So! In addition to learning that rollerskating is the key to solving all of life's problems through this project, we've also learned that high concept blog projects can become ever so slightly ponderous, debilitating, and hideous.
While hilarious painful and entirely appropriate for bored nights with friends (but only when you've just taken delivery of a tanker-sized quantity of vodka or gin), After School Specials do not lend themselves terribly well to recapping for a large audience that's largely never seen them. Half the fun of recaps is the familiarity with the source material. The other half comes from character development and ongoing plots, facilitating bizarre and asinine in-jokes, a recapping shorthand that develops over the course of the recaps, and maybe even sometimes the sort of joy and utility that one gets from making fun of something they truly enjoy?
I really enjoy nothing about these After School Specials. Even the title and credit design is jarringly painful.
But! The After School Specials are rife with tropes and memes and nonsensical ideas that have since percolated through our culture, launching countless media ventures with larger (though sometimes not by much) budgets, greater subtlety (again, sometimes not much greater), and camera technology that uses something with greater visual fidelity than a cassette tape.
I'm referring, of course, to The WB and its ilk. It's true that The WB wasn't the first, preceded by ABC with My So-Called Life and by FOX with a variety of teen programming that I haven't been particularly bothered to invest time in because I've never really understood the allure of Johnny Depp and why should I assault my eyes with the hideous fashions of the old Beverly Hills, 90210 when I can watch it all sparkly and new (and even with Shannen Doherty!) on The New CW? (As an aside, I find the progression of FOX to The WB/UPN to The CW (and now maybe even back to FOX again with Glee???) and the programming decisions absolutely fascinating.)
So we're going to change things up a little (after only one post! and also congratulate me for avoiding the pun that would have been so easy). Instead of epic, Tolstoyian recaps of things that nobody anywhere has cared about in thirty years, we're going to use them to explore issues (!) and tropes in media that is slightly more relevant (by which I mean it was relevant ten years ago) and cared for by a marginally greater number of people than 0. And also Glee, because damn those songs are catchy.
Plus, doesn't it look like these people are having more fun than anyone in any of those After School Specials? If only maybe because their waistbands don't rest under their armpits? (ALSO OMG I MISS THE TIME WHEN RED PLEATHER PANTS AND ANIME-INSPIRED HAIR WERE CULTURALLY ACCEPTABLE.)
