looks familiar. Hint: she’s featured in this review, and would look more familiar with a giant pair of tortoise-shell glasses or with a word processor across her lap.
