"Huge events take place on this earth every day...

"...Earthquakes, hurricanes, even glaciers move.  So why couldn't he just look at me?"

In the last week or so, I've been watching my DVD set of My So-Called Life in my free moments.  I still completely love that show, but I can't believe we were supposed to buy the fact that Angela kept her hair that shade of red (from a cheap home dye job, no less) without the aid of a stylist.  If only I knew her secret.  Also, now that I'm ten years older and can appreciate such things--the guy who played her dad was really sexy at the time.  Watch it if you don't believe me.

Remember the first time Jordan held Angela's hand in front of everyone in the hallway?  And the one when Rickie got kicked out of his house and Juliana Hatfield guest-starred as a dead homeless girl/guardian angel?  And the one when Brian told Delia he couldn't go to the World Happiness Dance with her because he wanted to go with Angela, but Angela was just going with him because she hoped she'd run into Jordan?  And the substitute teacher who got fired because he was encouraging kids to think for themselves and Angela wrote that awesome poem at the end?  And when Rickie brought a gun to school because he was afraid of getting beat up and it went off accidentally and Brian covered for him?  And the one when Brian started a rumor that Angela had sex with Jordan?

And people think The O.C. is contrived.  But it worked for exactly the same reason shows like The O.C. and Buffy the Vampire Slayer do: at its core, it's really about feeling like an outsider, and everyone can sympathize with with that.  The storylines are over-the-top, but the characters are honest.  The thing that astounds me is that they made all of 19 episodes and it's still syndicated (currently on some cable channel) after all these years.  There's something to be said for the fact that it got cancelled before it had a chance to suck, but still, it usually takes at least 100 episodes for a show to have that kind of shelf life.  There are die-hard fans now who were barely out of diapers when it originally aired.  All this, and they only gave us 19 episodes.