The anti-Juno

Today, the most simultaneously overrated and underrated film in recent memory, Juno, arrives on DVD. I hate to be all Spike Lee and say, skip that, watch this, but uh, skip that and watch this*.

See, although I don't even hate Juno (despite everything, I enjoyed it, contrary to how I may have come off...twice), but I finally figured out exactly why I couldn't connect with its snotty-assed namesake: Juno MacGuff is the antithesis of My So-Called Life's Angela Chase, who's quite possibly my favorite teenage girl of all time (real or fiction). Juno is a know-it-all; Angela is a think-it-all. Juno is extroverted enough to be exempt from real self-consciousness (i.e. she has no idea how obnoxious she is); Angela is a painful self-examiner (however wrong her observations about herself are). Juno's an emotional superhero; Angela's ready to self-destruct at the tiniest shard of visceral kryptonite. Juno's intellect is lightning-fast and infallible (even if she doesn't know Greek from Roman mythology); Angela's musings, even when spot-on, are worded goofily enough to feel perpetually stumbled upon.

It's this last point that I feel is most important: while Juno is essentially the extension of Diabo Cody's considerable ego, Angela Chase is a warts-and-all portrait of a well-rounded human. She's whiny, annoying, selfish, clever, insightful, beautiful. And hilarious! Rewatching MSCL via last year's DVD release reminded me how awesome Angela's dialogue is, especially her narration. I haven't seen any sort of clip reel that collects her greatest hits, so I made one. The wisdom of Angela Chase follows in all of its endearingly laughable splendor:

I don't want to video you out, so below is a transcript of Angela's musings. I think they might be even funnier in print:

 

"It's like sometimes, people fill their minds with all these stupid things, you know? To keep themselves from thinking about, y'know, what's really important."

"When someone compliments your parents, there's, like nothing to say. It's like a stun-gun to your brain."

"Sometimes I think if my mother wasn't so good at pretending to be happy, she'd be better at actually being happy."

"The sad truth is, my breasts have come between us."

"Hatred can become like food. It gives you this energy. You can, like, live off it."

"I cannot bring myself to eat a well-balanced meal in front of my mother. It just means too much to her. I mean, if you stop to think about, like, chewing. What it really is. How people just do it. Like, in public."

Mom: "Angela, orange juice doesn't grow on trees."
Angela: "It sort of does."

"Maybe teachers have a hidden life where they're actually, like, human. Where they have, I don't know, dignity. Or maybe not."

"It's so weird that teachers actually, like, live places."

"Field trips are so intense. It's like everybody's been let out of their cages or something. And we're all roaming around. Loose."

"There's something about Sunday night that really makes you wanna kill yourself. Especially if you've just been totally made a fool of by the only person you'll ever love and you have a Geometry midterm on Monday, which you still haven't studied for because you can't because Brian Krakow has your textbook and you're too embarrassed to even deal with it. And your little sister's completely finished with her homework, which is just, like, so simple and mindless a child could do it. And that creepy 60 Minutes watch that sounds like your whole life ticking away."

"When someone dies young it's like they stay that way. Forever. Like a vampire."

"You know how sometimes the last sentence you said, like, echoes in your brain and it just keeps sounding stupider? And you have to say something else just to make it stop?"

"It's so weird when you see someone you just dreamed about. Like it's gonna show."

"When you call someone's name, like, kind of loud and they don't hear you, it makes you feel really lonely."

"Walking into someone's house for the first time is like entering another country. Not that I've ever been to another country."

"Like cheerleaders. Can't people just cheer on their own? Like, to themselves?"

"You know the karma in this house is, like, ridiculous...Yeah, it's really low. Or dark. Or whatever it is that happens to karma."

"I thought at least by age 15, I would have a love life. But I don't even have a like life."

"I couldn't stop thinking about it. The, like, fact of it. That people had sex. That they just had it. That sex was this thing that people had. Like a rash. Or a rottweiler. Everything started to seem, like, pornographic or something. Like, Miss Krysanowski has sex. So does Mr. Katimsky. They both have sex. They could have sex together, like, right now. I am, like, the sickest person."

"The thought that I might be seeing Jordan Catalano in a few hours was, like, impossible to comprehend. Like when they first tell you about infinity."

"Because it is a big deal. I mean, sex made your whole life start and if you think about life as, like, a circle or something, then sex and death are the same...Look, I'm not saying they're the same. I mean, I've thought about having sex with you, and, god, I've never seriously thought about killing you."

Mom: "You know what you really should do? Soak a washcloth in some steaming hot water. Apply it very gently to your chin, make sure you have a swab handy..."
Angela: "Mom!"
Mom: "What? I'm trying to help. What is wrong?"
Angela: "Just the word 'swab.'"

"School is a battlefield for your heart. So when Rayanne Graff told me my hair was holding me back, I had to listen. 'Cause she wasn't just talking about my hair; she was talking about my life."

"It had become the focus of everything. It was all I could feel, all I could think about. It blotted out the rest of my face. The rest of my life. Like the zit had become the truth about me."

"It just seems like you agree to have a certain personality or something. For no reason. Just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know if it's even you?"

"I just think people wanna believe things about people, and so they decide certain things are true. And they don't even ask. And it's not fair! 'Cause you have to live with it anyway."

"People always say how you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing. Like a toaster, or something. Like you can know what it is, even. But every so often, I'll have, like, a moment, when just being myself in my life, right where I am, is, like, enough."

"What I was thinking as, like, a New Year's resolution is to stop getting so caught up in my own thoughts. 'Cause I'm, like, way too introspective. I think."

"But what if not thinking turns me into this really shallow person? I better rethink this becoming less introspective thing."

*I don't really think you should skip Juno, or anything for that matter. You should experience any and every bit of pop culture for yourself. So rent Juno. See if I care. But just know that Angela is cooler.

Comments

[a]

she is lovely. I‘m curious.She wrote blog on a celeb dating site recently named “blackmatching.com”. It attacted many fans. Is she feeling lonely?

[Gillian]

Aw, thank you for this.

[erin]

Best dvd box set I own- and you are dead on with the comparison. I can say I have watched every episode enough times that I may know most episodes word for word.. true depiction of teen life in the 90's

[Liz]

I still love Jordan Catalano and always have. He's who I wish I had dated in high school. But then again, I grew up watching this show and thinking that is how my high school experience was going to be and it totally WASNT, except for the deeeeeep thoughts. haha. LOVE IT, now must go watch my DVDs of it!

[Daniel]

*sigh* We've been reliving the glory that is MSCL ever since the DVD came out. *sighs again*

[Maria]

oooh, i disagree.
I think Angela and Juno are both very cool. I like them both. However.... Juno is much COOLER. Like, They are both very thoughtful and wise, but Juno is definitely the cool one.

[UJ]

Thank you sooooo much for the transcript. I'm at work and can't watch the video but since i've seen all of MSCL more than once, I still remember all those scenes. I'm with you Rich. Go Team Angela!

[Mardi]

Hey that was pretty cool. I don't know why, but I never saw MSCL. I think cause it was on a channel I didn't get?? But it was a phenomenon amongst my friends. I really enjoyed the little clip show you just put together for us, Rich. Very cool. If I were, say, even 5 years younger, I might grab the DVDs and check it out. But I enjoyed seeing that little overview. Thanks.

[Lesly]

I wanted to read all of that...but all the "likes" just made my head explode.

[SKRII]

Eh, these quotes reminded me why i could never sit through an entire episode of that show. They're indicative of the apocryphal teenagespeak, heavily laden with "meaning," that too many writers like to put into a teenage character's mouth to smuggle gravitas into the story. And it never worked for me. (As if throwing the word "like" around authenticated the dialogue as adolescent). The non-stop assault of MSCL's didactic gamut of hot-button issues, (touched on in ony 19 episodes) also soundly removed it from a truly relatable realm for me. I just felt like I was constantly being force-fed an Afterschool Special type of lesson that I couldn't stomach.

It's always a mistake to let overexposure and hype in media coverage control one's view of any movie or tv show. You end up reviewing not the movie but the hype, and the analysis suffers for it. True, the obsessively knowing, self-important attitude of Juno's script did grate after a short while, but it was character-based and recognized as a self-defense mechanism for the heroine. I think it makes her a realistic teenager, not emblematic of all teenagers, but still honest. It matters little that she confuses Roman and Greek mythology, (especially since the Romans appropriated Greek mythology and called it their own). It does matter that she tells people what it means, however wrong or right she may be. Juno, the well-read girl who likes to tell everyone what she knows in snarky banter, felt more sincerely like a teenager than Claire Danes' Angela in MSCL. Also, this movie doesn't pull punches the way you think it would, a temptation MSCL rarely resisted and which most modern storytelling can't either.

[Whitney]

I love you for this. Hands down, MSCL is one of the best shows ever. And I love Angela. She reminds me a lot of myself, both a good and bad thing, I guess.

[T-Square]

I have yet to officially see/rent Juno yet (ever since practically standing in line to see Hard Candy, Ellen Page scares the everlovin' out of me, but I have seen copious vids and movie clips), and the characters of Juno (notably Juno herself) seems more like what my friends in high school were actually like: far overly articulate (care of theatre, speech, acting, debate, or a combination) and wanting desperately to get someone to realize that they need out of this place and to get into college so that they can be understood. Of course, no one told us that college would just be Unbearably Stupid 2: Electric Bugaloo.

But MSCL... oh, man. I had a severe obsession in the morning before school when I was in junior high. Like nearly every neon-coated sign to my queerness, I just happened to like Ricky *for some odd reason*. To this day, I can point to Angela Chase as being a) the only realistic teenager I have seen portrayed in media (I'm looking at you, Dawson's Creek) and b) the only person (outside of jest) to be able to use an interrogative tone in a statement. It's so fitting with her character - every statement is really just a question of, "did I just notice something? or not?"

Kinda creepy side note - my ex-girlfriend called me out of the blue one day last summer looking for a place to crash because she was following Jared Leto's band across the Midwest. No update on whether there was boiler room action, though.

[shannon]

my favorite MSCL moment:

Angela: Why are you like this?
Jordan: Like what?
Angela: Like how you are.

I love, love, LOVE this comparison. Funnily enough I broke down and bought the DVD set this weekend and canNOT tear myself away. It is everything I was in high school--the painfully nerdy girl with misfit friends and a crush who would never appreciate her.

Oh this takes me back.

Thanks for brightening up my morning.

[Joe M]

This is the favorite tv show of quite a few of my friends. I don't know why, but I never quite cared for it or Angela Chase in general. Frankly, she exhausts me and reminds me of those girls in high school who overthought everything and turned the slightest bad day into a life-crushing drama. Which, I fully admit, is EVERY girl in high school and quite a few boys, but jesus. Lighten up, just ever-so slightly, darlin'. I don't know, I always end up feeling genuinly bad for her parents because raising such a depressive, especially one that is intelligent, must really be tiring after awhile.

[Nougat]

When MSCL came out, I was just one year older than the characters. I must say, they did an excellent job of portraying what it was like to be a teenager at that time ... especially when you consider that 90201 was still on the air. What made Angela so great is the fact that she was so average and normal - nothing extraordinary, yet extraordinary all the same.

The part of this show that got me more than anything was the tension between Angela and Sharon, her old best friend. That hit really really close to home.

[Meghan]

Aw I love this video. I <3 "Can't people just cheer on their own? To themselves?"

I agree with every point you make about Juno's character based on the script. But I do think that Ellen acted beyond those limitations, that she gives Juno a subtle emotional depth that doesn't come through in the dialogue. She'll say something dumb and flippant and tough but her eyes have that bone-dry-but-could-cry-any-second-but-won't look. That kind of thing.

[Sissy]

I do own it on DVD and I was Angela in HS. Seriously, when that show came on the air I was a freshman in HS. Everyone else was watching this new show called Friends. I love Friends, but when MSCL came on, I had to be in front of the TV to try to figure myself out. The line about Sunday nights and 60 minutes is so freaking true. Sunday nights were the worst. Angela was a lot like me in the sense that we were both so grown up for our age. Being able to look at yourself and other and analyze is such a great thing to do, but when you are 15...or just even when you are in HS it can be such a curse. You want to just not care and be fun and stupid but you can't be. You see the bigger picture and you see how everything correlates. I have to say that I liked Juno, but I agree that she is a know it all. Her lingo was cutesy and fun, but annoying at times. She had courage to handle her teen pregnancy in that way, but honestly no one I knew in HS would have been that brave or articulate about what she was going through. So when I saw that movie, I didn't really connect or relate. I did cry at the end because she made a very heartbreaking and important choice for her life that would follow her forever. that was real and that was sad. Maybe the most real part of the whole film. Angela is WAY cooler than Juno and I was a Brian Krakow girl. Jordan Catalano was hot and sang great songs but Brian Krakow KNEW Angela and loved her no matter what.

[hootiehoo]

"You know how sometimes the last sentence you said, like, echoes in your brain and it just keeps sounding stupider?"

This quote has stuck with me since i watch MSCL in middle/high school. I think it makes my stupid comments echo even louder and longer.

like now.

[Maybelline Jones]

That was the best 8 minutes and 38 seconds of my day. I love Angela Chase too. We should start a fan club or something ...

... or not.

Let's not forget Lindsey Weir!!

[Brett]

What about Felicity? Isn't Felicity basically Angela Chase goes to college? This is in support of how great Felicity is and is also overlooked. I think of it as MSCL without the omni-annoying Patty and gay chef husband.

[spielster]

Thank you Thank you Thank you. SlutMachine directed us towards this on Jez and I have to say a big ol' thanks. As a grunge obsessed, awkward red head, who grew up in the 90's, there has never been a major character that I have identified with more. Yeah, maybe her shit was over exaggerated, but thats the crazy way you talk and think when you live inside your 15 year-old head. I loved the fact her friends weren't perfect, her family wasn't perfect and honesty wasn't everywhere. I loved the fact she wanted to leave the "geeky" lifestyle for a more interesting friendship with Rayann (I mean who doesn't have that friend). We all had a Jordan, a Ricky a Rayanne. Thank god this was my show over "Dawson's Creek", which was so obviously written by adults it hurt to watch it.

While Juno was cute, it was so overly written, I couldn't feel connected to these people. Angela Chase will go down as truly one of the most real characters ever and yeah she might have gotten annoying, but the bitch was supposed to be. We all were. Just ask your moms! Thanks for the great post and the spot on editorial. I'm gonna link to it for an upcoming post on The Spielster.

[elisa]

since nobody has said this yet, i will give you a big thank you for the transcript of all the dialogue.

THANK YOU!!

It was great to be able to actually 100% understand one of your videos and enjoy it to the fullest. I loved MSCL when I was in middle school and now I understand why I loved it because I couldn't remember much of it until now...

[Beth]

I had such a girl crush on Angela Chase--and, by extension, on Claire Danes. I simultaneously wanted to be her and actually was her. Such a great show!

[R.Kitty]

::sigh:: Jordan Catalano...

I heart me some Rich today.