Me and 90s teen TV: A love story
How the lives of Buffy, Felicity and Dawson significantly impacted my own, chaperoning me through the cumbersome years of immigration-infused adolescence
I was saved by mid-to-late 90s teen TV dramas.
In fact, without the help of Angela, Jordan, Buffy, Felicity, Joey, Pacey, and the Salinger clan, I frankly do not feel I would have made it.
See, I come from a war-torn country, which prompted my parents to devise a drastic-times-call-for-drastic-measures survival enhancing plan B. This resulted in our immigration to Ontario, Canada in the early fall of 1994.
After being graciously put up by distant relatives for the first weeks of our arrival into our new, warless but ultimately even more terrifying new lives, my parents (both in their mid-30 at the time) decided to rent an apartment where we could be ‘on our own, by any means necessary.’ Independence was a huge evaluating factor in determining their self-worth at that time and I fully respect that line of thinking.
See, I come from a war-torn country, which prompted my parents to devise a drastic-times-call-for-drastic-measures survival enhancing plan B.
Of course, back then, me being 14 and getting equally ravaged by hormones as I was by my new reality, I couldn’t really comprehend why they would choose to move out of a lavender-scented cozy guest room with 300- thread-count bed sheets (rough estimate) in an idyllic neighbourhood to an apartment building next to an insane asylum, where the superintendent was a part-time drug dealer (which made total sense considering the surroundings) and literally nothing worked. Including my bedroom window, with direct view to said asylum, which had to be held up by industrial strength tape to, you know, drown out the ambiance.
But back to the TV shows.
Considering the whole, being an immigrant kid with parents who worked 16-hour days, feeling ripped out of the only reality you’d even known and forcefully thrust into an alternate universe while confused and terrified about 75% of the time, I feel that I was doing pretty OK. I was killing it with schoolwork, cultivated some decent friendships (with fellow aliens) and lived for two things and two things only: writing to and receiving letters from my friends back home every single day and having a show to watch and live through, every single night of the week.
The level of excitement before I was to delve into a new episode of ‘My so-called Life’ and ‘Party of Five’ and later ‘Buffy,’ ‘Felicity’ and ‘Dawson’s Creek’ has only been matched a few more times since in my life.
And yes, I have experienced the highest of highs, including giving birth.
It was the moment when I would swerve my wobbly chair (left by the dumpster by some kind people who didn’t have enough time for a garage sale, I presume) away from my study desk and positioned it about 20 inches away from the TV set we were gifted by our relatives that must have been at least two decades old. It had a chucky profile, an abominable shade of brown exterior and it would sometimes produce a shooshing tone that I would tackle with a speedy yet firm tap to its side. As unappealing and hard to work with, that unattractive brown donation was this needy immigrant girl’s bestest friend on Earth. It gave me what no other person or object could. The ultimate escape vestibule that transported me into a safe space where my feelings were not only validated but defined and celebrated.
As unappealing and hard to work with, that unattractive brown donation was this needy immigrant girl’s bestest friend on Earth.
I think about my 15-year-old, slightly overweight and grossly impressionable self sometimes and picture myself sitting cross-legged on that chair, in my stuffy, 100-square foot, mental hospital-facing room, devouring each new storyline with my entire being.
Bawling my eyes out with Bailey, Julia, Claudia, and Charlie Salinger, grasping to their unimaginable pain as it felt like my own. The devastation of the first and most consequential heartbreak was the Jordan Catalano/Angela Chase saga. The heartbreak was multiplied by about a thousand when ABC cancelled the show after one season, digging that dagger in what all their might.
Beginning to wrap my mind around what true passion may feel like, while watching Buffy and Angel tackle the chains of their forbidden attraction. True love? Pacey and Joey firmly planted that seed into my psyche. And then there was the Felicity-Ben-Joel triangle that I felt imprinted onto my soul and still have not been able to recover from entirely to this day. I will likely never be able to choose from a ‘Ben’ or a ‘Noel’ and eternally yearn for some kind of perfect concoction of those two.
I mean, the list honestly goes on, but I feel you must get the idea.
As the 1990s came to an end, my adolescence dispersed alongside the TV shows that held me together. One by one, each series finale I watched presented a new personal victory, in a sense. It completed a series of sanity checks and neatly wrapped up a box of feelings I successfully acknowledged and even more successfully digested. To use a modern term, I felt seen by these fictional characters and their lives, struggles and victories. Yes, granted, a visit to a mental health professional was in order here, but hey – it was the nineties and we all know that wasn’t the norm back then.
I was listened to, heard and, most importantly, healed.
For a while, at least.
Excuse me while I list my Angela Chase winners that got me through:
"It was the perfect moment for him to kiss me. For him to anything me."
"People alway say you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster or something. Like you can know what it is, even."
"Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we hate ourselves."
"There's something about Sunday night that really makes you want to kill yourself."
There are many Pacey Witter ones, but this one, THIS ONE:
"You know everything about me, huh? You know how I got this scar on my cheek? Or the real reason why my father hates me? OR WHY I RIDE THE FINE LINE BETWEEN INSECURITY AND SUPREME-SELF CONFIDENCE?"
El fin, my friend.