Square Pegs

Square Pegs
Format	Comedy
Created by	Anne Beatts
Starring	Sarah Jessica Parker Amy Linker
Theme music composer	The Waitresses
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	20
Production
Camera setup	Single camera
Running time	30 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	CBS
Original run	September 27, 1982 – March 7, 1983

Square Pegs is a CBS comedy television series that aired during the 1982–1983 season. The series followed Patty Greene (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Lauren Hutchinson (Amy Linker), two awkward teenage girls desperate to fit in at Weemawee High School.

Overview and setting

Created by former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts, the pilot introduces an eclectic group of eight freshmen on their first day at Weemawee High School. Most scenes were filmed in an abandoned high school in Norwalk, California. Weemawee at first appears to be in a generic suburban American community. However, though the location is never stated outright, the plot often refers to events in nearby New York City. In the premier episode Slash makes many references to hanging out at a record store in "the city," the universal New York metro reference to Manhattan. A frequent hangout for the kids and the most common location for scenes outside of the school is "The Grease," a Greek diner, also common to the NYC metro area (it is actually called the Acropolis, according to the neon sign). In another reference to the New York metro location, when Patty's father brings her to his cabin in the woods, she said she cried as they passed "each exit on the Connecticut Turnpike."

The series was much acclaimed by critics at the time for its realistic (if comic) look at teenage life, reflecting a sensibility somewhat similar to the John Hughes teen comedies of a few years later.^[1]

Presumably the characters were to go through high school during the following four years until graduation, but the show lasted only one season. The first two episodes had strong ratings, but plummeted shortly thereafter. An article in the June 9, 1984 issue of TV Guide blamed the show's failure on the inexperience of its staff, and drug use on the set (cast and crew interviewed on the 2008 DVD release make no comment regarding the latter allegation); nevertheless, it struck a chord with many Generation X viewers and many of its catchphrases and characters are still fondly remembered by fans.^{[citation needed]}

Though targeted to younger viewers, the prime time show's dialogue is rather adult and risqué, much more like Saturday Night Live than the later high school comedy Saved by the Bell which was aimed at pre-adolescent viewers.

Main characters

Sarah Jessica Parker as Patty Greene

Patty Greene is a budding young woman, not quite beautiful yet, but well cultured and intelligent. While clever and seemingly well-adjusted, she seemed awkward and a social misfit (i.e. a square peg) when amongst the “popular” students. Patty hated her eyeglasses, but her father would not let her get contacts (because, he said, her eyes were “still growing”).

Patty's very close friend Lauren Hutchinson struggles with her weight (the actress needing to wear padding for the role), has braces, wears unusual clothing, and also did not fit in with the popular crowd. However, much more so than Patty, Lauren constantly desires to be in with the in crowd, and the series' episodes revolved more or less around her dragging Patty into various schemes in attempts to make them more popular.

Lauren and Patty are surrounded by colorful supporting characters. Their friends Marshall Blechtman (John Femia) and Johnny "Slash" Ulasewicz (Merritt Butrick) are a pair of lovable geeks. Marshall was a motormouthed, would-be comedian, while Johnny was a soft-spoken new wave fan (not punk... “a totally different head... totally.”) Though seemingly off in his own reality most of the time, Johnny Slash states that he “[does not] do drugs and isn't a hippie” and on more than one occasion displays unexpected intuition and empathy, particularly regarding Marshall and the girls. Several episodes indicate that Marshall is attracted to Lauren and Johnny to Patty.

The popular kids whom Patty and Lauren are usually trying to impress are Jennifer DiNuccio (Tracy Nelson), the quintessential buxom Valley Girl, her boyfriend Vinnie Pasetta (Jon Caliri), a handsome greaser hood, and LaDonna Fredericks (Claudette Wells), Jennifer's friend and the sole minority character in the cast. Vinnie is cool but dense, using the “Why don't you make like a tree and get out of here?” line three years before the character Biff in 1985’s Back to the Future. LaDonna is known for sassy remarks such as “Shoot, child, you think this place is crowded? You should have seen our living room when The Jeffersons went to Hawaii. Those were the three worst Sundays of my life.”

The typical official high school activity culture is personified by preppy Muffy B. Tepperman (Jami Gertz) who is the endlessly chipper chairperson of the Weemawee Pep Committee, head of the Morals Club, chairman of the Science Fair Committee and member of the Future Nurses of America. Muffy has a memorably pompous, oratorical speaking style and began many sentences with “It behooves me to tell you...” or an elongated “People...”. Though perhaps even more socially inept (“I’m going to ignore that because, frankly, I don't get it”), Muffy's unawareness and/or lack of concern with her failure to fit in with the popular kids is in stark contrast to the motivation of the show's protagonists, and does not stop her from relentless involvement in peppy activities.

An ongoing gag throughout the series is Muffy's fundraising for Weemawee's adopted “little Guatemalan child,” Rosarita. As the series progresses, Muffy's charitable intentions become more and more frivolous, asking the school community to provide the girl with her own apartment away from her parents, cable TV, a second pair of culottes, swimwear, a split-level duplex, and finally, her own cleaning lady.

This group of eight students, though clearly of varied academic standing, were always in the same classes. The recurring staff members at the school were:

• Ms. Loomis, a feminist liberal arts teacher who often bemoaned her ex-husband
• Rob "Lovebeads" Donovan, who was continuously bringing up his antics in the 1960s and always stopping just short of completing references to smoking pot
• Mr. Spacek, the affected but married drama teacher
• Principal Dingleman

Home life of the students was rarely depicted, but Patty's father was prominently featured in the Christmas episode, played by Tony Dow, best known as the character Wally Cleaver in Leave it to Beaver.

Opening dialogue

Before the opening credits and theme song began, every episode began with the following dialogue appearing in a montage of stills from the school:

Lauren: "Listen. I've got this whole high school thing psyched out. It all breaks down into cliques."

Patty: "Cliques?"

Lauren: "Yeah, you know. Cliques. Little in-groups of different kids. All we have to do is click with the right clique, and we can finally have a social life that's worthy of us."

Patty: "No way! Not even with cleavage."

Lauren: "I tell you, this year we're going to be popular."

Patty: "Yeah?"

Lauren: "Yeah. Even if it kills us."

Theme song and other music

To accurately reflect high schoolers' tastes of the moment, new wave music was an important facet of the show's style. The show's opening and closing theme songs, "Square Pegs," and an untitled instrumental reminiscent of "Chopsticks," are performed by The Waitresses. In some episodes "Chopsticks" is the opening theme and "Square Pegs" the closing theme, and in others these are reversed.

• The Waitresses appear in the premiere episode as a band performing at the school dance. They sing "I Know What Boys Like" during a scene, and "Square Pegs" during the closing credits, with the characters dancing along. Their song "Christmas Wrapping" is playing in the popular hangout diner ("The Grease") during the Christmas episode. They are mentioned by Jennifer in the episode in which she works at the diner.
• John Densmore, original drummer for The Doors, plays himself as a member of Johnny Slash's new wave band, "Open 24 Hours" in two episodes: "Open 24 Hours" (episode #8) and "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah" (episode #9).
• Also performing in "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah," the new wave band Devo appear as themselves.
• The walls of the school radio station, run by Marshall, are covered with posters from then-current New Wave acts, including Berlin, The Clash, Missing Persons, Squeeze, Devo and Laurie Anderson.
• Billy Idol's song "Dancing with Myself" is featured in the episode guest starring Bill Murray. The song is replaced with generic music in the DVD release, but the original audio is in the version available on Hulu.com^[2]

Broadcast History

• Original broadcasts: Square Pegs debuted on CBS September 27, 1982 in the 8 P.M. Monday slot, formerly held by M*A*S*H, which moved to 9 P.M.
• Syndication: After having been unseen for a decade, episodes were shown on USA Network in the mid 1990s, and later on Nickelodeon, and TVLand.
• Recent digital availability: Square Pegs was shown on HDTV on HDNet, Comcast digital cable On Demand, on Saturday nights at 7PM on Me-Too Chicago, and on Canadian diginet Deja View on weekends at 10:30AM (ET/PT) and 2:30PM (ET/PT). It is currently airing at 4:30pm, Sundays on Me-TV Chicago. All episodes are available for download on iTunes. Several episodes of the show are available to view for free in Minisode format on Crackle.

DVD release

DVD cover

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in a 3-disc set on May 20, 2008, to coincide with the theatrical release of Sarah Jessica Parker's film Sex and the City: The Movie. On the DVDs, the episodes have been digitally remastered and include eight featurettes called "Weemawee Yearbook Memories." Each featurette focuses on a different cast member and has new interviews with the actors and creator Anne Beatts.

Also on the DVD are two minisodes from '80s sitcoms The Facts of Life and Silver Spoons.^[3]

Because the two parts of "A Child's Christmas in Weemawee" appear together as one episode, the DVD packaging states that it includes 19 episodes rather than 20.

Footnotes

References

• Carrie Bradshaw, Teenage Geek", NY Times 13 July 2008

External links

• Square Pegs at the Internet Movie Database
• Square Pegs at TV.com
• Brian Orndorf discusses the 2008 DVD release of Square Pegs