My Whole Life Became Like Divided

We interrupt this non-regularly scheduled programming to bring you this important announcement: My So-Called Life turned twenty this year. And that deserves an entire post dedicated to the MSCL links and articles that have been going up, especially over at Vulture.

I clearly must read them all, and then carefully parse through this "MSCL: Ranking the Episodes" list. (Already "Self-Esteem" at #13 is criminal.) This could call for a special podcast episode actually. And I already know who I would tap as special guests. If there’s one thing that can make me insta-friends with someone, it’s a shared obsession with MSCL. So come along best friends, and let's leave the non-MSCL watchers behind!

• www.mscl.com
• 20 Times Angela Chase Thought the Perfect Thing on MSCL
• MSCL: Why It Still Gets You Like No One Else Does, 20 Years Later
• Geeking Out Over the MSCL Finale With Creator Winnie Holzman
• MSCL’s Wilson Cruz on Rickie Fans, LBGT Awareness, and 90s Fashion
• The MSCL Soundtrack Is the Music Equivalent of the Coziest Flannel
• Claire Danes and Jared Leto reunion (2010) plus The Revenge of Angela Chase (2012)
• Watch Tavi Talk About the Dearth of Complicated Teen Girls on TV (2012)
• 100 Years, 50 Losers: #2. Brian Krakow (2008)
• This Was TV Review: MSCL, 'Pilot' and 'Betrayal'" (2013)

My So-Called Life remains my favorite show to this day, even if I concede that better teen-centric shows have come out since then. For example Freaks & Geeks is objectively a better and more consistent show. Still, MSCL rules all. Angela forever! It feels weird that my favorite TV show will likely never change until the day I die. Like my TV watching peaked at sixteen. But really, what could top MSCL? Please just play that little "and danced by the light of the moon" outro during my funeral pyre. Thanks.

"And that’s where My So-Called Life had the secret ingredient every other show about teenage life was lacking: the agelessness of insecurity. What no one tells you when you’re younger is that that painful inner monologue never quiets down, and all that really changes between the time you leave high school and become an adult is that you have a job to work and bills to pay. You never stop doubting yourself. You never stop feeling those awkward cringes that make you want to collapse in on yourself like a camping chair."

My friend, while getting her MFA in musical theater, had Winnie Holzman as her advisor. That basically meant I was only one degree away the genius behind Angela. Not that I ever got to meet her but still, this semi-closeness to Holzman buoys me, especially when I'm dancing in the dark by myself.

Also, while we're here: "'Everybody Wants to Live': An Oral History of Party of Five’s First Season." Not a pantheon show but I watched a boatload of Party of Five too. Wednesday nights and Stucchi's ice cream. It was tradition.

• Rayanne Graff Is My Spirit Animal
• Style Rookie, “This is When We Talk About Rayanne Graff.” (2011)
• Emma Straub, “My Rayannes” (2011)
• Elizabeth Sankey, "Lady Crush: Rayanne Graff from MSCL”
• 25 Important Style Tips Rayanne Graff From MSCL Taught You (2013)