The Square Pegs Pilot: In Hot Pursuit of Popularity and Larry Simpson – Part One

Square Pegs opens with a collage-style credit-sequence, with flashing images of various high school scenes (unpopulated, in a kind of bleached-out color scheme): the biology lab, the library, the hallway, the bathroom … all with the frenzied voiceover of the two girls as accompaniment.

Let’s go through it, shall we?

Memory Lane, revisited. First, let us revel in, what is for me at this moment, the most important fact of all.

Mkay?

Crucial to my emotional well-being.

The pilot starts with a pep rally for the freshman class on their first day of school at Weemawee High. A high school kid dressed in full American Indian regalia runs around the auditorium brandishing a tomahawk, wearing a full feather headdress, and doing an Indian war whoop. Today he would be sent to mandatory sensitivity training. But in the world of Square Pegs, he is revered. Such is progress.

Patty and Lauren (Sarah Jessica Parker and Amy Linker) sit amongst the crowd, and look around, ogling at the other students and trying to figure out who is the “in” crowd. Actually, that is more Lauren’s job, who is more ambitious than Patty. Patty has given her glasses to Lauren, so she can’t see anything anyway.

Tracy Nelson and her boyfriend Vinnie make a big entrance, and walk down the aisle of the gym as though it is a red carpet. Member those couples in high school? They were celebrities!

Does she look just like her father or what?

The laugh track on the show is really subtle, barely there. It’s kind of refreshing.

Lauren is plotting her way up the social ladder. You know it will be an uphill battle.

We meet Muffy Tepperman who shouts at the gathered students as though she’s running an Aryan Youth camp. She is obsequious towards the principal (Mr. Dingleman), so obsequious that you wonder if Jim Lipton had something to do with her portrayal. Mr. Dingleman introduces LaDonna, who will give “her rendition of the Weemawee Alma Mater – in her own style.” LaDonna sashays onto the stage, in full Cyndi Lauper slash Jane Fonda’s workout tape regalia – all leggings and long sweatshirts, and she performs the alma mater as though she is DEBORAH Gibson. Muffy Tepperman looks on, horrified, as though LaDonna has decided to rap the Gettysburg Address. LaDonna doesn’t care what Muffy thinks. She dances around, singing, the class claps, it is an impromptu concert. The Weemawee song involves the words “virgin spring” which I imagine causes much hilarity among the students. As LaDonna sings, the American Indian cliche dances around the gym. Off to sensitivity training for you, bub!

Let the school year begin!

Patty and Lauren make their way into the hellhole that is a high school cafeteria. Where to sit? Lauren, of course, knows they need to sit with the “in” crowd, so they plop themselves down at a table with Jennifer (Tracey Nelson) and LaDonna (Claudette Wells). Jennifer and LaDonna act as though little squirmy bugs have just joined their party. Ew. Jennifer is particularly relentless, honing in on Sarah Jessica Parker’s lunch box. “Did your mommy pack that for you … with, like … baggies and everything?” So mean.

The good thing about Lauren and Patty, and why they were fun heroines, is that they weren’t crushed down by this kind of behavior. They didn’t slink away, victimized. Parker saves the day by making a big lofty speech about how they realize they are not wanted, using huge vocabulary words, and the two friends flounce off, somehow becoming the victors of the moment.

BUT.

BUT.

Let me backtrack a moment. Jennifer and LaDonna have a conversation before Patty and Lauren barge over to sit with them.

Jennifer is bemoaning the fact that Vinnie isn’t all that deep (which is hilarious because Jennifer is the least deep fictional character ever created). She says to LaDonna (although she calls her “LD”), “You know who I, like, like?” LaDonna who is horrified and kind of judgey (because Jennifer already has a boyfriend) says “Who??” Jennifer glances longingly across the cafeteria and says, with import and meaning, “Larry Simpson.”

We see who she is looking at.

Larry Simpson (aka Ben Marley) is being fed … like a PASHA.

Isn’t that how hot nice guys seemed in high school when you stared at them from the faraway vantage point of freshman geekery? They seemed like desirable PASHAS, surrounded by giggling gorgeous acolytes, and there was no way on earth that you could ever get “in there” … Girls like that acted as a Praetorian guard of sorts! Territorial, protective, loving, vicious.

So anyway. Larry Simpson. In all his cute high school glory.

At this moment, Patty and Lauren race over and sit down with Jennifer and LD, Lauren saying, “Who’s Larry Simpson??”

Scene goes along as follows, with brief moments when all the girls drool over said Larry across the room.

But of course Jennifer and LD do not allow Patty and Lauren to infiltrate their clique, and make snotty comments about braces and lunch boxes until the two losers are forced to flee.

They then sit down with these two characters.

Man, doesn’t it bring you back? Unlike Jennifer and LD, Marshall and Johnny Slash are NOT horrified at Patty and Lauren. Just the opposite. Marshall sees an opportunity to try out his new comedy routines (his sense of comedy was arrested with Sid Caesar apparently), and also to hang out with the mysterious entity known as GIRLS. Johnny Slash is hidden behind shades and walkman, and when he realizes there are GIRLS at the table, he gets very nervous. Marshall calms him down. Johnny Slash has obviously been kept back many times, he appears to be about 25 years old … and he is “New Wave” … his whole life is “New Wave”. He is a rigid fascist about music, style, and labels. Patty innocently asks him if he is “punk” and he gets all offended.

Lauren, of course, is kind of a snob, and realizes immediately that these two guys are on the same echelon … and barely gives them the time of day. They need to move UP, not SIDEWAYS.

Marshall is so insistent with his ba-dum-ching comedy routines that Johnny Slash eventually picks him up and walks him away.

What ridiculous rapscallions. I love them both.

Patty and Lauren are now in a dilemma. They begin to flush Patty’s food down the toilet at school so that she need not go through the humiliation of lunch boxes any more (but also not piss off her mother who packs the lunch with “like, baggies and everything …”) I think flushing it down the toilet is rather high maintenance and believe that just stuffing the sandwich and yogurt and whatever else into a trash can would also do the trick, but no … flushing is what needs to happen.

The two girls huddle in the bathroom during lunch time, and they run into Jennifer and LD who say kind welcoming things to them like, “Gross me out the door …”

Muffy Tipperman also barges in at one point, in monogrammed preppy garb, and basically ropes them into the decorating committee for the upcoming freshman dance – “because you don’t have anything better to do …” she states.

Lauren, however, has other plans. She has set her sights on Larry Simpson. If they can somehow get in with him, they will be golden. Patty is doubtful. How will they ever get close to Larry Simpson who is, first of all, Ben freakin’ Marley, is, second of all, a senior, and lastly, a PASHA? Impossible!

But lo and behold, a miracle occurs.

Patty has been skipping lunch all week, due to the lunch box dilemma, and she walks up the stairwell, and suddenly gets weak in the knees, and has to sit down.

And who sits down next to her, joking, “Do you come here often?” but the pasha himself, Larry Simpson.

The worst part (and by “worst” I mean “best”) of this portrayal is that not only is he cute and desired by everyone, but also a nice guy. (Calling Keith M., phone call for Keith M.!) Killer combo. He saw the freshman Patty collapse on the stairs and he sits down, and is nice to her. He wonders if he should go for the school nurse. She tries to reassure him she’s okay. He jokes with her, and he’s so sexy (in that kind carefree high school boy way that is so effective you basically want to commit hari-kiri immediately) and also nice that it takes her a second to realize what is happening. That Larry Simpson is talking and joking with her. She doesn’t freak out immediately. She starts to talk about her lunch, and how she felt light-headed and just had to sit down. He’s trying to lighten her up, joke with her, being charming. Says, “What do you think Marcus Welby would do in a situation like this?”

Talk about looking like your father.

At some point, Patty realizes what is happening, and interrupts her monologue about fainting on the stairwell, with saying, “You’re Larry Simpson!” You know, guys like that were like stars in high school. I loved Tina Fey’s observation about that in the DVD extras for Mean Girls, how there were certain people in high school who were like celebrities – and the student body knew everything about them … what they wore, their relationship ups and downs, their fights, their dramas … the consciousness of the class revolved around these lucky few. So Patty breathes, “You’re Larry Simpson!” in the same tone that one would say, oh, “You’re Ben Marley!” (for example).

Instead of being cocky about her awestruck face, he is kind. (I mentioned in this post on Skyward the similarity between what he was doing in Skyward with what he did in Square Pegs – minus the cowboy hat and sexy ADD jangling-leg swagger). He played nice guys. Popular, sure, guys who look like that usually end up popular … but nice, too. So he’s kind to Patty. Look out, though, when you are kind to geek wallflowers. It might come back and bite you in the ass.

Ah, teenage adoration. When you are young enough to think that the one you love is perfect, and THAT is why you love him.

Then comes the most exciting moment of all, seen from the perspective of a 14-year-old square peg. Larry Simpson says to her, “You hungry? Want to get something to eat?”

So he takes her out to lunch at the local joint, where pretty much only cool kids get to go (similar to the damn Peach Pit in Beverly Hills 90210) … it’s like getting a glimpse of Xanadu’s mythical “pleasure dome” for Patty … and to show that, the booth they are sitting in starts to whirl around, with romantic music, and he’s feeding her, and they’re laughing, and time not only stands still, but stretches out, elongates, is made golden, and creamy, and delicious … In truth, they probably just had some fries and talked about school, but as anyone who was in love in 14 knows, it FEELS like the booth is spinning around in a golden drenched light!

Poor Patty! She’s headed for a fall!

I don’t know, I’m a grown woman now, and I still find him handsome and adorable. That’s not the case with all of my crushes from my youth, where I look back on it and think, What the eff did I see in that guy?

Flies preserved in amber, these Square Pegs episodes. I remembered all of it. Not to mention Ben Marley’s huge charm, which was just perfect for me as a young lonely teenager. I could look at him and say, “THAT’S what I want.” Ridiculous, I realize, but fantasies like that help get you through rough spots. (Not just when you’re 14, I might add.)

SO. OH MY GOD LARRY SIMPSON TOOK HER OUT TO LUNCH.

Yes, she has launched herself into a fantasy-world where there is no escape, except through heartache, but that’s part of life too.

During gym class Lauren tries to get all caught up on this miraculous experience as they run around the track. As I mentioned, this is (for me) the main strength of the show: the friendship between the two girls. Lauren could have been jealous that it was PATTY and not HER who was “chosen” by Larry Simpson, but instead she is more excited than even Patty is, and literally collapses into a writhing heap onto the track, moaning, “This is so romantic!” Now that’s a friendship moment I recognized from my own life.

Second half coming up ….