I'm a lucky girl. Fuzzy got me a Bluray player for Christmas this year, and he installed it a few days ago. This gave me the chance to enjoy a few of the programs I love that no one else in the family cares for, including the two holiday episodes of Popular.
If you've never heard of Popular, that's okay. You're not lonely. It was the very first show produced by Ryan Murphy (of Glee, Nip/Tuck, Pose, and a bunch of other stuff fame) for the WB in 1999. At that point in history, the network was hugely famous for its teenage programming, featuring Buffy, Dawson's Creek, Seventh Heaven, Felicity, and Angel. Popular premiered in the fall of 1999, complete with a pilot episode that featured a nameless indie rock singer perched on a Victorian settee in the bed of a yellow truck, crooning variations of the first version of the theme song to her own guitar accompaniment. I'm not joking. What followed was a series of episodes that veered from heartfelt character plots that followed the popular clique and the alternative clique that were forced together by the budding relationship between the two leaders' parents and brilliant satire on the teen tropes of pop culture, years before Mean Girls.
Not everyone got the jokes, and not everyone had the tolerance for the camp. I was the only person I knew watching this show, and if the internet message boards were to be believed, the majority of the audience appeared to be middle-aged (35-45-years-old, when you're 19 and in college) flamboyantly gay men. And Howard Stern, oddly, who would talk about the show every week on his morning radio broadcast. The show got moved around several times as the WB tried to make it work with teenagers before they killed it after the second season finale, which was rife with cliffhangers, as the producers had been told that a third season was greenlit. In another five or ten years, it might have gotten a different reception, but alas.
In the course of two seasons, we spend time in the Novak (the posh bathroom named after a famous alum) with the Blondes and the Browns, enjoy Niecy Nash in a lobster costume, face one of the oddest teachers in the profession, and view a theatrical production about STDs (It's like Cabaret, but with venereal disease!). There are characters named Mary Cherry (and her mother Cherry Cherry), Poppy Fresh, and Exquisite Woo. There are a few tropes that would surface again in Glee, like the Glamazons (the overly elite cheerleading squad), the football player trying out for the musical, the complete suspension of reality when convenient, and events aligning to fit the theme of the week.
This show is worth a second look. It's ridiculously fun, with cameos from the not-quite-famous, and there are so many indications of the much more popular projects that would come in later years. This is exactly what you get when Ryan Murphy doesn't have anyone to talk him out of a harebrained scheme, and it's fantastic when it's good.
Is it dated in the same way that old Will and Grace episodes are? Totally. Are there some awesomely awkward moments of the Millennium? Completely. Is this thing amazing anyway? Absolutely.
It's not available on any streaming services, and the DVDs are out of print, but you can find it on YouTube. It's glorious and flawed and worth the time and patience.
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