After I found this gem today, I decided to give a little blog love to a complex 15-year-old we all knew and loved: Angela Chase.

Anyone who knows me is probably surprised that this blog post hasn’t shown up earlier. I am lightweight obsessed with My So-Called Life, I’ll be the first to admit it. But it’s only because that show was the shit and so was its heroine. Angela was great because she was incredibly, discomfitingly real.

I loved how she was dorky and awkward and wore brown overalls with a black shirt–yet was still so inexplicably cool that every teenage girl in America wanted to be her. I loved how she was insecure and stumbly and passive-aggressive, yet still stuck to her guns (remember when she went to that teacher’s house and demanded why he abandoned his family? Remember when she told Jordan she wasn’t going to lose her V-card in some skeezy abandoned house?). I love that she was unconventional-looking and had zits and compared her small breasts to the huge ones in the locker room, yet was also beautiful and confident at random times and had that awesome shiny red hair. I loved how all her statements were questions (“When you call someone’s name? Like, kind of loud? And they don’t hear you? It makes you feel really lonely.”) I loved how she was completely insightful and utterly oblivious all at once. I just love her and always will.

Girldrive interviewee Ula kindly pointed me to this simply amazing video of Angela’s greatest hits from FourFour. Enjoy: