Square Pegs - The Complete Series
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DVD Cover Information
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
Movie Reviews of Square Pegs - The Complete Series
Movie Review: Totally Different Head...Totally.
Summary: 5 Stars
Great show + great characters + horrible production = cult favorite.
When they started showing this on Nick-at-nite for some 80s flashback I fell in love. This was a pretty cool experiment when it first came out. A show that was supposed to be a hip teen sitcom that failed due to a lot of problems behind the set, according to TV guide. And those problems are definitely there. The laugh track plays what seems to be randomly. Sometimes it goes off when they don't really make a joke, and other times there is a hilarious joke and it doesn't go off! You get the idea that the lunatics were running the asylum if you know what I mean.
The characters are all great and original.
Patty and Lauren are the two heroines, a couple of nerds desperately trying to be popular. Patty is the suffering artist type that writes poetry that she "doesn't want anyone to read," and has a dry sense of humor with an unhealthy insecurity about her glasses. Lauren is mostly over concerned about her weight and her braces. She is usually found being annoyed by the comings on of Marshell Bleckman. "You can't get affection from a coffee table!"
Johnny Slash is the New-wave/punk enthusiast who is perhaps too hip for this dull school. He spends most of his free time in "the city." He's always wearing headphones and is in no way concerned with peoples' impressions about him. "When some people have something to say they say it with greeting cards. I have something to say but I want to say it with a bunch of people behind me making a lot of noise." The only one of the four that is not really a nerd, he just doesn't with in with the crowd. Filled to the brim with eccentricities such as: wearing little toy babies on his rat tail, always missing the point of the conversations around him, throwing out a cassette tape because "air has touched the music," as well as an unhealthy fixation on Devo. Has a short-lived rock group called, "Open 24 hours" and later retitled "Open 48 hours" "because it's twice as good."
Marshell Bleckman is the wannabe comedian that is always making horribly lame jokes. Another social outcast he fits in well with the other three protagonists previously mentioned. Should not in any circumstances be allowed near a Pacman machine!
Vinnie is the Italian jock with the IQ of a primate. He is the male counterpart of "the school's top couple." Easily amused, enraged, and made jealous. "Nobody makes Vinnie understand anything! I forget his last name...sounds like placenta, lol.
Jennifer, Vinnie's girlfriend is like, you know, the Valley girl of the school and when she isn't talking about Vinnie she is talking about clothes or makeup. Most of her entertainment comes from picking on Patty and Lauren. Loves the slang adjective 'lame' for some reason.
Ladonna is Jennifer's best friend. Shares most of Jennifer's interests but they disagree when it comes to sports. Usually found goofing on Patty and Lauren. Has an unnatural hatred of practically everything. "People dressed up in sheets is not my idea of a good time." Has cornrows which Bill Murry in one episode claims, "the noise alone bothers the whole class."
Muffy Tepperman is a rich Jewish girl that is overly concerned with the school's pep level. In one episode she raps! She is the overachiever that always gets good grades and is involved in school activities. Devo plays at her bat mitzvah! Loves the word 'behoove.' "If this was your room would you have ripped this giant check!?"
Principal Dingleman is supposed to be the conservative authority figure that is always making allusions and similes to communism that will crack you up. I do the same thing! "It's ok to dream, but not really." Also is a huge Ricky Nelson fan.
Watch this show. Dada, new wave, offbeat comedy that will steal your heart.
Summary 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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