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Every Episode of My So-Called Life Ranked

We revisited all 19 episodes of the '90s teen drama My So-Called Life to see if they hold up. And they mostly do.

My So-Called Life
Photo: ABC

In April 1995, young audiences flocked to their TV sets to catch My So-Called Life on MTV, which had begun airing repeats of the teen drama on weeknights. ABC had placed the beloved but ratings-challenged series on indefinite hiatus, and by the time they officially pulled the plug on it one month later, the basic cable network was playing all 19 episodes on a seemingly infinite loop, including epic, weekend-long marathons (which I devotedly recorded to VHS tape for posterity). The addictive, eminently relatable saga of 15-year-old Angela Chase, exquisitely and gut-wrenchingly portrayed by Claire Danes, and her ragtag circle of friends had become “binge TV” before the term even existed.

Created by Winnie Holzman and produced by Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (all thirtysomething alums), My So-Called Life was, at the time, the most authentic portrayal of teen life ever seen on TV, as typified by nuggets of wisdom like, “What’s really horrible is being a witness while someone else’s parents orders them around. It ruins the conversation.” There were no bad guys or villains—just complicated, sometimes selfish characters making a mess of their relationships. And those messes weren’t always tidied up by the end of each episode, like they often were on other teens shows like Fox’s Beverly Hills, 90210.

The relationships between My So-Called Life’s teenage characters and their parents (at least the ones we had the chance to meet) were particularly resonant, homing in on how familial dynamics can be disrupted when children attempt to carve out their own sovereignty. Union rules prevented Danes from working long hours, forcing the writers to get creative, focusing almost as much screen time on Angela’s parents as Angela herself. Rather than ship them off to, say, Hong Kong, Graham and Patty Chase (Tom Irwin and Bess Armstrong) were allowed to slowly redefine their own identities just as their eldest daughter discovered hers.

Though My So-Called Life was short-lived, its influence can still be seen today, even in shows like HBO’s significantly darker Euphoria, which referenced its predecessor in an early episode. Perhaps the show’s biggest legacy, however, was its role in launching the careers of its young cast, including, in addition to Danes, Wilson Cruz in the groundbreaking role of Angela’s semi-openly queer pal Rickie Vasquez, and Jared Leto as perpetual leaner Jordan Catalano, which didn’t require much beyond generous doses of bad-boy charisma and almost childlike innocence.

“When someone dies young, they stay that way, like, forever,” Angela says at one point in the Halloween episode of My So-Called Life, which was still in its own adolescence at the time of its untimely demise. Last month, the cult series got a new lease on life after it was added to Hulu’s streaming library. I recently revisited all 19 episodes to see if they hold up. And they mostly do.

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The Zit

19. “The Zit” (Episode 5)

Patty’s vanity and need for validation as an aging former prom queen clashes with Angela’s insecurities in “The Zit.” With its heavy-handed references to Franz Kafka and Malcolm X, the episode proves to be, to quote Graham, “unbelievably corny” in its handling of issues of self-esteem and the objectification of young girls. But, as most episodes of My So-Called Life, it’s rife with poignant moments, as in a delicately handled scene in which Kyle (Johnny Green), then-boyfriend of Angela’s childhood friend, Sharon Cherski (Devon Odessa), charmingly struggles to describe what he likes about her, and an unexpected nod to RuPaul, who would aptly go on to become the queen of self-love.



Dancing in the Dark

18. “Dancing in the Dark” (Episode 2)

An ill-devised plan, orchestrated by Angela’s new best bud, Rayanne (A.J. Langer), to get Angela and Jordan Catalano closer together is overshadowed by this episode’s amusing subplot, in which Patty and Graham attempt to put the romance back in their relationship by taking a ballroom dancing class. Of course, they’re terrible at it, which Patty sees as a metaphor for their marriage. It’s not until the final act that the episode’s two storylines dovetail in a beautiful moment when Graham, who’s on the precipice of having an affair with another woman, warns Angela: “It’s really hard to figure out how to be a man.” The scene plants the seeds of Angela’s thorny relationship with her father, which is further complicated when she overhears him whispering on the phone in the dark.



Weekend

17. “Weekend” (Episode 18)

The second of two episodes told from the perspective of supporting characters, “Weekend” takes place predominantly inside the Chase house, giving Angela’s little sister, Danielle (Lisa Wilhoit), more screen time than usual. “It’s truly amazing. I have the power to be invisible,” she declares via voiceover in the opening scene. The episode’s twin storylines center around a set of handcuffs lent to Patty by her dear friend Camille Cherski (a superbly wry Mary Kay Place), and a bottle of Dr. Allen’s Ginger-Flavored Brandy, relying on slapstick and sight gags to nudge the conflicts between Angela and Rayanne, and Patty and Graham, forward.



Halloween

16. “Halloween” (Episode 9)

Angela’s preoccupation with the legend of Nicky Driscoll, a Liberty High student who fell to his death from the rafters of the high school auditorium decades earlier and who’s an obvious proxy for Jordan Catalano, might be a little on the nose. But despite its macabre underpinnings—a brief nod to the then-recently deceased Kurt Cobain lends the episode its own bittersweet nostalgia—“Halloween” doesn’t take itself too seriously. And neither should we.

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Self-Esteem

15. “Self-Esteem” (Episode 12)

“Self-Esteem,” in which Jordan Catalano refuses to acknowledge his budding relationship with Angela, is noteworthy mostly for the breadcrumbs it drops in service of future, more pivotal storylines: from new English teacher Mr. Katimski’s (Jeff Perry) attempts to enlist Rickie (whom he insists on calling “Enrique”) in drama club, to Graham’s introduction to a “loud, obnoxious” woman (Lisa Waltz) in his cooking class, to, of course, Angela and Jordan’s obvious incompatibility. The episode also bears one of Angela’s most astute observations: “There’s something about Sunday night that really makes you want to kill yourself.”



Gusn and Gossip

14. “Guns and Gossip” (Episode 3)

The issue of guns in public schools, though relevant even back in the pre-Columbine days, merely serves as a backdrop for thoughtfully explored themes of perception, truth, and consent in “Guns and Gossip” when rumors spread that Angela had sex with Jordan Catalano in the back of his car. They say a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its Doc Martens, and even Patty catches wind of Angela’s supposed relationship with her new “boyfriend”—from Rayanne’s mother, Amber (a pitch-perfect Patti D’Arbanville), who, to Patty’s horror, is delighted by the prospect of Angela getting it on with Jordan. Of course, Angela is not having sex, “to an embarrassing degree,” making both the rumors and Patty’s attempt to confront her about it all the more humiliating for everyone involved—including us.



Strangers in the House

13. “Strangers in the House” (Episode 8)

The climax of “Strangers in the House” revolves around a large pizza with extra cheese that everyone is starving to eat—until they’re not. Sharon’s father has had a heart attack, which sends Graham into an existential spiral and forces Angela to share her bedroom with Sharon, who she’s cut out of her life—in typical teen fashion—for reasons even she doesn’t fully grasp. By the end of nearly every scene in this notably mawkish episode, at least one character collapses into tears, as Angela does under the bleachers before Jordan Catalano offers her the briefest of obligatory hugs. (It’s at this point that it gets really hard not to wonder what Angela sees in him.) Of course, she isn’t crying over Sharon’s dad, but because, as she admits via voiceover, she’s “a terrible, terrible person.” No argument here, but the self-absorption of lonely teenagers is a condition as old as time, and at least Angela is self-aware enough to own hers.



Why Jordan Can’t Read

12. “Why Jordan Can’t Read” (Episode 7)

Despite the title of this episode, we never do find out why Jordan can’t read. In fact, his illiteracy is only one small thread in this understated episode. Like much of the rest of the series, “Why Can’t Jordan Read” is all about the accumulation of moments: stolen moments of freedom in a museum during a field trip; the moment Patty discovers she might be pregnant; the moment Graham learns that she’s not; and the moment that Jordan Catalano, after he and Angela share their first proper kiss, apologizes for interrupting her—in a nod to his previous, disastrous attempt at making out with her in “Dancing in the Dark.” That Jordan isn’t completely oblivious is put into stark relief by the episode’s final moment, in which Angela, blind to neighbor Brian Krakow’s (Devon Gummersall) obvious adoration of her, tells him that he’s incapable of understanding what love is.

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Resolutions

11. “Resolutions” (Episode 16)

In the final shot of “Resolutions,” we see a man (John Prosky), who’s already been revealed to us as Mr. Katimski’s partner, reach his hand out to a homeless Rickie, who’s just arrived at their doorstep drenched in rain and tears. The door closes, and we’re left to wonder how Rickie reacted to the realization that his English teacher is gay. And because the series would go on to end just three episodes later, we’re also left to wonder if Katimski’s fear, of becoming a pariah for taking Rickie in, ever comes to fruition. That My So-Called Life even broached these topics at all, when it could have easily kept its focus trained on the show’s myriad heterosexual dramas, speaks to the writers’ willingness to paint a complete portrait of teen life in the mid-’90s.



Pressure

10. “Pressure” (Episode 13)

After a botched attempt in “Why Can’t Jordan Read,” Graham finally, and unexpectedly, meets Jordan Catalano when he answers the door in “Pressure.” Graham and the blank-eyed teen amusingly echo each other’s nervous body language as they trade awkward niceties: “Are you Jordan?” “Are you Angela’s dad?” Later, Graham gets more than just a glimpse of Angela’s life when he inadvertently overhears her conversations with, first, Brian (“I think about [sex] all the time,” she admits, to both Brian and Graham’s amazement) and then Jordan (“At least you got in some driving practice,” he tells her during an achingly drawn-out breakup scene). Jordan had been pressuring Angela to sleep with him, taking her to a makeshift flophouse where he claimed (incorrectly) that there are “eight bedrooms.” That Angela is so woefully unprepared to make that step seems obvious to everyone but Jordan, who at least has the good sense to respond to her tearful, typically melodramatic “Well, I guess this is it. Goodbye” with a practical “I’ll see you tomorrow.”



On the Wagon

9. “On the Wagon” (Episode 14)

In which the ubiquitous (but, like the Chases’ cat, perpetually unseen) Tino quits Jordan Catalano’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars Frozen Embryos, and Rayanne ingratiates herself into the group—and back into Angela’s life. Naturally, humiliation ensues. As the relationships between the characters drift and deepen, the line between the teen and parental storylines continues to overlap, and Patty’s meddling into Rayanne’s sobriety puts her in Amber’s crosshairs. The tension between the two women is skillfully captured when Patty calls Amber to ask if she’s certain Rayanne hasn’t fallen off the wagon: “About as certain as you are that Angela and cutie pie are just friends,” Amber retorts. Later, Amber’s resentment of Patty’s judgments is less thinly veiled: “I’m a damn good mother, so you can just get right off your high horse.” My So-Called Life has rightfully been heralded for its realistic portrayal of teen life, but its depiction of interparental dynamics is just as sharp, if not more so.

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The Substitute

8. “The Substitute” (Episode 6)

Throughout its brief run, My So-Called Life only occasionally veered into topical, Afterschool Special terrain—and when it did, it mostly subverted expectations and remained committed to truthfully depicting life’s ambiguities. In “The Substitute,” one of the few episodes devoted entirely to one storyline, an unorthodox new teacher named Vic Racine (Roger Rees) captures the imaginations of the sophomores at Liberty High—particularly Angela—and introduces them to the radical concept of free expression. Except Vic isn’t a predictably loveable John Keating type—he’s a prickly, volatile deadbeat with a sordid past whose most enduring lesson is that even our heroes aren’t infallible. The more you know.



So-Called Angels

7. “So-Called Angels” (Episode 15)

My So-Called Life’s first and only Christmas episode opens with a grim shot of Rickie spitting blood onto a snow-covered sidewalk as holiday shoppers and revelers bustle around him. When Angela learns that he’s been sleeping at an abandoned warehouse, she and Patty get into “the kind of fight that’s having you,” to quote the mysterious homeless girl (played by singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield) who Angela meets in her search to find Rickie. Wisely, Holzman and co-writer Jason Katims don’t skirt Angela’s obvious naïveté, nor do they cynically look down on her wide-eyed idealism. Yes, “So-Called Angels” occasionally submits to yuletide sentimentality, but it’s also unexpectedly funny—thanks to Rayanne’s hijinks as a volunteer at a holiday hotline—and, in the end, as heartbreaking as it is hackneyed.



In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

6. “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” (Episode 19)

The show’s final episode pays homage to Cyrano de Bergerac, and if not for that arguably trite literary allusion, which my 10th-grade English teacher deemed useful enough to show the episode alongside our reading of the play in class, I might not have ever seen My So-Called Life at all. In the episode, Angela discovers that Brian was the real author of Jordan Catalano’s eloquent love letter to her, which results in a tender, unspoken acknowledgement between the two childhood friends and, in a bittersweet reversal of romcom convention, sees Angela choosing Jordan anyway. Like teenagers, inaugural seasons of even the best shows are often gangly and unformed versions of themselves, and the biggest tragedy of My So-Called Life’s premature cancelation is not having had the chance to see these characters mature. And yet, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” is the perfect ending precisely because of, not despite, all of its beautiful, messy loose ends.

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Life of Brian

5. “Life of Brian” (Episode 11)

Even by the standards of a series famous for its impeccably imperfect dialogue, “Life of Brian”—which is told largely from Brian’s POV—is an embarrassment of lyrical riches. Brian’s inner monologue is every bit as neurotic as you might expect, whether he’s describing the scent of Angela’s hair (“[It] smelled like this orange grove we passed when I was eight…But I guess that’s just her shampoo”) or his arousal from touching transfer student Delia Fisher’s (Senta Moses) hand while they look at paramecia through a microscope (“Finally, an erection from actual physical contact”). The episode is also significant for giving voice to Rickie’s angst over his sexual identity: “I belong nowhere, with no one,” he tells Angela outside of the school’s World Happiness Dance. Instantly proving his point, Angela chases after Jordan Catalano, who pins her against a chain-link fence and asks, “Why are you like this?” “Like what?” she replies. “Like how you are,” he says. Little does he know that she manipulated Brian to get to the dance in order to see him, and that, in turn, Brian stomped on Delia’s heart so he could be alone with Angela. In the end, both Brian and Angela justly spend most of the World Happiness Dance not experiencing much happiness at all.



Pilot

4. “Pilot” (Episode 1)

Like many a pilot, the first episode of My So-Called Life is meticulously crafted and choreographed, from cinematic long takes to the focus on buzzing fluorescent lights and hallway disturbances that uncannily establish the sounds and sensations of high school life. Occasionally, things feel too staged, like a brief shot of a cheerleader crying at her locker, and Angela’s earnest voiceover, which would become more attuned to the character’s voice as the series progressed, feels too writerly and self-aware here (“My dad and I used to be pretty tight… The sad truth is my breasts have come between us”). But the characters are all clearly defined, and Patty and Graham in particular are surprisingly fully formed people—not just thinly sketched authority figures designed to react to the main character. Setting the stage for Angela’s break from what she deems a humdrum existence, the episode subtly captures the simmering tensions of old friendships and the shifting social alliances of adolescence, a thread that’s woven throughout the show’s 19 episodes.



Father Figures

3. “Father Figures” (Episode 4)

“Father Figures” homes in on Angela’s increasing suspicions of Graham, her ambivalence conveyed via astute, fittingly clumsy, voiceover: “When you’re not sure you trust a person anymore—say a person you really trusted, say your father—you start wishing they’d do something, like, really wrong, just so you could be right about them.” Later in the episode, Angela snoops through Graham’s briefcase and wallet, searching for some kind of “proof,” something that would justify her distrust. The episode gracefully dances back and forth between scenes with Angela and Graham and ones between Patty and her father, which, like many of the show’s parental story arcs, add depth and import to what might otherwise seem like frivolous teenage melodrama. When Graham confides in Patty that he’s afraid of losing Angela, she matter-of-factly reassures him: “All she’s doing is pushing you off your pedestal, and she’s right to do that…She’s not a thousand years late, like I am.”



Other People’s Mothers

2. “Other People’s Mothers” (Episode 10)

Revolving around three different mother-daughter relationships and two diametrically opposed house parties, “Other People’s Mothers” is both My So-Called Life’s linear midpoint and one of its creative highpoints. “So, how did you know all that stuff, like, what to do?” Angela asks Patty after she rushes to the aid of Rayanne, who overdosed on a cocktail of alcohol and ecstasy at the birthday party Patty forbade Angela to attend. As mother and daughter sit in the car, avoiding an altogether different kind of gathering inside the Chase house, Patty reveals that her college roommate died under similar circumstances, at once giving Angela a glimpse of a new side of her mom and allowing Patty to consciously acknowledge the similarities between them. Amber’s permissive parenting style, which was initially so seductive to Angela and so threatening to Patty, suddenly doesn’t seem like either anymore. When Angela goes inside, Patty remains in the car and abruptly breaks into tears, out of grief, fear, or relief—probably all three. The episode, and this scene in particular, is a crucial turning point in a relationship that we, sadly, never had the opportunity to see come full circle.

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Betrayal

1. “Betrayal” (Episode 17)

For teens, fully immersed in the simulated mini-societies we’ve created called “high school,” even the smallest of transgressions can feel like the end of the world. In “Betrayal,” it very nearly is. Throughout the series, A.J. Langer is extraordinary as the loveable but love-starved Rayanne Graff, but she’s never more devastating than she is here, in the aftermath of Rayanne’s betrayal of Angela by sleeping with Jordan Catalano. In the final scene of the episode, during a rehearsal for the school’s production of Our Town, Mr. Katimski instructs Rayanne to “stop acting,” and the result is a powerful meta-monologue in which she acknowledges the things she took for granted and mourns life as she once knew it. For years I’d erroneously remembered this episode being the show’s last, and it might as well have been, as it represents the logical, tragic conclusion to what is simultaneously the show’s central friendship and its most heartbreaking love story.

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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