"If I Were Attracted To Girls, I'd Be Attracted To You"

Next up in my line of obsessive motifs is My So-Called Life, an amazing show from the 90's that's famous for being a clear, honest, raw lens into the lives if American teenagers as they really were then (and now): sex, drugs, drinking, pain, laughter, anger, friendships, love...it was all there. It had it. One of the best shows ever made.

And it was canceled due to low ratings.

Part of me hates so so so much the fact that there are only nineteen episodes. I love these characters now. I want to know more, more, more. I want them to grow and change over time. I want plot. I want movement. I want a future.

But another part of me is sort of glad that it ended so early in its life on screen. The world of Rayanne and Angela, Sharon and Rickie, Brian and Delia, Graham and Patty, Jordan and Danielle...it'll always be there somewhere, in the murkiness of unwritten stories. I can think and hope and wonder about how things worked out for them. I can discard things I don't like--in my mind, Graham and Patty drove each other crazy and went in circles for decades but never split, never let their love crumble at the core--and make sure what I want happens--Rickie finds a boy to love, Angela is forced to grow up and choose between Jordan Catalano and the ever-suffering Brian, Rayanne and Sharon ride closer and closer together until maybe they bump and hit and collide. My version of their future is probably farther than anything from where they would have gone. And that's a comforting thought. There are multiple futures, and there always will be. It never twisted itself into knots like Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty, and there's no longing for past days of splendor, because all we have are the days of splendor.

I'm sad the show died. But in a weird way, it feels right. It doesn't actually feel like it died; it feels like it wandered off to do its own thing, like every teenager does at some point.

There are some beautiful moments that I'm so hung up on, and most of them have to do with Rickie. As always, I gravitate towards the gay men in the story, and Rickie got my attention from the beginning. Always lonely, always awkward, always trying to fit in a badly-cut niche. Rickie is the character I love to love. He has two people in the world who love him; that must make everyone else pretty terrifiying. I want him to have his happiness. And of all the growth I missed, I think Rickie's is the one I most regret missing out on.

There's a wonderful, wonderful moment at the very end of the series when Rickie, in an attempt to, as he says, take advanatge of his "one chance...to be straight," asks out Delia, a cute girl with a crush on him. Looking confused, she says, "But...you're gay, right?" Rickie hems and hawes, all the while looking completely blind-sided; then, throwing down his pencil, he says with a weary sort of peace, "Yeah. I'm gay." The honesty and total lack of pretension in that moment is incredible. There's no swell of music or melodramatic exposition. There's only a scared, hiding teenage boy coming out for the first time to an understanding prescence, who's not even a main character. It was beautifully written and beauitfully acted, and the entire scene has a aura of gentle sweetness to it: Delia goes on to explain why she has a crush on Rickie, who admits he's never said out loud that he's gay before. They close with Rickie turning to Delia and saying, "Delia, if I were attracted to girls, I'd be attracted to you." Then they hold hands.

Yeah, I loved it. What can I say?

Probably more on this later, if I don't self-destruct first.