Square Pegs

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Square Pegs was a CBS comedy television series that aired during the 1982-83 season. The series followed Patty Greene (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Lauren Hutchinson (Amy Linker), two awkward teenage girls desperate to fit in at Weemawee High School. Created by former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts, the series was much acclaimed by critics at the time for its realistic (if comic) look at teenage life, reflecting a sensibility somewhat similar to the John Hughes teen comedies of a few years later. The show lasted only one season (A TV Guide article dated June 9, 1984 blamed the show's failure on the inexperience of its staff, and drug use on the set), but it struck a chord with many Generation X viewers and many of its catchphrases and characters are still fondly remembered by fans.

Lauren and Patty were surrounded by colorful supporting characters. Their friends Marshall Blechtman (John Femia) and Johnny Slash (Merritt Butrick) were a pair of lovable geeks, with Marshall a motormouthed, would-be comedian and Johnny a soft-spoken punk and new wave fan who was constantly pronouncing things "a totally different head... totally." Patty and Lauren were forever hoping to impress the popular kids: Jennifer DiNuccio (Tracy Nelson) was the quintessential Valley Girl, her boyfriend Vinnie Pasetta (Jon Caliri) was a greaser hood and LaDonna Fredericks (Claudette Wells) was Jennifer's sassy friend. Muffy B. Tepperman (Jami Gertz) was the endlessly chipper chairperson of the Weemawee Pep Committee, head of the Morals Club, chairman of the Science Fair Committee and member of the Future Nurses of America. Muffy had a memorably pompous, oratorial speaking style and began many sentences with "It behooves us..." She remembered her 20th century presidents by using the phrase "Rough Toughs Eat Cool Jello!" (For Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson - it is pointed out in the episode that Kennedy doesn't begin with a "c", but Muffy brushes off this inconvenient fact.)

Every episode began with the following dialogue before the credits:

Lauren: "I've got this whole high school thing psyched out. It all breaks down into cliques." Patty: "Cliques?" Lauren: "Yeah, you know. Cliques. Little in-groups of different kids. All we have to do is click with the right clique, and we can finally have a social life that's worthy of us." Patty: "No way! Not even with cleavage." Lauren: "I tell you, this year we're going to be popular." Patty: "...Yeah?" Lauren: "Yeah. Even if it kills us."

Square Pegs debuted on CBS on September 27, 1982, in the 8 p.m. slot on Mondays, which was formerly held by M*A*S*H (which had moved to 9 PM.) In recent years, episodes have been rerun on the USA Network, Nickelodeon, TVLand, and most recently in HDTV on HDNet.

The show's opening and closing themes were perfomed by The Waitresses.

While Parker went on to become a celebrity and Gertz and Nelson have both had their successes, Butrick died in 1989 (of AIDS) and Linker, Femia, Caliri and Wells no longer act. Beatts has written for television occasionally in the years since and produced the first season of the collegiate Cosby Show spinoff, A Different World, but she has apparently been semi-retired since the 1990s.

The title derives from the intelligence test in which the test subject is given a board with a series of differently-shaped holes in it, and a collection of differently shaped wooden pegs, and asked to put the pegs into the appropriate holes. This test has given rise to the expression "a square peg in a round hole," to describe somebody who just doesn't fit their surroundings.