‘Generation Catalano’ and Your Other Suggestions

This was exactly the thing that My So Called Life was trying to counter, but instead of lasting one season, lasted many seasons, and one of the critics actually said it was arguably one of the worst long running.

Shows on television.

I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Bannacarum.

And this is in retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us.

And that we just can't stop thinking about.

Today, we're delving into some of the great ideas that you, our listeners, have sent in. We've been asking for your suggestions, and these are some of the moments that you can't.

Stop thinking about.

Jess people sent in so many good ideas, and some of them were things we had thought of, but some of them weren't. And this first one we're going to talk about was something I didn't even know existed, which is a suggestion that we talk about Generation Catillano, which is based on a character in My So Called Life, a show you and I were both obsessed with.

Will you tell us about it?

Yeah?

So, Generation Catialana is based on Jordan Catalano. Snaps to Lisa, who sent this in, because I am still in love with Jordan Catalano.

Yes, me too, the fact that we come here, let's keep it like our secret.

He was played by Jared Letter, And to be clear, I'm not saying this about Jordan Letter.

I'm saying it about the character.

But my so called life was this show that ran for one season, tragically only one ragide and it was a high school drama.

It made Claire Dance famous.

She played the lead character who was also the narrator, Angela Chase, and Angela's love interest was Jordan Catalano.

The thought that I might be seeing Jordan Catalano in a few hours was like impossible to comprehend.

There was also her two best friends, Ricky and ray Yanne. This was a high school drama that didn't have the kind of sack grend earnestness or like after school special sense vibes that like Thousands Creek did. It was for emo types who wore flannel and docs and were like really in their feelings.

Yeah, so I wore flannel and docs, but I would never have described myself as emo. But when you say that, I feel like I should confess that I wrote really dark, lame poetry at this time of my life, so maybe I did qualify as EMO. But this concept that Lisa sent in, this concept of generation cattleano, I had not heard about this before.

What does it mean?

It basically describes where you and I meet, which is this generation between gen X and millennials. Like I'm a millennial, you are gen X, but we have this focal point, this reference between us.

Yes, because I never really felt quite gen X. So I love that there's this other mic, the other way.

Of saying cusp right, yeah, Like it's more fun.

And actually I feel like we should note that I mentioned the tragedy my circle.

Life only ran for one season.

And that was despite the best efforts of our producer, Lauren, who when she was a teenager wrote many letters to the creators.

Of that show to try to get it to continue.

And I remember that big like such a thing, like we were devastated, devastated.

I was devastated when it was canceled. It was kind of like Freaks and Geeks. Although I did not watch Freaks and Geeks when it was actually on the air, I watched it many years later, so I did not feel.

That tragedy when it was canceled after one year.

Right, But I remember being so upset when my Socles life was canceled.

I rewatched My Circled Life a fe years ago and it does hold up, like I cried.

Oh, it really brought me back.

Yeah.

It was a high school drama. It was like love interests, friends, parents. There was a coming out story with Ricky, but it just had so much raw emotion behind it, and it really brought me back to that age.

Oh God, I really should rewatch it too.

And I feel like this is a good time for me to tell you about my proudest fashion moment of all time, which is that when I was at ABC News, I interviewed Claire Danes for.

Something Oh you did.

Yeah.

I was wearing like a cool black suit.

Yeah, and I was wearing these baby blue sneakers with it, which wasn't like so common at that time, and she was like, I really like your sneakers.

Oh that's cool. Was this wait? This was later? This was like Homeland era.

Yeah, this was Homeland air.

This was like when I was working in news, so I must have already been in my thirties.

I feel like we should also note that in the show she had this like dark red hair kind of like long Bob, and I spent so long trying to get that hair color it would never really work. And my hair because I have dark brown hair, like everyone wanted that hair.

Yes, who is a battlefield for your heart?

So when brand Graft told me my hair was only the deck, I had to listen.

Well, she just was very cool, even though she wasn't. The character she was playing wasn't supposed to be popular or cool in the way the traditional.

Teen shows set that up.

So that's I think the other reason it felt very relatable because she was a cool person, but she wasn't necessarily cool in high school, which is not the same thing people.

Always say, how you should be yourself, Like yourself is this definite thing like a toaster or something.

She was saying the uncool thing. Yeah, that you were thinking on the inside, which is like why won't this guy acknowledge me? Like there's something here, we feel something.

And there was so.

Many just like tense, so rare, like longing stairs through the hallway, Oh my god. But then he'd like ignore her later, which anyone who's been in high school and had love interests remembers, Yes, but particularly maybe in this time and but she like says it out loud, Like there's a scene where she's like, why are you like this?

Why are you like this?

Like what like how you are?

I do want to say that Lisa is not the only person who suggested My So Called Life. Actually, my friend Lauren's husband has become addicted to the show. She said she got him addicted to it. And Lauren is an old friend of mine from ABC, and she sent me a text saying he thought we should do My So Called Life or Working Girl because we've mentioned that movie a few times and I think that's a really

So he just wanted to give a little pizza.

Yes, wanted to update on that a little piece of Long Island history.

I'm sure my Long Island relatives so ill appreciate that. Let's get to our next suggestion. This one came from again a number of people, Betsy Watson, Jamie Kramer, and Shannon Paris, thank you all for writing in. And this is that moment between Nancy Kerrigan and Tanya Harding.

The infamous clubbing heard around the world.

Yeah, Kerrigan was hit several times on the leg around the knee by what's being described as.

A club of some sort. So I definitely remember this.

This was a story I was very into and for people who haven't seen it, Eitania is.

Such a good movie about this.

But the background here is basically that in nineteen ninety four, Harding and Kerrigan were two of the best ice skaters in the world. Tanya Harding has delivered her challenge.

Will it be enough for the national title?

You'll find out when.

We come back, as Nancy Carragrin looks on.

And they had always been pitted against each other because Nancy Kerrigan was this kind of like sweet girl next door and Kanye Harding had this kind of like trashy, cheap vibe that people often commented on, which feels really nasty in retrospect.

Tanya has a more complicated life than a lot of these other women competing here.

I mean, she was poor, she didn't come from money. She had a hard upbringing. She couldn't afford the fancy literally uniforms, whereas Nancy Krigan was like this beautiful kind of upper crust type, doesn't she look all?

She looks angel Well.

That's actually one of the interesting things about the stories. It turns out they actually were raised in similar economic conditions. Like Nancy wasn't from that well off of family, but Nancy had a loving family who supported her, and Tanya's mother was by all accounts pretty abusive to Tanya.

Her upbringing was really unstable.

But the controversy itself was that they are about to compete against each other in the Olympics and Tanya Harding's husband at the time orchestrates an attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

In which somebody hits her leg with a crowbar.

Correct I don't know if it was with a crowbar, but basically she's coming off the ice where she's practicing. There are cameras all around, and this sky comes out of nowhere and hits her knee, trying to make it so that she can't compete some hard art black nick. And in the end she does compete, and she does really well and Tanya Harding does really badly.

Nancy Kerrigan skated the performance of her life.

Gathery Devitt wound up seventh, Tanya Harding eighth.

But the intention here was to derail her career, and because there were all these cameras around, it was captured and so it was this really huge national story. And then over time it came out that actually it was Tanya Harding's husband who orchestrated this. There was some question about whether or not on You herself had been involved in the attack, and eventually she did plead guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution for trying to cover up for him.

But to be clear, this happened in real side, Like do you remember watching as I may?

I remember I was like so excited. I love the ice skating in the Olympics.

I remember being with my parents and the scene of Nancy Kerrigan in all white on the ground holding her legs, crying and saying like my leg or.

My life is something?

Why that was played on repeat, on repeat and repeater.

It was like the cover of every sory.

I so distinctly remembered watching that and it being everywhere.

Yeah, and also just the unfolding of was Tanya involved, wasn't she like that whole kind of mystery, and then the unpeeling of it, I think just really captured the imagination for a long time and it became a classic comedian narrative which as you and I know, people love, which is it was really framed as good versus evil. Right, Nancy was good, Tanya Harding was evil, and you know, this effectively ended Tanya Harding's career. But then it got a revisiting with this movie E Tanya, and it really

There was not a lot of nuance.

When that revisitation occurred.

One of those layers that was peeled back, like you mentioned, is that turned out she was in this very abusive relationship with the ex husband, Jeff Glouley, who was then later found to have committed the crime or orchestrated the crime. And so that too was just a complexity that was not there in this sort of good evil narrative.

Speaking of feuds women who have been pitted against each other, I think the next one is a suggestion that we talk about Brandy versus Monica and The Boy's Mind. This came in via Ayisha Johnson and also Jenna McCollum.

Okay, so I remember this so much because I loved this song. This was like the jam of the of nineteen ninety eight. It was a song called the Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. It was a duet and at the time Brandy and Monica were both pretty popular and well respected singers in their own right. They

In doing additional research.

I thought that the feud began with the song because in the song, they're basically fighting over a boy.

Right, It's like that boy is mine.

No, he's mine, Yeah, he's mine. I'm sorry, you seem to be confused. He belongs to me. The boy is mine, you know, and on and on. But actually I read that in fact, the rumors of the feud had gotten started earlier, and so this song was originally written as a solo song. For Brandy, but she brought in Monica to do it a duet so they could.

Like squash their beef or their entry beef or whatever it was.

Weren't there rumors that the feud was kind of manufactured to get them both attention, But then eventually it became so real that there was like an incident at the Grammys.

Yeah, there was an incident took the Grammys, where like maybe they got into a fight of some kind, And so there was always this sense around this that was this real? Was this manufactured by the producers? And certainly like the tabloids who at that time were running the world didn't seem to care.

So the feud was everywhere.

The feud was everywhere. But one of the things I read in preparing for this was that it's kind of an enduring mystery, right, like they've never really addressed what caused the actual break between them, because then they really weren't friends for a really long time. And recently they did this versus battle in twenty twenty. They did it, Oh yeah, I remember, yeah, And they said during that that they hadn't spoken in eight years.

Believe it or not, is our first time in the same room for hell long eight I think eight or nine. That's long done. That's too long. It really did become a real thing, but we still don't really know why.

So actually this is a random side but Jessica Bennett, one of my doppelgangers, who was a writer for Vibe, I frequently get her Google alerts, and recently one of her Google alerts was an interview with Monica Wow, and I was like, oh my god, thank you.

This is so useful. Anyway, funny, small world.

But in this interview with her, Monica said, I wish people would stop putting the two of us against each other and stop attempting to compare who sings better, who looks better? Who I did the other one, because I never came into the space with the spirit of competition anyway. And I think that what we now kind of understand is that, yeah, like they were two really different people. Maybe they didn't totally get along, but like who cares.

Like that song was everywhere.

Yeah, it's an iconic every word me too, and I can never recite the words to songs. Like an ongoing joke about me with my friends is that I get every word wrong in a song, but I know all the words so the boys.

To be clear, we had, in fact, thought about doing a whole episode on this, but it's too expensive to license.

Yes, yes, I will say that there's obviously still a lot of interest in this because that Versus Battle I mentioned six million people tuned in it.

Liah Kamala Harris, Oh my god, yes, she was on it.

She appeared on the live stream with Monica and Brandy.

I thought that was hilarious.

And I just wanted to thank you ladies, just you, plans you stars you.

And did she like was she just a fan or did ye?

She was encouraging people to vote, so it was a way to get out the vote, but I think also she is a fan.

I love that.

Okay, So there's another show that I want to talk about that Claudia Juliana sent in and I just remember occasionally this show would be on TV. It must have not been on cable because we didn't have cable, and so like when there was nothing else on, I would watch this show and I always hated it so much. And that show is Seventh Heaven.

Yeah, Seventh Heaven, which was objectively speaking, a pretty terrible show. When Claudia Juliana sent this in, she said that we should talk about how nineties TV was very into life, lesson messaging, and very Christian forward, and I think that's true. It was really the era of after school specials and this show, which I never watched, Touch by an Angel was very popular. But I did watch Seventh Heaven, and

Do the right thing.

And this is the show that gave us Jessica Bielle.

Correct, it is the show that gave us Jessica bille And also, unfortunately, it is the show that gave us Stephen Collins, who played the minister Dad and turned out to be a pedophile.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

In twenty fourteen, he confessed to sexually abusing underage girls, one of whom was ten, after audio of him talking about it in a marriage counseling session leaked.

So he didn't even deny it.

He actually said he had sexually abused three underage girls, but denied being a pedophile.

So not a lot of people watch the show anymore. I think at that time it got pulled from rerams.

But I will say that seventh heeven was one of the first major hits for the w B, which people may not remember, but it was a teen channel that went from nineteen ninety five to two thousand and six when it became Dawson's Creek.

The c W. Yes, it gave us Dawson's Creek.

And probably so many other shows, right, so many other shows.

This was really like the teen cable channel, and then it merged with another channel to become the CW and then that became the teen channel.

Okay, And actually it's funny that you say this because this is sort of like where we started this conversation on my so called life, which was the kind of anti After School teen special.

Yes, this was exactly the thing that my so called life was trying to counter, but instead of lasting one season, lasted many seasons, and one of the critics actually said it was arguably one of the worst long running.

Shows on television.

Yeah, because it was just like Christian propaganda essentially.

Oh wow. I should also mention here that.

There's this guy who's been watching Seventh Even and doing recaps on TikTok that.

Are always going viral amazing and they're very funny.

Wait, do you know his name?

His name is Heartthrop So check out his tiktoks.

Oh my god. Okay, it's like heart Throb Heart, but heart Robert.

I'm rewatching Seventh Heaven. Please just listen to the plot this episode I just finished, where a white guy is a victim of racism. Simon finds a homeless girl on the street and he brings her home to keep her is a pet. This episode with a drunk ant is so good. Simon's friend has an older sister. Her name is Karen, and she isn't a gang white Christian problems of the nineties, So, you know, like.

All good things, TikTok has found a way to make Seventh Heaven funny. It's never intentionally funny, but it is very funny to look back on.

I wonder has TikTok discovered my so called life yet?

I don't know, but I feel like a lot of these TikTok recaps are for shows that are ridiculous, and I hope that they are not making fun of my so called life.

That's true.

Although do you remember I guess I forgot like ten years ago on Tumblr the clar Dance cry face was a big meme.

Oh really, I didn't.

Know about the clar Dance cry face. I remember the Kim Kardashian cry Yeah.

No, before Kim Kardashian to kryface, there's a very distinct clear Dance cry face. And I think that during the Homeland era this is going around, but it really started with Angela Chase. Oh you're feeling interested Google that there were so many good things that people sent in. We will probably do another episode devoted to them, but there were a few that we felt like needed honorable mention. Yes, so I'll start with the first one. This is from

I know you remember this.

I remember this, and I was watching it live, okay, and then this idea that he kind of like paraded her around and on People magazine and that party is like she was aprized, this is this is words.

Well, there was also very obviously some tie to Scientology, like yes, exactly gotten divorced from Nicole Kidman, and the rumor was that he had essentially had Scientology audition girlfriends for him.

So he went on.

Oprah to convince people that his love for Katie Holmes was true. But he really overdid it and literally stood up on her couch and started jumping up.

Because I was working in a newsroom then, and I don't think I watched it live, but it was played on repeat over and over. I mean that momentage like Freeze screaming him.

He was so out of control, he seemed unhinged.

So it really didn't do what he was hoping, which is quell rumors that it wasn't a real relationship. Another honorable mention we have here is from someone named Clerby. She was listening to our hig Yales episode and it made her think of the color red, the Lady in Red. She was curious when this color became the sexy color for women, and I think that's actually a really interesting topic.

Also, I'm thinking of that song Red Red Wine.

I mean, I guess there's a lot of red in a lot of places.

I mean, I love Lady in Red.

Anyway, but yeah.

Clarby notes that color theory, especially between men and women, could be a good topic for us, and I totally agree.

Rebecca Carroll, who's a friend of the podcast, also messaged me to ask if we'd considered Blue Lagoon.

And I've never seen Blue Lagoon?

Have you? I swear that I have seen Blue Lagoon, but now I can't. I'm like conflating it with all of those other type of movies.

Hold on, can we google it?

Yeah, Well, it's I think it's vaguely pornographic.

Maybe it was like that Sexy water movie.

Sexy Water Movie is a great way to put it. I think it's about two very young teenagers, like stranded on an island, but there's a lot of like nudity in sect.

Imagine a boy who didn't know he had become a man.

My heart's beating so fast.

Mine too.

It's okay, yes's rick.

Yeah, So that's definitely a topic we should probably explore.

It someh Okay, this is coming back to me now.

And I think Brookshields has since talked about this because she was so young and probably didn't have a lot of agency and how she was portrayed her.

Actually, if you haven't watched the Brickshields documentary, which I saw I went to the premiere of, that is a great look back on her career from her perspective, and just like how she could never win.

She was either always accused of.

Being too sexual or not sexual enough, and that is just like a wild thing where people would openly ask about her virginity when she would do interviews when she was still a teenager. It just feels crazy to look back on. So that's a recommendation if you haven't watched that.

And then maybe this is a good one to end on.

But this is our friend Rachel Sklar, who is Greece obsessed, and I think we actually probably have to come back to this and like do more on and maybe she needs to make a guest appearance. But she talks about Stephanie on the step ladder in Greece too specifically.

So funny.

I don't really remember Greece too that well. I've definitely seen it, but I do remember Greece. I was obsessed with Greece. I wasn't allowed to see it when it first came out because it was considered too racy for me, so of course I just made me want to see it, and I just love this movie.

There's so much to mine in it.

There's like Rizzo, who is just like one of the best characters ever, and that song she sings that there are worse things she could do than go with a boy or two, Oh my God. And then of course there's the Sandra d transformation that she goes from being like sort of the sweet innocent girl next door to being.

Like bubba ba boom.

So I really feel like Greece has so many themes we could mind.

I've now clicked on a link to Grease latter scene on TikTok and there's like hundreds of videos with women reenacting Steve Flatters stop Latters, so clearly we need to refresh our memories of what this scene actually is.

Hilarious so I think that's enough for today, but we're going to do more of these. We really appreciate you guys sending them in. We love hearing from you. So keep telling us about the moments that you think about and that impacted you, and we'll keep sharing them.

Susie, I'm really excited for our next episode. Can you tell us what's in store?

Yes, it's an interview with one of my personal heroes and amazing editor, Jane Pratt, who was founder of the iconic teen magazine Sassey.

People now talk a lot about that Kurt Cobain and Courtney love cover. Yes, I remember going into my meeting with the publisher and having to pitch Kurt Kobain as basically I've painted him to be like one of new kids on the block or Backstreet boys.

This is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.

Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode. Email us at in retropod at gmail dot com or find us on Instagram at in retropod.

If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram, which we may or may not delete.

You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist Fight Club and This Is Eighteen.

In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media. Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Sharan Atia is our researcher and associate producer.

Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stemp and Katrina Norbel. Our artwork is from Pentagram. Our mixing engineer is Amanda Rose Smith. Additional editing help from Mary Do. We are your hosts Susie Bannaccarum and Jessica Bennett.

We're also executive producers. For even more, check out in retropod dot com.

See you next week.