Square Pegs - The Complete Series
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DVD details
Actor: Amy Linker, Jami Gertz, Sarah Jessica ParkerBrand: PARKER,SARAH JESSIC
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 491 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-05-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Square Pegs - The Complete Series
DVD Review: "I COULD JUST BARF"-- IN A VERY GOOD WAY--OVER "SQUARE PEGS"
Summary: 4 Stars
After she starred on Broadway as "Annie" and long before she became Carrie Bradshaw from "Sex and The City," Sarah Jessica Parker portrayed Weemawee High School outcast Patty Greene in the short-lived but fondly remembered 1982-1983 CBS sitcom "Square Pegs." The series struck a major emotional chord with me at the time; for I was also a major "square peg" in high school. Looking at it now after 25 years, I appreciate the show's satirical spin on high school horrors more than ever but, also, I still feel the pain. This proves how very much on the mark "Square Pegs" was and still is.
The series revolved around Patty and Lauren's (Amy Linker) relentless pursuit of "Popularity." The two misfit girls actually DID FIT IN quite well with class comedian Marshall Blechtman (John Femia) and his constantly "zoned out" sidekick Johnny Slash (The late Merrick Butrick, whom the cast recalls fondly on a sweet remembrance in the DVD'S "Weemawee Yearbook Memories" Segments).
Some of "Square Pegs" is dated; particularly the "Pac-Man Fever" episode, in which Father Guido Sarduchi from "Saturday Night Live" cures Marshall of his video game addiction. And snotty Jennifer's (Tracy Nelson) vapid "Valley Girl act"-- "like, gross me out the door!"-- grows old very quickly. But several other episodes, including "Halloween XII," "A Simple Attachment," and "Weemaweegate" skillfully mix humor and genuine charm.
Sarah Jessica Parker, wearing glasses that her character Patty despises, is as luminous, lovely, and talented as ever. I'd take Patty Greene ANY DAY over Carrie Bradshaw in "Sex and The City!" But it's Merrick Butrick and Jami Gertz who really go to the head of the class and steal the show with their inspired comic portrayals of Johnny Slash and Muffy Tepperman, respectively. Johnny and Muffy are even briefly "married" for a school assignment in the episode "No Substitutions" featuring guest star Bill Murray. Other "Square Pegs" guest stars included New Wave music acts Devo ("Muffy's Bat Mitzvah"), The Waitresses (who sing the "Square Pegs" Theme Song and "I Know What Boys Like" in the Pilot Episode), John Densmore (drummer for "The Doors"), Martin Mull (Roseanne"), and Tony Dow (Wally in "Leave It To Beaver"), who appears as Patty's estranged father in the episodes "A Child's Christmas In Weemawee: Parts 1 And 2."
Butrick is obviously much too old to play a high school student-- and too talented not to play one. The series cleverly dealt with his age by saying that Johnny Slash was "held back three times"; thus making him "Weemawee's oldest freshman." Butrick shines in the episodes "Open 24 Hours," "Muffy's Bat Mitzvah" and "No Joy In Weemawee."
As Muffy, the ever peppy preppie who is "drunk with pep", Jami Gertz often looks like she is sucking on a lemon, especially when she sees anything that displeases her. When Marshall's "love detector" throws the school's social order into disorder (in the episode "A Simple Attachment") Muffy exclaims, "I could just barf!" It's a testament to Gertz's talents (she went on to appear in the films "The Lost Boys," "Less Than Zero," "Twister" and the CBS Sitcom "Still Standing") that we laugh at Muffy but we never hate her--even when her actions and behaviors (especially in the episode "To Serve Weemawee All My Days") are horrible!!!!
Clearly, this show was way too hip and way too ahead of its time. Consequently, the school bell rang much too soon for "Square Pegs." The series was shot in California in an abandoned high school, some 40 miles AWAY from CBS. The network probably felt it didn't have enough "control" over the show's content, so it was cancelled. The cast laments in DVD interviews that the party ended much too soon, after only 19 episodes. Well, 20 episodes if you count " A Child's Christmas In Weemawee: Parts 1 and 2" as two episodes-- but on the DVD, they are edited together as one episode.
The main cast members, except for the late Butrick and Jon Caliri, who portrayed Jennifer's "walking gland" boyfriend Vinnie Pasetta, are all present, and seen in the present, in the DVD Extras segments titled "Weemawee Yearbook Memories." The series, like Patty and Lauren, never did achieve "mainstream popularity." And that fact, my dear misfits, makes "Square Pegs" so much more special and endearing.
Description of Square Pegs - The Complete Series
Square Pegs follows the hilarious misadventures of Patty (Sarah Jessica Parker, TV's Sex and the City) and Lauren (Amy Linker), two freshmen girls desperate to fit in at Weemawee High School. Befriended by oddball characters Marshall (John Femia), a budding comedian, and Johnny Slash (Merritt Butrick), a wacky new-waver, Patty and Lauren still hope to impress the popular kids: valley girl Jennifer (Tracy Nelson), her tough boyfriend Vinnie (Jon Caliri), and their sassy friend LaDonna (Claudette Wells). And it would "behoove us" to not forget Muffy (Jami Gertz), the ever-peppy preppie!Square Pegs was in a class by itself, but much like brainy, bespectacled Patty (Sarah Jessica Parker) and pushy, overweight Lauren (Amy Linker), popularity eluded this late, lamented series, which was expelled from prime time after one season. Rarely seen in syndication, its cult cachet has only increased with time (enhanced by Parker?s extreme makeover into Sex and the City?s trend-setting Carrie Bradshaw). In the words of peppy, preppy Muffy Tepperman (a spirited Jami Gertz in her own career-launching role), it behooves us to report that the series lives up to its rep as a smart and hip alternative to what creator Anne Beatts (in one of the newly filmed interviews with the show?s creators and cast included on each disc) calls "processed cheese television" of the day. Square Pegs was a totally different head; totally. Anticipating 16 Candles and Freaks and Geeks, Square Pegs viewed high school from the perspective of the bottom of the high-school social food chain. Patty and Lauren are freshmen at Weemawee High School. Lauren has it "all psyched out": If the girls can click with the right clique, they will at last have "a social life that?s worthy of us." Alas, it is not to be. The girls instantly run afoul of the school?s reigning Mean Girl, Jennifer (Tracy Nelson), her bad boy boyfriend, Vinnie (Jon Caliri), and her sassy best friend, LaDonna (Claudette Welles). "La Donna doesn?t like anything I do," Patty wails, "and I don?t do anything." They are also treated with disdain by Muffy, who seems to have the run of the school to rally students around sponsoring a "Guatemalan child" (they need swimwear, too). Patty and Lauren reluctantly bond with fellow square peggers Marshall Blechtman (John Fernia), an aspiring comedian always ready with a <>Saturday Night Live or Monty Python reference, and the "laid back and left back" Johnny Slash (the late Merritt Butrick), who?s New Wave, and not punk. (New Wave, he explains, is "a totally different head; totally").
Each episode brings some new fresh hell for Patty and Lauren, but also some hope that their fortunes will somehow change and their stock will rise (in the pilot episode, Patty impresses a "stone fox" upperclassman, and in another, she's Vinnie's leading lady in the Chorus Line-inspired school musical, "A Cafeteria Line"). Until then, cup size may trump IQ, but friendship will trump popularity. Weemawee High School appears to be based in New York, but everything else about the show is totally Los Angeles, from, like, Jennifer?s Valley Girl-speak to an appearance in one episode by Steve Sax and the Dodgers. The laugh track is as lame and half-hearted as the one employed by SCTV, but the show?s left of center spirit shines through. Two standout episodes feature, respectively, Bill Murray (Beatts? former National Lampoon and <>SNL colleague) as an unorthodox substitute teacher, and Devo, who performs at Muffy?s New Wave Bat Mitzvah. And that?s Wally Cleaver himself, Tony Dow, as Patty?s estranged divorced father in what passes as a Very Special two-part holiday episode. Square Pegs is totally '80s (in one episode, Marshall's Pac-Man addiction can only be cured by an intervention by Don Novello?s Father Guido Sarducci), but the Waitress?s indelible theme song ("I?d like it if they like us/But I don?t think they like us") sets just the right pathetic/persevering tone that will resonate for a new generation for whom "one size does not fit all." --Donald Liebenson
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