School Works
A look inside the WB's surprise hit series. Why ''Popular'' is attracting more female teens than ''Friends'' and ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''
by Lynette Rice

In high school, ''Popular'' star Leslie Bibb wasn't, well... popular. Even among her miniscule class of 38 girls at a Virginia single-sex Catholic school, Bibb says she ranked ''somewhere in the middle'' when it came to being cool. ''I was no head cheerleader,'' the actress tells EW Online. ''I didn't even have a boyfriend.'' If only the nuns could see her now. The 26-year-old Bibb is finding herself more in demand every week, thanks to the WB's freshman drama, which is striking a chord among teenage girls. Created by Touchstone Television, ''Popular'' has become No. 1 in its Thursday time slot in this key demographic, regularly beating ''Friends'' and ''Jesse.'' And the series is No. 3 on the WB among female teens -- behind ''Dawson's Creek'' and ''7th Heaven,'' but, surprisingly, ahead of the girl-powered ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'' Still, ''Popular'''s success didn't come overnight. ''The pilot we did was similar to 99 other shows that were on the air,'' admits cocreator Ryan Murphy. With episode seven, however, (which featured Delta Burke as the wacky mom of homecoming queen candidate Mary Cherry) Murphy hit his stride: ''I just decided to write something that was so irreverent and odd that I wondered how it would even get on the air. But the network immediately embraced it; it was so out there and wacky. Before, we were in this netherland -- was it a comedy or a drama? But from there we found a voice and our niche. Now there's nothing like this show on the air.''

For those who aren't regular viewers, ''Popular'' focuses on two very different sophomores -- Brooke McQueen (Bibb), a beautiful but self-conscious cheerleader, and Sam McPherson (Carly Pope), a bright but insecure writer -- who become unlikely stepsisters after their single parents suddenly hook up. All the while, Brooke and Sam continue their painful quest for acceptance at Kennedy High School, where they hang with two very different peer groups. ''Stories are coupled with something serious and something funny. We have a balance so it's never heavy,'' says Bibb, recalling an episode in which her character thought she was pregnant while Mary Cherry (Leslie Grossman) kidnapped Gwyneth Paltrow's personal shopper. ''Life has ups and downs and 'Popular' will always be that way. There will always be a comedic thread through it.'' Inventive recent episodes -- such as the one featuring two members of the U.S. Women's World Cup Soccer Team -- helped boost the series' ratings. So did the WB's decision to air reruns on Mondays at 9 p.m., in addition to the shows on Thursdays. And ''Popular'''s success is all the more surprising given the dismal failure of such hyped young-skewing series as Kevin Wiliamson's ''Wasteland'' and the WB's own ''Brutally Normal.'' ''We hear from young people all the time who say the show is a great role model, and that it's hitting home,'' says Bibb. ''It's not like a soap opera, it's high school, and being popular, that's high school. It's about fitting in.'' Expect ''Popular'' to keep fitting in with its faithful teen audience, as upcoming episodes deal with the marriage of Delta Burke's character to Erik Estrada (who plays himself), and another teen's pregnancy, which, unlike Brooke's near brush, is for real. Bibb, who hits the big screen in the ''The Skulls'' (April 7) with fellow WB actor Joshua Jackson, understands why the freshman drama is a hit among the Clearasil set. Though she considers her own school days to be uneventful, she says ''every high school is its own drama series. You're dealing with young people who are on the brink of adulthood and who are not sure who they are.'' At least not until they land a hit show.

Television shows do not get much more gay than Popular, the WB’s very, um, popular teen satire. So far this season the show has boasted a proud lesbian mother, a conniving bisexual teen, a gay feminist literature teacher, a sexually confused young woman, and the gender-ambiguous Glass siblings. Give credit to openly gay series creator Ryan Murphy for concocting a show that can make Will & Grace look like The Golden Girls. “People like the fact that the show is balls-out crazy,” muses Murphy, 34. “It pushes the envelope. It’s a little out there. It’s a lot out there in terms of some of the characters.” Leslie Grossman, who plays one of the show’s more “out there” characters—the so-rich-it-hurts fundamentalist Christian Mary Cherry (“A drag queen with a vagina,” Grossman notes)—knows who’s watching. “Only gay men and little girls come up to me—which is all I ever wanted,” she says with a laugh. “It’s funny to me that little girls have glommed on to the show so much. There are certain jokes where you have to be over the age of 25 to even get them.” Murphy originally wanted to do a project about ambition and two feuding high school girls with characters based on his friends growing up in Indianapolis, Ind. “There were eight of us; I was the mayhem ringleader,” he recalls of his days at Warren Central High School—which he was attending when his family learned he was gay. “I went away to a camp, and my mother found some cards and letters in a drawer from somebody I was seeing, and she figured it out,” he recalls. The resulting household turmoil was quelled when a family psychiatrist told the Murphys “that this was not a bad thing and that there was nothing wrong with it,” he says. Coming out so early only helped him later in life, Murphy says. “I think when you wait and deal with it in your 20s, it becomes an all-consuming passage because it’s a struggle. For me, because it happened at a young age, it was just one thing about me. I have never made any bones about it, and it’s never been a problem.” “[Murphy’s being gay is] integral to everything that the show is,” notes Grossman. “He has a distinct personality apart from his sexuality, but I think it plays a really important role in the way he sees the world, and that’s what makes the show work. Without that sensibility, it would be weepy. He always says, ‘We are never going to have people staring out the window listening to Sarah McLachlan ballads.’ ” Murphy’s relationship with his cast is equally integral to the show’s “crazy” yet familial atmosphere. Says Popular actress Sara Rue, who plays would-be cheerleader Carmen Ferrara: “When I first met Ryan I didn’t know if we’d get along because he was sort of quiet and aloof and very mysterious. Now I just think he’s fucked up and brilliant.” The fact that Popular is so preoccupied with pop culture stems directly from Murphy’s youth. “I would lie and skip mass so I could stay home and watch the Sunday noon movies,” he recalls. “When I was really tiny, I was obsessed with Bette Davis for a long time, which was very odd.” Years later, Murphy’s Davis obsession would pay off when, as a successful celebrity journalist, he conducted Davis’ final interview. “It was four hours long, and she had a lot to say before she died,” he remembers. “She dressed up in her Patrick Kelly pillbox and she had her wig on. We sat under a huge painting that a fan had done of her as Jezebel.… She really reflected a lot on her life and her career and her mistakes. I loved that.” Murphy went from celebrity journalism to screenwriting when Steven Spielberg optioned a script he’d written called Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn, a gay-inclusive romantic comedy. (Murphy is hoping the movie, which has been batting around Tinseltown for several years, will finally get made this summer.) He went on to pen several other screenplays, including Marry Me, Jane, the story of a wedding planner based on a pitch by Jennifer Love Hewitt. He also did a rewrite on The Next Best Thing. “I rewrote the first guy, and then Rupert [Everett] rewrote me,” he says with a smile. The next best thing to screen credit, he says, was visiting with Madonna in person. “I went to New York three times and sat around with her in her glamorous apartment. We talked about her life, and I did a draft where I put a lot of her life stuff into the script—probably too much. She did not disappoint. She’s a very nice person and very respectful of other writers and artists.” Madonna, it seems, is also a Popular fan, as are Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and even Howard Stern. Actress Clea DuVall was so taken by the show that she asked for and got her own role: mentally unstable recurring character Wanda Rickets.

So what is it that gets everyone so excited about this little show? “Everybody feels alienated and misunderstood and like a bit of an outsider and underappreciated to a certain degree,” speculates Murphy. Devoted Popular viewer Eric Kops, the openly gay vice president of national publicity at MGM, sees the show as a kind of wish fulfillment for the formerly unpopular. “Each of the characters is constantly breaking the barriers,” he observes. “The high school jock breaks up with the homecoming queen to date a more unconventional full-figured gal.” “Every character thinks of themselves as a minority,” adds Murphy. “They feel like nobody gets them or they’re not represented correctly. I think many gay people feel that and embrace the characters for that reason.” The show’s over-the-top comic sensibility may also have something to do with it. Who could not chuckle at Delta Burke as Mary Cherry’s oil baroness mother, Cherry Cherry? Or the plush-velvet girls’ rest room, called the “Novak” as an homage to Kim? Just don’t call the show campy. “To me, camp is something that takes itself way too seriously,” says Murphy. “We do not take ourselves seriously at all.” Indeed—many of Popular’s story lines go right over the top. On “A Very Popular Christmas” teacher Bobbi Glass says he/she only wanted to get his/her sister “a hairless pussy… like the cat in Austin Powers.” How did they get away with that? “The standards and practices people, who I know I give nightmares to, will come to me and say, ‘OK, look. We’ll give you two hairless pussies, but you have to take out an asshole and a shit,’” laughs Murphy. “When I sold the show to Suzanne Daniels [president of entertainment] and Jordan [Levin, executive vice president of programming], I said I really wanted to push the envelope with the show. They’ve been really supportive.” Not that there aren’t serious lessons amid the madness. One show focused on student-to-student harassment, including antigay taunts; Mitchell Anderson has appeared as a gay teacher; and another teacher will shortly come out as transsexual. Still, even though the comedy earned a GLAAD Award nomination for outstanding episode, none of the teen regulars is gay. “The network and I had a discussion about that early on,” Murphy explains. “Because of the Dawson’s Creek story line [teen Jack had just come out on that WB series], at this point they felt that it would be oversaturation.” Once Popular’s season wraps, Murphy will begin collaborating on a coming-of-age feature film with Varsity Blues director Brian Robbins, but for now the series consumes most of his attention. “When you do an hourlong drama, it’s like doing a minimovie every eight days,” he muses. “Now I look at TV as my career and film as my hobby.” With a smile, he adds, “C’mon, when you have one of your lead characters wearing a full-length fur to school, you can’t go wrong.”

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 endeavour 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 counsellor (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.