Two girls who despise each other, due to being on opposite sides of the "popularity fence", are forced together upon learning that their parents are getting married.Two girls who despise each other, due to being on opposite sides of the "popularity fence", are forced together upon learning that their parents are getting married.Two girls who despise each other, due to being on opposite sides of the "popularity fence", are forced together upon learning that their parents are getting married.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 9 nominations
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Storyline
The two girls who are seen in their fictional Jacqueline Kennedy High School as the leaders of two main opposing cliques, the popular one and the not so popular one, clash heads when their single parents meet, fall in love and decide to get hitched. However, both the girls and their two cliques slowly grow together and become an unlikely group of friends with both typical and not so typical high school and young adult problems. Brooke McQueen is the captain of Glamazons, the school's cheerleading squad. She's considered smart, beautiful and perfect. Privately, she's been dealing with self-image and body image issues ever since her estranged mother left her and her father. She also tries to fight the popular image people have of her. She wants to be good and does good and often helps people instead of thinking only about herself but she also has a suppressed selfish side. Sam McPherson aims to have the opposite image of Brooke's. She's attracted to journalism and wants to be the voice of nonconformists. Despite this, she has several flaws like being too judgmental, underestimating people or ignoring the fact that she sometimes acts hypocritically, especially when it comes to love. Her anger partially stems from the trauma of losing her father to leukemia. Lily Esposito is the schools top environmentalist, animal and human rights activist and an all-around liberal On the other hand, she has a fear of sex and sexuality and this creates problems in her relationships with men. She's Sam's friend and so is Harrison John, the ultimate friend-zoned guyfriend, who's been friends with both Brooke and Sam for a long time and has a crush on Brooke ever since childhood but also feels certain attraction to Sam. These three friends make the ultimate love triangle. Carmen Ferrara is a slightly overweight girl, who tries to deal with her body issues by trying to accept and enjoy who she is. Despite being friends with Sam's group, her dream is to become one of the Glamazons and be friends with the popular girls as well and she goes for it. Josh Ford is the school's hot popular quarterback, who at first seems like a walking jock stereotype but actually has a lot of depth and is for the most part a nice guy. He dates Brooke at first and they become the school's ultimate power couple but he eventually decides to quit trying to be what other people want him to be and become his own man. Nicole Julian is the second in command of Glamazons but always wants more power and influence. She's assertive, smart, cynical, egotistical, Machiavellian, combative and attractive and she knows it. She sees herself as the Queen B of the school and wants everyone to know it and respect it. She does not play fair and wants to see all her real and perceived enemies destroyed. The only people she respects are Gwyneth Paltrow and for the most part Brooke. However, she sometimes shows her suppressed empathic side and in those moments she becomes a true friend. Michael 'Sugar Daddy' Bernardino is Josh's towering best friend. He's cheerful, fun, acts like a rapper, takes the simple approach to life but also suffers from morbid obesity. He doesn't let this bother him though and uses his size to his advantage when playing football with Josh for the school's team. Mary Cherry is Nicole's larger than life, super rich, both genuinely quirky and amusingly psychotic, best friend and a Glamazon, although Nicole usually treats her like her sidekick. Jane McPherson is Sam's loving mom. Mike McQueen is Brooke's loving dad. The two meet and fall in love which eventually leads to marriage. Brooke and Sam can't accept this and even do their best to try to break them up but the girls eventually see the upside of becoming stepsisters, which doesn't stop them from occasionally stabbing each other in the back. Bobbi Glass is the gang's conservative, androgynous, charismatic, ingenious, commanding, tyrannical female biology, science and chemistry teacher and a true frienemy who always comes up with creative ways to put her students down but she also has a somewhat of an empathic side to her. She has several twin brothers and sisters. April Tuna is the school's scary unhinged psychotic nerdy ginger with a potent sex drive, but boys avoid her nonetheless. She leads the actual unpopular kids from the fringes of high school society and has her eye on Harrison. Emory Dick is Harrison's self-confident geeky friend who doesn't even try to fit in and likes it that way. He's always ready to help his friends and often comes up with silly creative plans that sometime actually make things worse. Poppita Fresh is the African American Glamazon and fits in perfectly with Nicole and Mary Cherry. George Austin is a smart, nice, hot, and caring African American jock, who falls for Sam and she reciprocates. Freddy Gong is the school's uneasy Asian American student, who has a strange masochistic rapport with Nicole. Principal Cecilia Hall is the school's caring blind principal who always tries to be just and help the students as well as protect the school's interests. Vice-Principal Calvin Krupps arrives later to help the school deal with conflicts between students. He's a very smart man, who doesn't mind playing games or confronting students openly if he believes that some good will come of it. Principal Hall eventually disappears from the show and he becomes the schools acting principal and he and Ms. Glass become buds. Godfrey is Ms. Glass' very strange on and off boyfriend who eventually becomes a priest. Cherry Cherry is Mary Cherry's super rich super charismatic no-nonsense mother and businesswoman who talks tough and acts accordingly. Her dream is to marry the real life actor Erik Estrada and when she wants something, she means business. The show's plots, arcs and subplots range from creative quirky over the top parodies to enhanced reality situations and typical high school drama. Due to unforeseen cancellation, the show ends on a huge cliffhanger.
- Genres
- Certificate
- TV-14
- Parents guide
Did you know
- TriviaThe producers didn't know the show was going to get cancelled. In fact, they claim that the WB executives told them to do cliffhangers, and they did, keeping in mind that they wouldn't be cancelled and had several storylines planned for a third season.
- GoofsThroughout out the series, it's clear that the actors/actresses portraying teenagers are actually in their 20s+. This is done as to not interfere with the schooling of real teenagers and to give the general viewing audience who are teenagers themselves someone they can look up to.
- Quotes
Samantha 'Sam' McPherson: You know what, Brooke? Cancel my subscription, I'm over your issues.
- Alternate versionsDue to licensing costs, some of the songs originally featured on the soundtrack of several episodes have been replaced by less expensive tracks (or no tracks at all) on the DVD release.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Visible: Out on Television: Breakthroughs (2020)
Top review
Orginal the first show to make us laugh and cry within five minutes.
Popular is best described as a dramedy, for its 43 episodes it both had its bittersweet moments ones that made you cry to it's repulsive laugh out loud black comedy moments which made us die with laughter. Popular dealt with the issue we all face in high school the divide between the popular people and the unpopular people and for once it shows us that those people arent losers as they were in other stereotypical teen dramas. The cast were first class, the leads were good choices as they did seem like representable teenage girls. Plus the fact that Sara rue (perharps one of the best actresses on the show) represented fat people like me without any difficulty because shewas so honest with the role. I've read on here that people think this season made fun at delicate issues. That is not true it did indeed show that they were done in a new light. not with the same softpading done with other shows. Honest Brutal and touching. Popular dealt with issues truthfully the way we have to in the world and in the world it shows us not everything is peachy. Plus we finally got funny moments admist the sadness which took away the depressing parts of the show. So for all the cast the top acting skills which i plan to continue enjoying i enjoyed after last moments of brooke and co and sam and co as it was good to see something other than stereotypical rubbish when popular broke the boundraries of our modern society
helpful•161
- Machine_of_god
- Jul 10, 2002
Details
- Runtime1 hour
- Color
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