Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Talk about school overcrowding: as if in a communal anxiety dream, TV has returned en masse to high school, offering a quartet of new takes on socialization and its discontents. On NBC's 1980 period piece Freaks and Geeks (scheduled for a Sept. 25 debut, 8 p.m. E.T.), the pencil-necked latter scurry from gym-class bruisers wielding dodge balls. On Fox's Manchester Prep (not yet scheduled), the tormentors are the rich preppies in the secret society the Manchester Tribunal, their weapon psychological cruelty. And the WB's Popular (to bow Sept. 29 and 30; regularly Thursdays...
Columbine High, where social-outcast status turned to murderous outrage, didn't create these series, but it lent them urgency, focusing as each does on that basic high school and Hollywood concern: popularity. Set in America's laboratories of tyranny, empathizing with misfits, the shows purvey the myth that much as there were suddenly no Nazis in Germany after V-E day, there are now apparently almost no former popular high school kids. "I very much identified myself as an outsider [in high school]," says Katims. "I was king of the geeks," says Manchester Prep creator Roger Kumble. "I totally...
...what, after all, is popularity? Popularity--basing cliques on money and genes and je ne sais quoi--is class with training wheels. In a country that pretends it is entirely middle class, high school series serve as surrogate examinations of social barriers. (Or certain ones: while the great dramatic potential of high school comes from its throwing together kids whose parents don't work or play together, these shows are almost uniformly white.) This In crowd-obsessed setting comes as close as is Nielsen-feasible to admitting that class is still in session: that it does matter where you were...
...become stepsisters-to-be--appears to have Western Union on speed dial. The original pilot (which is being expanded to two hours) takes on body image, eating disorders and virginity, just for starters. Co-creators Ryan Murphy and Gina Matthews talk excitedly about future theme issues: cheating, fame, the social pecking order (Bibb's cheerleader is named Brooke McQueen--get it?). They aim to make, as Murphy calls it, "a Zeitgeist show" that nails the teen experience du jour with rapid-response precision; they repeat "reality" and "real" like mantras...
...adults create a realistic high school show? Does anyone want them to? High school shows succeed by offering sexy fantasies (Dawson) or outlandish stories that ring psychologically true (Buffy). What may save Popular is not its pandering to hipness but its willingness to skewer social haves and have-nots and its satiric, Heathers-ish flourishes (the popular girls, e.g., hang out in a velvety school powder room called "the Novak," as in Kim). Freaks, a sweet and funny character study, is probably the "realest" of the bunch and the best fall drama aimed at any demographic...