I wrote about My So-Called Life in this week’s DVD column:

I was just starting my first year of high school when ABC aired My So-Called Life—set during a turbulent sophomore year at Pittsburgh’s fictional Liberty High—so I was probably, like, morally obligated to revere it. What’s surprising, watching the series again 13 years later, is that it was worth the adoration.

I watched all 19 episodes and all the commentary tracks for this measly 400-word review, so naturally there are some things I didn’t have room to mention. First: It’s annoying when it’s clear that the people doing commentary tracks know less about the series than you do. Can’t the producers of the DVD set force their prima donnas to at least watch the episode in question before sitting down in front of the mics? No, Scott Winant, So-Called Angels was not the first episode to introduce metaphysical elements, though it was the first to do so with any degree of success: The Halloween episode has Angela falling in love with some dead boy. And speaking of shitty episodes, why did Claire Danes and creator Winnie Holzman get assigned to the schematic Self-Esteem? (That track is pretty cute, though.)

To further elaborate on my points about the character of the eyeliner-wearing, girls’ bathroom-hanging, half-black, half-Latino Catholic Rickie Vasquez: The way this show treated teen sexuality—whether promiscuous, abstinent, straight, or otherwise (Rickie gets called bisexual and ambiguous before he finally tells Delia he’s gay in the last episode)—is really remarkable. I get so annoyed when the media studies types interviewed in Further Off the Straight and Narrow (shown at this year’s Lesbian & Gay Film Festival) fall all over themselves praising Joss Whedon for the Willow character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer without mentioning MSCL (ok, I know, it was referenced in the earlier video Off the Straight and Narrow). Whedon is a fan of My So-Called Life (he has a tribute in this box set), and the Willow character is so… feminine… and tame. My So-Called Life didn’t have any same-sex makeout sessions, true, but Rickie is a much more complicated and provocative character.

Rickie’s storyline in the episode The Life of Brian (directed by Todd Holland) is especially touching and subtle. His cathartic dance scene at the end of the show is right up there with my gold standard for dance in the movies: Denis Lavant in Beau Travail. It almost made me go back and watch Holland’s most recent movie again to see if I missed anything. Almost.

One last thing: My So-Called Life producers Marshall Herskowitz and Ed Zwick have launched this new internet-based show quarterlife, which appears to have been designed to appeal to exactly the demographic who would’ve been fans of MSCL back in 1994. It also seems like it was even timed for the release of this box set. NBC is picking up the show for a midseason replacement, but don’t be fooled—that’s just the writer’s strike talking. There are some decent moments in the second episode, but the show is basically precious and stupid. Avoid.