Microwave Nachos
Remember . . . that one time I made microwave nachos and we watched My So Called Life?
Go now . . . Go!
"My So-Called Life" (MSCL) ran on ABC from August 25, 1994, to January 26, 1995. The remote control was my dad's domain back then (it still is), so I never got to watch it live. Shortly after cancellation, MTV picked up MSCL, and I could watch it in the magical hours between getting home from school and my parents' return from work while eating microwave nachos. There were only 19 episodes, but it felt like three seasons of television. Each episode spoke clearly to the teenage experience of the '90s.
As someone living life on the outside (not part of any clique), I absorbed it all like an encyclopedia of high school life. I thought if I watched this, I could talk to the kids at school about stuff. Even though I wasn't going to clubs late at night (or the one club we had), I knew about it because Angela and Rayanne did it. MSCL was my socialization strategy. I thought I was a genius even though it didn’t really work at all.
At the time, teenagers were the most misunderstood creatures on the planet. According to the media, we were all on drugs, and our brains were rotting from television. Primetime TV was dominated by shows like "ER," "Friends," "Murder, She Wrote" (yes, it was still on—and at the same time as "ER," surprisingly), "Home Improvement," "Frasier," and "The Simpsons." Few shows featured teenagers, and those that did either focused on boys or offered a sanitized view of our lives. Angela Chase (Claire Danes) changed all that.
One of MSCL's most powerful aspects was Angela Chase's narration. While not revolutionary, it provided one of the most honest looks into the teenage mind. When I rewatched the pilot recently, I realized how much her thoughts still mirror my own.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the pilot:
“Things were getting to me. Just how people are. How they always expect you to a be a certain way . . . even your best friend.”
High school me was like, "YES! I feel this." I was always expected to do the right thing, whatever that was. I was supposed to behave and not cause any trouble. I was so scared to break out of that mold that I never really got a chance to know who I was back then. I never dyed my hair—at all—let alone red. I never told my parents I was sleeping over at someone else's house when I was really going out with my friends. Drinking? NEVER! I was told these acts were rebellious, and being a rebel was wrong.
When I was rewatching this I had to pause the TV after this line. I was like whoa. I am there. I am still in a place where people expect me to be a certain way. This may or not be true from the other people, but it’s what I think people expect from me. I've always heard pople say things like, "You can always count on Marissa," "Marissa will do it!" and "Marissa knows." What once seemed like compliments now appear as red flags. I was so consistent with people pleasing, it was my brand. I never really experimented or explored like Angela is doing in this episode. She’s trying to break free from every construct she can. I just now feel safe enough to do that. As I talked about on the plog, I am wondering if I am going through a midlife crisis, but maybe I’m just going through my first adolescence? Should I dye my hair red?
“Yearbook is a book of how it’s supposed to be. If you made a book of what actually happened, it would be a really upsetting book”
I was a yearbook kid. I loved it. It is actually what got me in to writing and graphic design (then called desktop publishing). This quote was what Angela said when she quit yearbook. Yearbooks were Instagram before Instagram. They were filled with the highlights of the time. When I first watched this this quote kinda flew over my head because I was so into yearbook I couldn’t really grasp what she meant. “Yearbook was does show what happened. That’s why I’m writing about the volleyball team.” Also, at the end of the year, yearbooks were signed by everyone and they told me how awesome I was, so why would anyone want to quit yearbook??
Today’s Marissa totally gets it. I never look at my yearbooks. I don’t even know where they are. Could you imagine if we had a collective book of what actually happened? Is that what kids experience these days with their social media? They get to see what’s “actually” happening? I guess for me that’s my journals. I am working on being more vulnerable online sharing what’s actually happening, what I’m actually feeling. It’s rough. I think it is important that we have a collective record of a time period though. When we have that we’re able to look back and see if how time has shifted our perspectives.
“I’m in love. His name is Jordan Catalano. He’s always closing his eyes like it hurts to look at things.” “I just like how he’s always leaning. He leans good.”
Ah, Jordan Catalano... where to begin? He was the red flag I couldn't see. As a teenager, I was cheering so hard for them. The way Angela talked about him was just like how my friends and I talked about our crushes. It was so relatable. I mean I even had a crush on Jordan Catalano. I really thought that an emotionally unavailable person was desirable because I could help unlock them. (Don’t worry, my therapist and I have talked about this a lot.)
Now as an adult, I'm like, "Oh, Angela! I get it, but no." This is something I need to tell myself sometimes too. The butterflies felt by finding a “Jordan Catalano” in the wild are not good. I don’t need butterflies. I don’t need excitement. I need calm. I need peace. I’ve learned that butterflies and excitement lead to trauma bonds more than anything else. I don’t need any more of that.
One thing Angela and current me can agree on — leans are everything.
“Ricki might be bi - his cousin can still drive.”
This line is quintessentially '90s. Angela's mom doesn't want Ricki's cousin to drive Angela to a party because Ricki is "confused." It's the kind of thing my mom would think and try her best not to say aloud, but the sentiment would still be there. Everything I learned about the LGBTQIA+ community came from "The Real World," shows like this, and the few out people in my world at the time. I'm so grateful for all of that because, without it, I'd have known nothing. It was such a gift. I love Angela's response because it's so authentic. She has the language. To her, Ricki isn't "confused," and she knows sexuality has nothing to do with driving skills. So '90s!
Hearing this line today, it reminds me not conflate what I know about different communities and pass judgements on people. In other words, it reminds me to not be like Angela’s mom. (Oh how the turn tables have turned.)
“Have you ever waited for something? Ya, for my life to start!”
Have you ever heard a more teenage conversation? I vividly remember that feeling. It felt like I was behind a starting line waiting for the race to start. There was so sort of invisible force field out there that wouldn’t let me cross that line, but I knew that when I crossed it EVERYTHING would be different.
This feelings is so familiar to me because I still feel it some times. When I was let-go from my job in August I spent a lot of time just waiting around. Waiting for something to just arrive. Waiting for something to change. It wasn’t until I started authentically creating things (newsletters, websites, journal entries, lego projects) that that feeling left my aura. I’ve come to realize that creation is what makes that starting gun go off. It’s what makes that force field disappear. While I have had creative projects in the past, none of them were created with my authentic self. They were always created with the ideal of who I was supposed to be in the drivers seat. Now that it feels safe enough for the real me to show up, I can create and feel free.
“Something was actually happening, but it was too actual.”
Oof, ya. This scene. If you know, you know (I don’t want to spoil too much). This line has me having so much compassion for teenage me. Something bad is happening in this scene and Angela doesn’t have the vocabulary or the experience to really get the full grasp of what is going on. It’s just “too actual”. It reminds me how much trauma can steal communication and how much compassion people need to have their feelings felt and have the space to find the tools to communicate what they need. I know teenage me really needed that.
As an adult, it’s a reminder to me that even though we might have the vocabulary and the experience to understand certain situations, compassion is still needed. A person might not be able to find the words. I just need to be there for them until they find them or ask them questions to help them tell their story.
“She was hiding, but in another way she wasn’t. She was free.”
Angela’s reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” in English and her takes are not what you usually hear from students nor what I remember taking away from the book when I read it in school. Instead of focusing on the trauma of what’s going on around Anne, Angela is focused on the fact that Anne was stuck in an attic for 3 months with a boy she really liked. Angela picks up on the fact that even though she was trapped, there was a freedom that Anne was able to experience that she couldn’t experience outside of the attic at the time. This says so much about Angela and where her mind is. When I watched it the first time, I thought I was finding the freedom in my trapped teenager life, but I wasn’t. I was still people pleasing.
Now when I think about Angela’s perspective on “The Diary of Anne Frank”, I think about the duality of truth. How two or more things can be true at the same time. There can be hope and fear. There can be freedom within a trap. There can be a trap within freedom. It’s all everything, everywhere, all at once.
“For awhile she was looking for her real parents. I guess that’s what everyone is looking for.”
At the end of the pilot Angela tells us that her mom was adopted and for a while was searching for her biological parents. Then she flips this line to make it universal and I gotta tell you, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
This is what I’ve been looking for my whole life. I have been looking for my real parents underneath the expectations of their parents, underneath the expectations of capitalism, underneath their own ideas of who they think they should be.
As a teenager is caused SO much friction in the family. I would call my parents out on stuff and they would have no idea why and I had no way to really communicate back to them in a way they could understand because I was a still a kid. So they got mad at me and I’m sure at themselves.
I’ve been so fortunate the past few years to see my real parents emerge from their shells. It’s something I’m super grateful for and I treasure every moment it happens. I’m pretty sure it heals teenage me, child me, and middle-age me all at the same time.
All 19 episodes of My So Called Life can be found on Hulu if you want to do your own re-watch. Would anyone be interested in a deep-dive series if I did one on this show?
I’ll leave you with one final quote . . .
“She finished my cheese.”
Angela’s mom is not a fan of Rayanne. When asked why, she said “She finished my cheese. It was a brand new package of cheese.” This one is just on the list for middle-aged me because ya, don’t finish my cheese.
Microwave Nachos Recipe
Ingredients
1 paper plate
Handful of chips
Cheese of choice (colby jack for 90s vibes)
Process
Put paper plate on counter
Grab a handful of chips and put it on the plate
Put cheese on top of chips (sometimes you might feel like you want to layer chips and cheese, that’s okay, go wild)
Put in the microwave
Set the cook time for anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute.
Microwave nachos are best enjoyed on a couch while watching TV.
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