Square Pegs: A Personal Reminiscence

Hard to believe that Square Pegs only ran for one season. It’s one of those glitches in the programming instinct of the powers-that-be that happens from time to time (I am thinking now of one of the heirs of Square Pegs – My So-Called Life), and you look back on it, thinking, ‘That show should have run at least for a couple of seasons.” Square Pegs was a hit (well, as I remember it it was, I don’t know what the ratings were – WE all were watching it down on the ground) and in the 20-odd years since then, people’s affection for it has only grown. People still remember the names of the characters by heart. How often does that happen? Muffy Tepperman. Johnny Slash. You have to be a certain age, obviously, to get the references – but to think that a show that was on for only one season would hit, and on such a deep level, is rather extraordinary. It also had a “cool” factor going on, with guest spots by Devo, The Waitresses, Bill Murray.

Speaking on a personal level, that show hit at just the time when I was moving into the whirlwind of adolescence. What it showed was what I was experiencing. It was similar to the bomb going off in my group of friends when Breakfast Club came out. These things now can be seen as almost relics, almost cute, or coy – because they were so of their time and place, kind of like watching Beach Blanket Bingo or something. “Oh, look how funny they wore their hair back then! Listen to the music!” But on the ground, in the moment, we weren’t “ironic” or into it because it made fun of us and where we were at and the music we listened to. It validated us.

Now there is all kinds of art, and I’m not putting Square Pegs on a level with, oh, Andrei Rublev … but neither should it be. All art does not have the same goals. Rebel Without a Cause or Catcher in the Rye may seem silly when you have passed the stage in life when you need to hear what they have to say. That’s fine. But teenagers, in all their messiness and awfulness, are – like all of us still, as adults – looking for a mirror. A mirror that was not given to them by their parents, but one that is out in the world. I had, up until that point, found my mirror in books. Harriet the Spy, Ballet Shoes, Wrinkle in Time, Huckleberry Finn. I was not a pop-culture kid. How could I be? To quote Mark, we “only had three channels”. I had parents who loved folk music and The Beatles so that’s what I listened to (and still do, although I mix it up with my own taste too). Top 40 didn’t make a dent in my consciousness. I wanted to live in the world of Oliver Twist. I was 12, but I was still a little girl. When I started growing breasts in the 6th grade, I doggedly slept on my stomach to try to push them back in again. I wasn’t ready. I loved baseball, I was on a Little League team (before they had girls teams), I loved living in my imagination, and making up dances after school with my friends. I was dragged kicking and screaming into adolescence.

But then, along came a mirror called Square Pegs. And it managed to act as a mirror without being ponderous or preachy or too melancholic. It’s kind of a hoot, actually. This show was funny. But that deeper level was there, and that’s why it is so remembered.

Those two lead girls, Patty (in glasses, played by a geeky Sarah Jessica Parker) and Lauren (the pudgy girl with braces, more effervescent and embarrassing, played by Amy Linker) were like me. I didn’t care about being popular, I wasn’t a social climber like Lauren – but I certainly didn’t fit in, and I had glasses, braces, my clothes were wrong, and I looked around at other girls and they just seemed so put together, and what … did I miss a memo? Patty and Lauren had missed the memo, too. And better than all of this: they made it FUNNY. The show made the trials and tribulations of geeks FUNNY. It was a precursor to Freaks and Geeks, to all of the wonderful shows about the weirdo yet charming outcasts of the world that now dominate the airwaves. So I kind of could embrace my weirdness. Not totally, because yuk, I wasn’t into being weird, and un-dateable. But it, like so many other key things that came along at key times (uhm, Skyward), said to me in no uncertain terms: “Hang on. You’re kind of fabulous. You’re just a weirdo right now. Don’t try to change. Your time will come.”

I’M STILL WAITING, BY THE WAY.

So the message was a big fat LIE from where I’m sitting now, but I am trying to imagine myself back into my 14-year-old self who thought it was appropriate to dress up like this on dress-up days at school, mkay? To quote my friend Beth, “And then we wondered why we didn’t have boyfriends.”

The other great thing about Square Pegs which was a mirror for me was the importance of having a good core group of friends. Now, I already had that. I have always been blessed that way. My friends from high school are still my dear friends, everyday friends, they comment on my blog, we Facebook like crazy, we are still in each other’s lives in an intimate way, even though we live in different spots now. One of the strengths of Square Pegs was that it wasn’t just ONE geeky girl trying to become popular. It was a constant strategizing session between TWO girls, who were obviously best friends. Their friendship was one I recognized from my own life (and that rarely happens with female friendship on television – which often is depicted in a catty competitive or shallow way – none of which was going on with my group of friends – we were a huge bottomless pit of support and shrieking encouragement.) It had a good heart, Square Pegs. Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker, as Patty and Lauren, created a believable friendship. You believed those girls had been having slumber parties since they were eight. You believed they had known each other forever. Girls can be very intense with each other, and the show got that, and didn’t condescend to it. Watching it now can be kind of embarrassing, because you remember all the melodramas you involved yourself in in high school and you want to erase it from the public record (unless you’re like me, and you put your high school journals on the internet) … but thank God you had friends you could feverishly fill in about the big moment of chatting you had with some hottie at his locker, and how important it all was, and how since he said THIS that obviously means THIS and OH MY GOD HE LIKES YOU (etc. etc.) My friends and I have moved on to be capable adults, with relationships and kids and houses and all that, but I love that I am still friends with the people who literally caught me when I swooned at a dance after dancing with the guy I was in love with (who was in a toga, too, so OUR SKIN TOUCHED which was a big deal for a girl who wouldn’t end up getting her first kiss until she was 18 freakin’ years old), or who listened sympathetically when I SOBBED because he wasn’t in school that day, and I was just so disappointed.

Condescend to your younger self at your own risk.

You lose so much when you forget who you were. When you roll your eyes at how “stupid” you were, or “foolish”. Embrace it. It’s part of you. Sometimes it’s the best part. If nothing else, man, I knew how to love back then. I had ZERO success at it, but boy did I know how to love someone! That’s nothing to scoff at.

Square Pegs was not released on DVD until May of last year. It was another one of those strange annoying glitches. I have my pet peeves. Why the hell is thirtysomething not on DVD? Is it a music rights issue (which holds so many of these shows back)? I don’t care WHAT it is, that show needs to be released. I have a couple others. Secret Garden, starring Margaret O’Brien and a child Dean Stockwell. I cannot BELIEVE that this is not available on DVD. It’s a travesty. It seriously MUST happen. Sounder! Are you telling me Sounder is not on DVD? I can’t believe it. I have it on VHS, but come on now.

Square Pegs, along with all these others, had been a bee in my bonnet for years, since old TV shows started becoming available on DVD. “Yay! I can watch I Love Lucy – hooray! But what about Square Pegs?”

I am sure its release had something to do with the unstoppable juggernaut that was the Sex and the City movie, but I didn’t care about any of that. I was just happy to have that show again in my sweaty little hands, so I could relive the horror of high school, but also laugh my ass off at all of those characters I remembered so well. It was strange how much came back to me. Lines of dialogue, scenes … “Oh wait … isn’t there some scene in the bathroom with a plunger right around here?” I was always right. So strange and actually kind of freaky. I wish I could remember OTHER things, like all the Latin I took in high school … but no, I have entire episodes of Square Pegs memorized, not to mention every camera angle in the legendary Skyward. I want my Latin back!

The funniest thing about all of this, at the moment, is that I watched the entire series last June, after I bought the DVD. Had a great time, yuk yuk. Then Suzy Gilstrap came along in November and hijacked my life. Ben Marley took on more importance, as I watched Skyward, and I remembered the impact he had on me as that awkward girl on the cusp of just accepting I was not only a girl but a weird girl … and so I looked him up and, naturally, realized that I had seen him many many many many times before. Facts of Life. Check. Jaws 2. Check. Pride of Jesse Hallam. Check. Square Pegs. Check. That TV movie starring Mare Winningham as a girl who goes back to high school after being a teenage streetwalker? Check. And then of course Apollo 13. Check. (Thank you, Lisa, for the checklist.) Seen them all, all throughout my life. I just hadn’t put it all together (the Ben Marley thread of connection, I mean). I hadn’t followed him, in the way I followed Ralph Macchio or Harrison Ford. He remained an isolated cute guy, but gotta say: in Square Pegs he was devastating – and I remember him very well from back when I first saw it – just the kind of guy who would crack your heart in a million pieces in high school … and just attainable enough that it makes the whole situation even worse. Once I figured out his continuum (as of two weeks ago, after seeing Skyward, when Keith and Dan and I IMDB’d him to DEATH), I remembered him vividly and put it all together. Of COURSE he was Larry Simpson in Square Pegs. I remember his face, I remember their moments – I would expect nothing less!

“Larry Simpson is like … deep … you know? Vinnie can fake ID any time … but you can’t … fake ……….. depth.”

I have such affection for those characters, it’s insane.

I love Tracy Nelson as Jennifer DeNuccio, the popular dead-eyed fashion-plate Valley Girl beeyotch. I love Vinnie, Jennifer’s swaggering Welcome Back Kotter boyfriend, who is always chewing on a toothpick, played by Jon Caliri. I also loved Claudette Wells as LaDonna, the black girl (the only black girl in Weemawee? Seemed like it), who palled around with Jennifer, and basically started off the entire series by singing the alma mater at a school pep rally “in her own style”, which was reminiscent of Madonna. So unfortunately the one black girl is also a song-and-dance queen. But she was very funny and intimidating as a character, and I loved that her best friend was the Valley Girl. It’s a nice and un-obvious choice, but that’s the way life is, so often.

I adore Jami Gertz as Muffy Tepperman, the bossy preppy pep-squad queen, who hadn’t a shred of humor about herself or anything. She is so annoying and very very funny.

I love John Femia as Marshall Blechtman, another annoying character, who wants to be a stand-up comedian and he is terrible. I loved Johnny Slash, played with great weirdness by Merritt Butrick – and the music he loved was the music that I loved by that point, so I felt a kinship to him. Every time Marshall would take Johnny’s ubiquitous headphones off, you could hear some other cool song playing – B-52s, for example – “Private Idaho”, I think was one of them. He was me. I get it, Johnny Slash, I love that music too!

So there’s our main cast (I’ll be focusing on Ben Marley as Larry Simpson soon enough!). These people have, like so many other characters, stayed in my brain for all this time. You know, you say “Johnny Slash” to someone of a certain age, and they will nod, and reply, “Totally different head.”

The show was on for one season.

Remarkable.