You know, like, it's not as bad as you'd think for a show that was canned as it began a second season.
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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.
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