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Popular won my heart in the 90s by adding farce to the standard fighting stepkids template while indulging me in my teen-drama addiction without rotting my brain.  Think Mean Girls before Mean Girls with a tad more plot.

The show lasted two seasons from 1999-2001 on the WB and centered on two stepsisters at the same high school.  One of the girls, Brooke McQueen (Leslie Bibb), was very popular, while the other, Sam McPherson (Carly Pope), was very not.  The show’s fabulousness obviously did not derive from its common premise but from its satire of such a common premise.  We got the usual pregnancy scares, love triangles, eating disorders, and divorce issues common to teen drama, in addition to alcoholic parents, suicide, homosexuality, and terminal illness.  But add its flippant treatment of over-the-top touchy topics such as dieting, porn, and STDs (see Clip of Gold), and you’ve got something super-special.  Not to mention the fact that I get bored very easily, and this show crammed a ton of ridiculousness into its short life.  Then the series abruptly ended, and we never found out if one of the main characters –who got run over–lives or dies.  Where could the show have gone if it had survived another season?  I can’t even think of a stereotypical teen-drama topic they didn’t cover. 

Both seasons of Popular are available on DVD.  Keep an eye out for Tammy Lynn Michaels, Delta Burke, and a pre-Less Than Perfect Sara Rue as supporting characters.  Extra props for the episode bravely titled “Fag” in which a character takes up the fight against homophobia.