This was sent in by SunStar, tigger3634, and LAWard<\/p>\n
From TV Guide:<\/p>\n
\nTragically Hip WB Panders for Popularity<\/strong><\/p>\n
By Matt Roush<\/p>\n
For someone who\u2019s looking back at high school from almost a
\nquarter-century\u2019s perspective, I watch a lot of WB\u2019s adolescent-aimed guilty
\npleasures: Buffy, Angel, Felicity, Roswell. But there is a limit. And its
\nname is Popular (Thursdays, 8 pm\/ET). Granted, I\u2019m far from the target
\naudience \u2014 fashion-obsessed 7th-grade girls with a “Gwyneth” fetish \u2014 but a
\nmore tiresome piece of presumed teen satire is hard to imagine. If Roswell is
\nthe teen X-Files, then Popular is the teen Ally McBeal. This is no
\ncompliment. The fact that Popular has its own version of Ally\u2019s “unisex”
\nbathroom \u2014 a lavish girls\u2019 room dubbed “the Novak” in homage to screen queen
\nKim Novak \u2014 merely underscores the lack of true originality here.<\/p>\nGarishly campy and mean-spirited in its stylized look and snotty attitude,
\nthis show is even worse when it heavy-handedly tries to locate a heart under
\nits cartoon surface. It\u2019s the flip side of NBC\u2019s superior and now canceled
\nFreaks and Geeks. Whereas Freaks opened each week with real-looking kids
\nanxiously posing for class pictures, Popular\u2019s glossy credit sequence finds
\nits gorgeous stars preening for a professional fashion shoot. Popular is like
\na weekly version of those lousy teen movies that disappear after two weeks at
\nthe multiplex. Built around the rivalry between a golden girl (Leslie Bibb)
\nand a rebel chick (Carly Pope) whose single parents move in together, Popular
\nthinks it\u2019s saying something about the culture war between haves and
\nhave-nots, condemning petty prejudices and gossip. Actually, despite trendy
\nsubplots on homophobia and body image, it trafficks in cruelty.<\/p>\nThe series marginalizes its real “geeks,” grotesque losers with last names
\nlike “Tuna” (a girl) and “Dick” (a boy). And while the school\u2019s nastiest
\nviper, Nicole (Tammy Lynn Michaels), often gets punished, the audience is
\nencouraged to admire her witchy ways, which include such taunts as, “Jealous
\nmuch, fast-food Hag-atha?” When a member of the “unpopular” set said, “I\u2019m
\nbeginning to understand why this school stocks plastic knives,” I figured it
\nwas because there were so many plastic characters. To borrow one of the
\nshow\u2019s favorite words, Popular is “heinous.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This was sent in by SunStar, tigger3634, and LAWard From TV Guide: Tragically Hip WB Panders for Popularity By Matt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roswell","tag-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}