mscl's finest-ish moment

Spurred on by the brand-new My So-Called Podcast, we've been watching My So-Called Life. It's that show that kind-of Started The 90s for many people. Only one season, in 94–95, but it galvanized a generation, and gave voice to what oft was thought but never so well expressed about American teenagehood.

Like so many works that have a devoted cult following, it's a powerful work of the second order. There are so many bad moments. But there are soooo many good moments, and a few miraculous ones, that the show is forgiven.

The dreamy-but-unavailable (and-kind-of-a-loser) Jordan Catalano (who was recently referenced as a teen crush by Peggy Olson in The Handmaid's Tale) has finally paid attention to Angela Chase. They find themselves in a car together. He leans in for a kiss, which she's been fantasizing about for days, but is such a big gropy jerk about it that she spurns him. Her odd response: "I was talking." He then lunges again, and she admirably lets him have it, and gets out of the car. In 2018, when we're awakening to women's experiences, it's even worse than in 1994. But it was unacceptable then.

A few weeks later, they find themselves in his car again, and this time they've had some time to connect and he's gotten to know her a bit. There's that awful (and hilarious) moment when words fail but keep coming, and then they kiss. This time it's everything a 15-year-old girl could want. When she gets out and goes to her door, after Jordan's car pulls away, Angela does an impromptu courtly dance. It's MSCL on all cylinders: great writing, superb cinematography, perfect music, a great actress (who's obviously trained) going into fearless territory. It all coalesces into one of the most perfect scenes in television.

The musical score here is brilliant: during the kiss, we hear no music at all. An incredible restraint, because a lesser team would have put in a big romantic swell. But the kiss stays musicless and fragile.

Then Jordan apologizes for interrupting (calling back his attack on her in the earlier episode: remember that odd "I was talking"), and when she gets it and says "Thanks," the music starts — the show's main theme, played on acoustic guitar, with some sparse twinkly synth and conga.

As she gets out of the car, the music gives us a dominant chord (that is, the chord that's often next-to-last, 'asking' for resolution), but then instead of just a plain resolution, it whooshes into a new thing.

Now there's no percussion beating the time. The guitar has been replaced by bell-like synth sounds that recall the ballerina/princess/music boxes of girlhood. (Note that the music and instrumentation call back that first car scene as well, so that their second kiss, romantic and respectful, redeems the first.) All this as the camera literally leaves the ground and floats in the air.

Angela's moment of entry into the Real Life of young womanhood is expressed in the musical language of fairy tale.

Then, the final touch: the main melody stays unresolved, on what's called a suspension. If you listen and try to sing along with what would come next, you'd go down a note and it would feel like a 'the end' moment. But nope, it stays in that unresolved place and leaves you there.

It's masterful. It socks me every time.

The more I think about it, the more I think that this scene utilizes two senses of time really well: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clock-time (as in chrono-); Kairos is perfect-moment-time. Chronos is quantity and kairos is quality.

So: the conversation stutters, slows, stops, and the kiss — unaccompanied by a musical score — exists in timelessness.

Then, when Jordan and Angela exchange words that, possibly for the first time, indicate real mutual regard as humans, chronos begins. The hand drums begin literally beating out time.

Then, when she's alone again and reflecting on it, free to be herself with no one watching, chronos stops again — no drums — and kairos enters, in the dreamy music of fable and fantasy.