Popular (1999)

The two girls who are seen in their fictional Jacqueline Kennedy High School as the leaders of two main opposing cliques, the popular one and the not-so-popular one, clash when their single parents meet, fall in love, and decide to get hitched. However, both the girls and their two cliques slowly grow together and become an unlikely group of friends with both typical and not-so-typical high-school and young-adult problems. Brooke McQueen is the captain of Glamazons, the school's cheerleading squad. She's considered smart, beautiful. and perfect. Privately, she's been dealing with self-image and body image issues ever since her estranged mother left her and her father. She also tries to fight the popular image people have of her. She wants to be good and often helps people instead of thinking only about herself but she also has a suppressed selfish side. Sam McPherson aims to have the opposite image of Brooke's. She's attracted to journalism and wants to be the voice of nonconformists. Despite this, she has several flaws like being too judgmental, underestimating people or ignoring the fact that she sometimes acts hypocritically, especially when it comes to love. Her anger partially stems from the trauma of losing her father to leukemia. Lily Esposito is the school's top environmental, animal, and human-rights activist and an all-around liberal; she has a fear of sexuality, which creates problems in her relationships with men. She's Sam's friend and so is Harrison John, the ultimate friend-zoned guyfriend, who's been friends with both Brooke and Sam for a long time and has a crush on Brooke ever since childhood but also feels certain attraction to Sam; these three friends make the ultimate love triangle. Carmen Ferrara is a slightly overweight girl, who tries to deal with her body issues by trying to accept and enjoy who she is. Despite being friends with Sam's group, her dream is to become one of the Glamazons and be friends with the popular girls, and she goes for it. Josh Ford is the school's hot popular quarterback, who at first seems like a walking jock stereotype but actually has a lot of depth and is a nice guy. He dates Brooke at first and they become the school's ultimate power couple, but he eventually decides to quit trying to be what other people want him to be and become his own man. Nicole Julian is the second in command of Glamazons but always wants more power and influence. She's assertive, smart, cynical, egotistical, Machiavellian, combative, and attractive and she knows it. She sees herself as the Queen Bee of the school and wants everyone to know and respect it. She does not play fair and wants to see all her real and perceived enemies destroyed. The only people she respects are Gwyneth Paltrow and for the most part Brooke. However, she sometimes shows her suppressed empathetic side, and in those moments she becomes a true friend. Michael 'Sugar Daddy' Bernardino is Josh's towering best friend. He's cheerful, fun, acts like a rapper, and takes the simple approach to life, but also suffers from morbid obesity. He doesn't let this bother him; he uses his size to his advantage when playing football with Josh for the school's team. Mary Cherry is Nicole's larger-than-life, super-rich, genuinely quirky, amusingly psychotic, best friend and a Glamazon, although Nicole usually treats her like her sidekick. Jane McPherson is Sam's loving mom. Mike McQueen is Brooke's loving dad. The two meet and fall in love, which eventually leads to marriage. Brooke and Sam can't accept this and even do their best to try to break them up but the girls eventually see the upside of becoming stepsisters, which doesn't stop them from occasionally stabbing each other in the back. Bobbi Glass is the gang's conservative, androgynous, charismatic, ingenious, commanding, tyrannical female science teacher and a true frenemy who always comes up with creative ways to put her students down but she also has a somewhat of an empathetic side to her. She has several twin brothers and sisters. April Tuna is the school's scary unhinged psychotic nerdy ginger with a potent sex drive, but boys avoid her nonetheless. She leads the actual unpopular kids from the fringes of high school society and has her eye on Harrison. Emory Dick is Harrison's self-confident geeky friend who doesn't even try to fit in and likes it that way. He's always ready to help his friends and often comes up with silly creative plans that sometime actually make things worse. Poppita Fresh is the African American Glamazon and fits in perfectly with Nicole and Mary Cherry. George Austin is a smart, nice, caring--and hot--African-American jock who falls for Sam, and she reciprocates. Freddy Gong is the school's uneasy Asian-American student, who has a strange masochistic rapport with Nicole. Principal Cecilia Hall is the school's caring blind principal who always tries to be just and help the students as well as protect the school's interests. Vice-Principal Calvin Krupps arrives later to help the school deal with conflicts between students. He's a very smart man, who doesn't mind playing games or confronting students openly if he believes that some good will come of it. Principal Hall eventually disappears from the show and he becomes the schools acting principal and he and Ms. Glass become buds. Godfrey is Ms. Glass' very strange on and off boyfriend who eventually becomes a priest. Cherry Cherry is Mary Cherry's super rich super charismatic no-nonsense mother and businesswoman who talks tough and acts accordingly. Her dream is to marry the real life actor Erik Estrada and when she wants something, she means business. The show's plots, arcs and subplots range from creative quirky over the top parodies to enhanced reality situations and typical high school drama. Unforeseen cancellation caused the show to end on a huge cliffhanger.