Why We’re All Still In Love With Jordan Catalano

Remember that time when I was with my friends and I saw you playing pool with your friends and I was like, “Maybe I should talk to him,” and Rayanne was like, “Go talk to him,” so I walked over and your friends were all looking at me and I was like, “Hey,” and you were like, “You’re blocking my shot,” and Rickie was like, “Oh no he didn’t,” and I just walked away and your friends all laughed?

Well, I know that was just because you were afraid to express your emotions. I knew by the way you kissed me in the car in front of my parents house that time that your really loved me.

Wait. That wasn’t me. Come to think of it, you’re not Jordan Catalano. I should’ve known by your lack of astonishingly beautiful eyes that pierce me to my very soul. (I’m sure your eyes are lovely, but you must admit they aren’t in the Catalano realm of lovely.)

If you were a complex teenager circa 1995, you’ll have guessed somewhere in the middle of the first paragraph that I was having a vivid waking dream based on my recollections of the classic, short-lived US drama My So-Called Life. They don’t make them like that anymore. They didn’t make them like that then, in fact.

And that’s why we loved it. For its time, My So-Called Life was the closest representation we had on mainstream TV of the lives of teenagers. More or less non-patronizing, taking into account emotions and worries young humans have. Glossing over neither naivety nor sophistication, because of course both those things can exist in a teenager. Not that you’d guess, watching crap like Dawson’s Creek and all those dreadful dime-a-dozen sitcoms which always had an episode with some daft girl in an outfit no one at my school or yours would wear (Janet Jackson T-shirts? When the hell were those cool?) getting terribly upset over the prom.

What the hell is a prom?

I discovered recently that, not only did I watch My So-Called Life obsessively in New Brunswick, my Swedish friend, Scottish friend, German friend and Indian friend are also engaged to Jordan Catalano, and are still annoyed with him for his callous behaviour whilst provocatively rubbing chalk on the tip of a pool cue. The stunning bastard.

Why did this show not only go around the world, but remain so important now that its fans are all grown up with absolutely no romantic mismanagement in our entirely logical and ordered lives? Oh…wait…

Short answer: it was awkward and hideous, wonderful and euphoric. Everyone was always locked in a tense web of pain and bliss, usually in a school hallway or seedy bar. It was about us.

Contact the author here: miriam@morningquickie.com