The
following are articles found online about "Popular".
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Seventeen Online
by Jana Siegal
THE DEAL: What do you get when the mother of a slightly insecure (but
totally gorgeous, hello) girl from the fringe crowd hooks up with the
father of a socially powerful cheerleader? The premise of Popular, a show
that takes a look at the intricate web of high school cliques. Sam (Carly
Pope), a semi-misfit obsessed with finding her individuality, constantly
badmouths the "in" crowd, but secretly wouldn't mind being a part of it.
Her friends are an eccentric crew of freaks (even though they really don't
look all that freakish) who aren't cool enough to get invited to the party
of the year. Brooke (Leslie Bibb)
is a cheerleader who can make
or break anyone's social standing with the snap of her fingers. It seems
like she's got it made, but behind the perfect facade is a girl who battled
an eating disorder and isn't happy with her jock boyfriend. The two girls'
polar-opposite worlds are turned upside down when Sam's single mom meets
Brooke's single dad and they decide to get married. HIGH POINTS: A pretty
cast of characters participating in high school antics is always entertaining.
The characters seem to have more depth than most shows in the same category.
LOW POINTS: It's not a very realistic view of the teen experience. The
worst part of the show is the appearance of a random girl who plays the
guitar and sings about what's going on with the characters between segments.
Enough with the Ally McBeal thing already.
St. Petersburg Times
Online
by ERIC DEGGANS
POPULAR, 8 P.M. (premieres Sept. 30 on the WB, WTTA-Ch. 38; sneak preview
Sept. 29): In yet another high school drama, we're shown two girls: one
is blindingly popular, another wears her outsider status like a badge
of honor. What happens when their parents get married? I don't know, but
the WB hopes it's interesting enough to draw teen viewers from NBC's Friends.
Watch for Sara Rue, a size 14 actor who shines as a frustrated cheerleader
wannabe. But please, add some color to this lily-white entourage. Will
it survive? A show about young people up against Friends on NBC? You'd
have a better chance seeing Chandler rule the ring on WWF Smackdown!
Toronto Sun
By CLAIRE BICKLEY
On the new teen series Popular, Brooke (Leslie Bibb) is beautiful. She's
popular. High school classmate Sam (Vancouver's Carly Pope) is perhaps
2% less beautiful than Brooke. She's unpopular.Spot any credibility problems
so far? Add in a ripped-from-the-pages of People magazine story arc that
will force the girls not only into close quarters but possibly into the
same family.
Their parents are engaged. While it's a worthwhile endeavor to dissect
the high school caste system, below the surface Popular seems, instead,
to be endorsing it. For instance, an overweight girl (Sara Rue) who is
rejected by the cheerleading squad despite being the most talented dancer,
is filmed so as to keep the focus off her body. Kind of reminds me of
new legal drama Family Law, which is meant to celebrate older women --
but literally shot its first episode through a stocking to keep them in
soft focus. Hide the crone! Avoid the fatty! As on so many new series,
we're let in on the characters' thoughts, most effectively in a classroom
scene where the distractions on young wandering minds range from life
crises to what's for lunch. Elsewhere, Sam fantasizes about the sexual
seduction of her guidance counselor (Chad Lowe) and a biology class frog
comes back to life and sings. Problem is, Popular’s reality is exaggerated
to the point of fantasy as well. The popular girls carry a suitcase-sized
bag of nail polish to change to the latest shade on a moment's notice.
House parties have bouncers and clipboarded guest lists. Viciously hateful
Brooke's status-obsessed friend Nicole (Tammy Lynn Michaels) is so viciously
hateful she comes across not as a snob but as a psychopath. Fat white
guy rapper wannabe Sugar Daddy (Ron Lester) is a cartoon. Not to mention
that his posing is the closest the show comes to trying to represent non-white
characters. That's not even Popular's most annoying aspect. That'd be
Sunny, a folky singer who turns up throughout to offer musical commentary,
even over the school's P.A. system. In the immortal words of Mr. Leonard
Cohen, the singer must die. Far superior at portraying the teen experience
is Freaks And Geeks, premiering tonight opposite Popular on NBC and ONtv.
Its 1980s time frame and its glammed-down depiction of adolescence should
hit a nostalgic nerve with the Boomer audience, as well as the current
teen viewership. This Welcome To The Dollhouse-esque study of teen angst
and amusements feels very real. Even set-pieces -- such as the gym class
run by a sadistic jock teacher, the school dance dilemma of being caught
on the floor when the music turns from slow to fast, the showdown with
the bully -- feel fresh. Central to the story are the Weir siblings: Sophomore
Lindsay (Linda Cardellini), an A-student who nonetheless feels most at
home with the underachieving, rebelling freaks, and younger brother Sam
(John Daley), one of those confident, likable geeks you suspect would
grow up not only to be popular himself but also to one day be the boss
of all those Popular kids.
Hang with Geeks on Saturday
night
by LOUIS B. HOBSON
Calgary Sun Let's face it: In high school you were either in, or you were
out. The pupils populating Popular, premiering tonight on DE at 8 p.m.,
are in. The students on Freaks and Geeks, debuting tonight on Q at 9 p.m.,
are out. Ironically, Freaks and Geeks is the better show and a much better
crowd to hang out with on a Saturday night. Freaks is mainly a drama,
though the first the hour-long episode does contain many laughs. The great
deal of humour injected throughout, however, merely dulls the painful
moments caused by their unflinching examination of the hallway food chain.
For one of the outcasts, simply being accepted by a circle of
cooler outcasts -- the rebels too outcast to care about being unpopular
-- is a major achievement. It is therefore a red-letter day in the struggle
of geeks everywhere when one of their own actually talks to a cheerleader.
Unlike so many primetime series, the kids on Freaks and Geeks act like
kids. Geeks is a study in contrasts with Popular. Popular is '90s, glossy,
contrived and vacuous. Sam is a brainy Bohemian whose worst nightmare
is realized when her mom announces she's engaged to the father of Brooke,
queen bee of the cheerleaders. The pilot episode spends many scenes lamenting
the class struggle amongst the student body. Yet you'll laugh aloud as
Sam, played by the flawlessly gorgeous Vancouver actress Carly Pope, agonizes
over her appearance in the mirror. It's similar to the film She's All
That, in which a talented and beautiful young woman with supportive friends
is considered a loser. Things go over the edge with a overwrought monologue
by Brooke (Leslie Bibb) trying to convince viewers just how difficult
it is being popular. Maybe if they devoted a little more time working
on a plausible script than co-ordinating outfits and choreographing dance
sequences. Then maybe, on Saturday nights this season, the geeks wouldn't
seem cool and the popular kids like try-hards.
Popular[Truth or Consequences] Review
by Daily Radar
When the truth hits the consequences, good things ensue... Is this what
high school is really like? This is the truth. Popular, perhaps on a long,
slow march toward cancellation, takes a no-nonsense approach to goofiness.
That in itself is pretty darn goofy. When perky teens Nicole, Poppy, and
Mary Cherry set off to steal the big biology test, why, the whole darn
thing is played off as a Charlie's Angels parody/homage -- complete with
cheesy wigs and theme music. Nor should anyone fail to recognize that
the show's epic denouement (an enthusiastic food fight) comes straight
from the National Lampoon classic Animal House or that the show's basic
premise is an entirely bent take on The Brady Bunch.
The skinny (and the
fat) on WB's new 'Popular'
By David Kronke
TV Critic If there's one media outlet that has no business lecturing us
on body image, it's the WB. And yet, amid the torrents of svelte, youthful
comeliness that gush forth from the network's
airwaves comes the shrill, small and staggeringly hypocritical voice of
"Popular," a new series that considers itself daring because it has a
couple of cast members who don't look anorexic and suggests -- stop the
presses! -- that the whole idea of teen cliques is arbitrary and probably
unfair. Yet this same show forces its gorgeous characters to dig deep
into their psyches in a neurotic search for flaws, physical or otherwise;
acceptance of or simple neutrality toward oneself is utterly verboten.
And its chief conceit is that the "unpopular" girl (played by Carly Pope)
is just as attractive -- and smarter, and even a smidgen more introspective
-- as the "popular" one (Leslie Bibb), but, well, she's still an outcast.
This results in behavior all around that is borderline pathological. What
is this show going to do for the self-esteem of impressionable, average-looking
young viewers -- who, God willing, will just tune into the infinitely
smarter "Freaks and Geeks" instead -- wondering what their chances for
social acceptance are if even good-looking kids get shunned? "Popular"
wants it both ways -- it lures viewers in by promising them glimpses of
Bibb in a slip, then tries to assuage them by intimating that her character's
a harridan because she won't hang out with "normal" kids. And that's just
one of the many sins of "Popular," which debuts tonight and continues
in its regular time slot on Thursday. "Popular" proves only that people
who live in Hollywood long enough can lose all touch with reality. Co-creator
Ryan Murphy writes, for one of his characters to declare, "We live in
the Age of Gwyneth (Paltrow) and that is the state by which all things
are judged," distilling the theme of the series to its essence. Show business
is just high school with money, Martin Mull once observed; in "Popular,"
high school is just show business, period, and if the rest of the country
can't relate, well, they're not cool anyway. Murphy used to write for
Us magazine (Pope's character, Sam, writes for the school newspaper);
now he has his own weekly incarnation of that magazine's "Who's Hot-Who's
Not" issues. He tries, unconvincingly, to present both points of view.
"We're all just trying to make it through the day hoping no one finds
out about us -- we're the same," Sam reflects. Brooke (Bibb), the cheerleader,
may be superficial, but she's a sincere kind of superficial, and the jock
(Bryce Johnson) is actually soulful underneath -- he aspires to perform
in the school musical. On the other
hand, a couple of in-crowd kids (played by Tammy Lynn Michaels and Leslie
Grossman) would have to add layers of personality simply to come off as
one-dimensional. If the kids' characterizations defy credibility, the
adults are simply risible. Teachers argue over their dominion of the popular
kids, or they bully students for having a point of view, and the jock's
pop marches into the high-school auditorium and interrupts a rehearsal
to bawl out his kid for getting a part in the play -- in other words,
for achieving. In Thursday's episode, Sam's mom and Brooke's dad get engaged
without the girls having even realized they were an item. The plot twist
ensures that these separate cliques will be in each other's faces for
the duration of the series, but as strained contrivances go, it's pretty
breathtaking. Actress Sara Rue has a scene in the second episode where
she movingly discusses her weight problem. It would be a powerful moment
on any other show. Here, she's inspired to do so by the fact she didn't
make the cheerleading squad because, implausibly and manipulatively, the
school allowed two popular girls to control the vote. Here, among scenes
of partying and shopping for designer fashions and copious soon-to-be-dated
pop-culture references, it's an egregiously insincere gesture. "Popular"
is a trollop of a TV show, desperately willing to do anything -- anything
-- to get people to like it.
going up?
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