Over the last couple of weeks, I have indulged in something truly satisfying. I have laughed, I have cried, I have wanted to throttle, and I have wanted to console. Mostly I have been ashamed.
I have been watching a 90’s teen television show.
I have been watching Popular!
Brain child of Ryan Murphy, God of all things Glee, Popular! is a show set in high school about two girls from opposite social spheres whose parents get engaged. Chaos ensues as social barriers come tumbling, and crashing, down around them and force they, and their friends, to discover what it really takes to be popular.
It is a total guilty pleasure show; it’s ridiculous, stupid and downright absurd at practically every moment but it’s also hugely entertaining. The characters are brilliant, with just the right amount of randomness to make them believable, and every word of the script is golden.
The problem with many teen dramas is that they’re just too polished. The characters are too beautiful, too smart, too one dimensional to really make you believe in them. In Popular! each character displays such a myriad of emotions and characteristics that you start to think of them as real. People, especially teenagers, are confusing, unreliable, hypocritical, and change their mind as often as the wind, so why should teen characters not portray that? I love the fact that this show, in the same vein as Glee, also shows the funny side of everything. It takes the piss out of itself at every turn and never once apologises for it. An episode in Season Two, for example, sees the chemistry teacher, Ms Glass, write and direct a production in which the students play sexually transmitted diseases and perform to primary school children. Now that would (probably) never happen in a regular high school, but in Popular! it's completely normal.
It’s a shame that the show was cancelled after only two seasons. It ended on a massive cliff-hanger (life or death type cliff-hanger) and, apparently, the show’s producers had no idea the show would be cancelled. Even so, it’s still worth watching. If you enjoy shows like One Tree Hill, The O.C., and, of course, Glee, then it’s definitely worth seeing if you can get hold of Popular!
