Square Pegs

Overview and setting

Created by former Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts, the pilot introduces an eclectic group of eight freshmen on their first day at Weemawee High School. The series was much acclaimed by critics at the time for its realistic look at teenage life, reflecting a sensibility somewhat similar to the John Hughes teen comedies of later years.

Main characters

Patty Greene (Sarah Jessica Parker) is a budding young woman, not quite beautiful yet, but well cultured and intelligent. While clever and seemingly well-adjusted, she seems awkward and a social misfit (i.e. a square peg) when amongst the "popular" students. Patty hates her eyeglasses, but her father won't let her get contacts (because, he says, her eyes are "still growing").

Patty's very close friend Lauren Hutchinson (Amy Linker) struggles with her weight (the actress needed to wear padding for the role), has braces, wears unusual clothing, and also does not fit in with the popular crowd. However, much more so than Patty, Lauren constantly desires to be in with the in crowd, and the series' episodes revolve more or less around her dragging Patty into various schemes in attempts to make them more popular.

Lauren and Patty are surrounded by colorful supporting characters. Their friends Marshall Blechtman (John Femia) and Johnny "Slash" Ulasewicz (Merritt Butrick) are a pair of lovable geeks. Marshall is a motormouthed would-be comedian, while Johnny is a soft-spoken new wave fan (not punk... "a totally different head... totally.") Though seemingly off in his own reality most of the time, Johnny Slash states that he "[does not] do drugs and isn't a hippie" and on more than one occasion displays unexpected intuition and empathy, particularly regarding Marshall and the girls. The two help to maintain a school radio station. Several episodes indicate that Marshall is attracted to Lauren and Johnny to Patty.

The popular kids whom Patty and Lauren are usually trying to impress are Jennifer DiNuccio (Tracy Nelson), the quintessential buxom Valley girl, her boyfriend Vinnie Pasetta (Jon Caliri), a handsome greaser hood, and LaDonna Fredericks (Claudette Wells), Jennifer's friend and the sole minority character in the cast. Vinnie is cool but dense, using the "Why don't you make like a tree and get out of here?" line three years before the character Biff in 1985's Back to the Future. LaDonna is known for sassy remarks such as "Shoot, child, you think this place is crowded? You should have seen our living room when The Jeffersons went to Hawaii. Those were the three worst Sundays of my life."

The typical official high school activity culture is personified by preppy Muffy B. Tepperman (Jami Gertz) who is 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 has a memorably pompous, oratorical speaking style and begins many sentences with "It behooves me to tell you..." or an elongated "People...". Though perhaps even more socially inept ("I’m going to ignore that because, frankly, I don't get it"), Muffy's unawareness and/or lack of concern with her failure to fit in with the popular kids is in stark contrast to the motivation of the show's protagonists, and does not stop her from relentless involvement in peppy activities.

An ongoing gag throughout the series is Muffy's fundraising for Weemawee's adopted "little Guatemalan child," Rosarita. As the series progresses, Muffy's charitable intentions become more and more frivolous, asking the school community to provide the girl with her own apartment away from her parents, cable TV, a second pair of culottes, swimwear, a split-level duplex, and finally, her own cleaning lady.

This group of eight students, though clearly of varied academic standing, are always in the same classes.

The recurring staff members at the school are:

Series creator Anne Beatts appeared in two episodes as Miss Rezucha.

Home life of the students is rarely depicted, but Patty's father is prominently featured in the Christmas episode, played by Tony Dow, best known as the character Wally Cleaver in Leave It to Beaver.

Opening dialogue

Before the opening credits and theme song begin, every episode starts with the following dialogue appearing in a montage of stills from the school:

Lauren: Listen. 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.

Episode list

Theme song and other music

To accurately reflect high schoolers' tastes of the moment, new wave music was an important facet of the show's style. The show's opening and closing theme songs, "Square Pegs", and an untitled instrumental reminiscent of "Chopsticks" composed by Tom Scott, are performed by The Waitresses. In some episodes, "Chopsticks" is the opening theme and "Square Pegs" the closing theme, and in others these are reversed.

The music supervision for the show was handled by Stephen Elvis Smith, although he is credited as Program Coordinator, and later as Associate Producer. The 2008 DVD release of the episodes, which included interviews with the cast, was directed by Stephen Smith and produced by his company Abbey Entertainment.

Broadcast history

DVD releases

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in a 3-disc set on May 20, 2008, to coincide with the theatrical release of Sarah Jessica Parker's film Sex and the City: The Movie. On the DVDs, the episodes have been digitally remastered and include eight featurettes called "Weemawee Yearbook Memories." Each featurette focuses on a different cast member and has new interviews with the actors and creator Anne Beatts.

Also on the DVD are two minisodes from 1980s sitcoms The Facts of Life and Silver Spoons.

Because the two parts of "A Child's Christmas in Weemawee" appear together as one episode, the DVD packaging states that it includes 19 episodes rather than 20.

On August 27, 2013, it was announced that Mill Creek Entertainment had acquired the rights to various television series from the Sony Pictures library including Square Pegs. They re-released the complete series on DVD on October 21, 2014.