#My so called life jordan catalano series#

At the time, it was unheard of for a teen drama on a major network to cover school violence.Ī gunshot goes off in a locker at Liberty High, and Rickie is suspected of having brought it to school after being bullied for being gay. “Everybody knows there’s like 50 guns in school at any given moment,” says Rayanne in this episode. These are things that are part of growing up so it’s not like I invented anything.”Ģ. It’s that line in the pilot when Claire goes, ‘How do I know it’s really me?’ But that question of ‘how do I really know who I am? was really at the heart of it. I had in mind high school being about trying on a new personality. “I was in a collaboration with Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (who produced ‘Thirtysomething’) and they approached me and we all had in mind this old show called ‘Family’ which starred Kristy McNichol as this teenage girl. “I didn’t come up w this idea myself,” says Holzman. Angela narrates most of the episodes and this one establishes her crush on bad boy Jordan Catalano. Langer, and Rickie Vasquez, played by Wilson Cruz. While navigating high school, she tries to shake her childhood best friend, the seemingly goody two-shoes Sharon Cherski, in favor of Rayanne, played by A.J. She wears plaid shirts and combat boots with dresses and dyes her hair a dark red. We meet Angela Chase, who is in her sophomore year at Liberty High, in a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA. Here are five stand-out episodes, with insight from Holzman into each.

#My so called life jordan catalano series#

To mark the event, I re-watched the series and it remains as timely and relevant as it did more than two decades ago. Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of the show’s debut. When people say that that’s a powerful thing.” They told me ‘We just want you to be honest write it from your heart. “They said to me ‘What if you were to write a teenage girl that was really real and that we didn’t try to stereotype or make perfect?’ It was their giving me permission to be honest and that was empowering. “They had long been interested in a show with a real depictions of teenagers on TV,” “My So-Called Life” creator Winnie Holzman tells CNN. The show portrayed confused – and smart – teenagers searching for love and acceptance while working through family troubles, substance abuse, homophobia, unrequited love and dealing with school violence. The groundbreaking ABC teen drama lasted for only one season, but what the producers and actors accomplished in those 19 episodes still speaks to what it means to be a teenager in America. Prior to the series, which lasted for one season, young audiences had teens living in Beverly Hills and girls who looked like Kelly Kapowski.

When my “My So-Called Life” premiered in 1994, Angela Chase (played by a 13-year-old Claire Danes) and her circle of friends made a generation of teens feel not so alone.