SQUARE PEGS [TV SHOW] - DVD review

When it debuted, "Square Pegs" drew notice because it was created by "Saturday Night Live" writer Anne Beatts, and it was based on her own geeky attempts to fit in when she was in high school. Now, the show's claim to fame is that it starred a geeky-looking Sarah Jessica Parker.

Parker played Patty Greene, and awkward young girl with glasses whose best friend was a girl with braces named Lauren Hutchinson (Amy Linker). Together, these two brand-new high school freshmen decided that they were going to find a way to fit in. High school is all about cliques, and all they have to do was find the right ones.

In the pilot, the entire season is laid out when Glasses and Braces sit down at the cool table and proceed to try to get in on a conversation dominated by a Valley Girl named Jennifer (Tracy Nelson, singer Rick Nelson's daughter) who, like, says at least three "likes" in every sentence and is more concerned with the right shade of nail polish and wearing the right brand clothing than she is about any of her studies.

Then again, at Weemawee High School, nobody seems to be terribly concerned about their studies. More of the episodes have to do with crushes that people have on certain teachers (or janitors) than any academic problems. It's all, like, very social, you know? Like fitting in, and like stuff like that. And, like, all that affectation can drive you bonkers after a while.

Nelson's character and a New Age dude with sunglasses named Johnny Slash (Merritt Butrick) are the most broadly comic characters, with the greatest potential to either amuse you or irritate the heck out of you. The rest of the characters are patently familiar. Naturally the girls have to have a guy friend, and naturally he's got to be the relatively cute class clown. In this case, he's Marshall Blechtman (John Femia), a character who'll remind you a little of early Scott Baio without the big hair. And this is the '80s when we should be seeing a lot more in the way of big hair and shoulder pads.

Like "Grease," the cool girl has a cool guy, with Vinnie Pasetta (Jon Caliri) a kind of pastiche of all the semi-cool good-looking but dumb-as-a-stump guys you've ever seen in a high school sitcom. In fact, he might remind sitcom fans of a cross between Vinnie Barbarino and the Juan Epstein character from "Welcome Back Kotter."

Rounding out the cast of regulars is the preppie rich girl, Muffy Tepperman (Jami Gertz, "The Lost Boys," "Sixteen Candles"), while the "sister" in the group is LaDonna Fredericks (Claudette Wells).

The theme song was written and performed by The Waitresses, and the show's entire run was just 19-22 episodes (depending on your source). So does the show hold up very well? Like, totally . . . not. It isn't just that the clothes and hairstyles and teenspeak are dated. The subject matter and writing seems dated as well. Yet, the show was ahead of its time in at least one respect. The first episode following the pilot, one called "A Cafeteria Line," gives us a drama teacher with grand affectations who wrote a play about a gawky young girl who falls in love with her high school drama teacher. As you watch this unfold, especially during the audition scenes, you can't help but be reminded of similarities to Disney's later runaway hit, "High School Musical."

Here's how the other episodes play out:

1) "Square Pegs" (Pilot). Patty attracts the attention of a cute senior as they try to fit in at Weemawee High.

2) "A Cafeteria Line." Patty gets the lead in the school's version of "A Chorus Line," and she starts to actually believe she can rise above her geekdom.

3) "Pac-Man Fever." Marshall gets so obsessed with his video game that Johnny Slash decides to stage an intervention. Father Guido Sarducci puts in a guest appearance. Along with "A Cafeteria Line" and the pilot, one of the better episodes.

4) "Square Pigskins." Patty and Lauren end up being recruited to play on the all-girl football team which is coached by (what else?) a gung-ho army vet.

5) "Halloween XII." Muffy convinces their teacher to host a slumber party on Halloween, and so naturally they're the targets of a possible stalker.

6) "A Simple Attachment." Marshall orders a "love detector," scheming to use it on Lauren, but the thing ends up causes chaos at the school. Dumb episode.

7) "Weemaweegate." Watergate inspires reporters Patty and Lauren to try to figure out who might be trying to sabotage Vinne to keep him from becoming the school mascot.

8) "Open 24 Hours." When Marshall books Johnny Slash's band to play at the opening of a supermarket deli counter, Slash gets songwriter's block.

9) "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah." Muffy has a new-wave celebration that everyone wants to attend. But when Devo backs out, Muffy asks Johnny's band to help. Then she has to tell them Devo's back in again. Meanwhile, left off the guest list, Lauren and Patty plot to somehow get invited. New Age group Devo guest stars.

10) "Hardly Working." Jennifer has to get an uncool job and Muffy finds a new cause, which leads her to stage a telethon for Jennifer, hosted by Marshall. Dumber than dumb.

11) "A Child's Christmas in Weemawee" Parts 1&2. Lauren devises a scheme for crashing all the holiday parties, but has to spend time with her estranged dad instead.

12) "It's All How You See Things." Lauren convinces Patty to ditch her glasses, but when Patty trips, it's Lauren who gets tripped up.

13) "Merry Pranksters." Patty and Lauren decide that pulling pranks might increase their popularity. WRONG!

14) "It's Academical." On a local quiz show, contestants Patty and Muffy go up against rivals from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tech, but they also compete for the attentions of an attractive teammate.

15) "The Stepanowicz Papers." The janitor's gorgeous son fills in for him, and all the girls (and female teachers) take notice.

16) "To Serve Weemawee All My Days." In this clichéd episode, students go to bat for a popular teacher whose in-class style and out-of-class lifestyle have put his job in jeopardy.

17) "No Substitutions." Instead of the janitor's son, it's a new substitute teacher who sparks feelings in the females and threatens to split the two best friends.

18) "No Joy in Weemawee." Johnny Slash turns out to be such a good ballplayer that he's scouted by Dodger Steve Sax.

19) "The Arrangement." Jennifer and LaDonna invite Patty and Lauren's to Vinnie's party. Thinking they've finally made it, the girls discover why they really were invited.

Look for SNL alum Bill Murray and comedian Martin Mull in guest spots.

The whole series runs 491 minutes, but as short as it's run was, "Square Pegs" really changed the life of several of the actors, as we learn on cast reminiscences.

Video:
Like the show itself, the video quality is nothing special, nothing awful. There's a slight graininess, but the colors are very bold and vivid. "Square Pegs" is presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Audio:
The audio is a Dolby Digital Mono that's closed captioned, with subtitles in French. Again, nothing special, but fans of the show will appreciate that it's a clean sound, with no distortion.

Extras:
The extras are really no-frills, with the cast and creator appearing in front of a blank background talking about their memories of the show. Parker has surprisingly little memory of the show, and mostly remembers details like signing a thick contract and what it did to her family dynamic. Her body language makes it seem as if she'd rather be somewhere else. That's not the case with the others, and I guess that's the difference hitting it big as an actor and forging a respectable career. Others who share there memories are Femia, Linker, Butrick, Nelson and Wells (who appear together), Gertz, Steven Peterman (who played Mr. Donovan), and creator Anne Beatts. Fans should enjoy seeing what they look like and hearing their stories. Of these, Gertz stands out because she played hookey, basically, to audition for the part and had to explain to her parents after she was invited to fly to Hollywood for studio approval what she'd done. And Nelson and Wells are fun to listen to because they were best friends on the show, and became best friends off-camera ever since.

Rounding out the bonus features are two "mini-sodes," episodes from other sitcoms available from Sony: "Sex Symbol," from "The Facts of Life," and "Hey, Mrs. Robinson," from "Silver Spoons." Sony has done this before, and it remains a neat idea--much better than trailers!

Bottom Line:
Fans of Sarah Jessica Parker are going to want to get this series, because you know, like, it's not as bad as you'd think for a show that was canned as it began a second season. It's not as edgy as it seems to think it is--or at least as the title credits would have you believe it is--but it's as watchable as any of the teen sitcoms on the air today.