It’s only fitting that a TV movie from the mid-90s about the damaging effects of socioeconomic self-comparison among high school students should be similar in many respects to a limited series set in the mid-90s about two girls existing in very different social strata. The former, Death of a Cheerleader (also known as A Friend to Die For), is based on the true story of the murder of a popular, rich cheerleader from Orinda, California named Kirsten Costas. In the recently concluded Cruel Summer (appropriately titled, as the dramatic incidents in both this and Death of a Cheerleader take place during the irascibility-inducing summer season), that type of role is fulfilled by Kate Wallis (Olivia Holt). Also a popular girl with an “admirer from afar” in the form of Jeanette Turner (Chiara Aurelia), it is the latter girl who embodies Costas’ murderer, Bernadette Protti.
In the TV movie version of the story, however, the girls’ names are changed to Stacy Lockwood (played by Tori Spelling, for authentic 90s measure) and Angela Delvecchio (Kellie Martin). In this iteration, too, Angela covets the life Stacy has, the one she feels would make her high school experience what it was truly meant to be. She also has a similar dweebish aura to Jeanette, and a best friend, Jill Anderson (Margaret Langrick), who is slightly “cooler,” therefore doesn’t seem very impressed by the notion of getting closer to Stacy so that perhaps she can be deemed part of the in crowd as well.
After landing a job in the administration office on the first day, Angela gushes to Jill, “Guess who works there? Stacy Lockwood.” Unmoved, Jill returns, “Oh, the queen bee herself. Does that make you one of her drones?” In this regard, Jill is similar to Mallory (Harley Quinn Smith) in Cruel Summer, who finds Jeanette foolish and pathetic for lusting after Kate’s existence so blatantly all the time. It is an almost Single White Female-esque kind of lust (another fitting reference since the 90s are the name of the game for both of these pieces of pop culture) that can, at times, feel as though it’s bordering on the lesbianic (in Kate’s case, perhaps some foreshadowing for one of the final scenes of the show). Particularly in the first episode of the series, “Happy Birthday, Jeanette Turner,” when our still glasses-wearing and braces-sporting “heroine” spots Kate at the mall. Speaking to the socioeconomic inferiority complex of both narratives, Kate is wistfully examining purses she might buy. Jeanette, obviously aware she can’t purchase anything, still approaches the kiosk nonetheless in order to find a way to strike up a conversation with the girl she so wishes she could be.
Kate, while oblivious to Jeanette’s drooling, is still more receptive than most cliche popular girls would be. Nice enough to at least demonstrate that she knows who Jeanette is. In contrast to Kate, Stacy is an active puta, more in the spirit of Kate’s mother, Joy Wallis (Andrea Anders), but with even less tact about letting her claws out. The hypocrisy of a girl allowed to be the “queen bee” of a place like Santa Mira (a fictional town in the spirit of Skylin) is manifest when Angela attends a church service with her family, during which the priest (Eugene Roche) insists, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Angela–or Jeanette, for that matter–couldn’t agree less based on her current down-at-heel social status, almost entirely a direct result of not having the same kind of money as someone like Stacy’s or Kate’s family. Yet the priest continues, “We who live in Santa Mira have many blessings. Blessings of good family, of lovely homes, good jobs and the blessings of a beautiful community that is as close to paradise as any of us will ever see on this Earth.” Ah yes, but as Adam and Eve would attest, scratch the surface of “Paradise” and you’ll quickly find an eternal purgatory.
As the “who’s really telling the truth?” angle of Cruel Summer amplifies, its denouement in episode ten, “Hostile Witness,” finds Jeanette informing Kate of her lawsuit for defamation, “It was never about the money.” Kate demands, “Then what was it about?” Jeanette, even after everything that has happened and all the perspective supposedly gleaned, admits, “All I ever wanted was to just maybe feel what it was like to be like you. Not to actually be you, just… I never felt like I was popular… or beautiful… or enough. I just wanted to know what that felt like. To just once have the sun shining on me.” This is precisely what drives Angela her sophomore year. To do everything in her power to become popular, including trying out for the cheerleading squad (even in spite of how patently she doesn’t fit “that bill”).
But there will be so many embarrassing social setbacks for Angela to come, including with the Meadowlarks, a “charity group,” of sorts, with more focus on being an elite secret society/sorority than anything else. As the pressures mount, Angela’s sister, Terri (Christa Miller)–a confidante like Jeanette’s brother, Derek (Barrett Carnahan)–finds her in her room gazing sadly out the window. When she sees her sister she asks, “Do you ever wish you were someone else?” This “major Jeanette energy,” in terms of constantly yearning for a life like Stacy’s/Kate’s, is the type of thinking that can only lead to a macabre outcome. And, inevitably, does. In Angela’s scenario, murder. In Jeanette’s, allowing another human being to be held in captivity while she “took over her life.” Ahem, does it need to be said again? Single White Female.
When Terri nonchalantly responds to Angela’s body-swapping question, “Yeah, all the time. Why?,” Angela explains, “There’s this girl… Sometimes she’s not very nice but she’s so good at everything.” She continues on to say that she’s jealous of such effortless likability, as well as Stacy’s aptitude with “people things”–in other words, not being socially awkward. Her sister chimes in, “Look Angela, we’d all like to be someone else at some time or another. We are who we are. Just accept it and do the best with what God gave you.” This is the advice Jeanette’s father, Greg (Michael Landes), would likely give her as well. And Jeanette, too, might say something in the spirit of Angela’s response: “I can’t. I won’t. I wanna be better than just me.”
Soon after, Jill is forced to list off all of Angela’s admirable attributes after she gets rejected from yearbook, concluding with, “What more do you want?” The fiery look in Angela’s eye indicates she wants more–full-stop. More, more, more. That until she is “as good” as Stacy, what she has will never feel like enough, will never measure up. So it goes for Jeanette in wanting to emulate Kate. Going so far as to ominously hold on to her scrunchie for most of the summer, beating Kate’s abductor, Martin Harris (Blake Lee), to the punch on this particular form of creepiness.
As for Angela, getting rejected from yearbook was one thing, but the second blow comes as even more of a sting–regardless of how it should have been slightly expected: she didn’t make the cheerleading squad. With no one to turn to but “same old” Jill (who is infinitely nicer than Mallory), she gets drunk for the first time and goes on about how boys will probably never notice her. This, too, being another symptom of capitalistic brainwashing that women are subjected to from an early age. For if they had the money to buy the clothes and the makeup and all the other bullshit that made them appear as the girls in magazines, then surely boys would have to notice–the indoctrination dictates. Jill mocks, “Oh here we go again: ‘nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I’ll eat some worms.” Angela whinily persists, “I wonder what you have to do to be popular.” Ultimately, kill someone. Which seems to work well enough until she gets caught. Just like Jeanette tried her best to keep Kate out of the picture for as long as she could after discovering her presence in Martin’s basement in 1994, and then herself getting caught for that withholding of information.
The boiling point Angela reaches occurs after more venomous repudiation on Stacy’s part. When she attempts to “abduct” her in her own way to take her to a party, Stacy asks her to pull over into a church parking lot where things quickly escalate. “You’re so pretty and funny and confident. All I want is to be like you!” she shouts at Stacy. This after Stacy lights up a joint (and Angela grows accordingly prudish) and insists that the “weirdo” take her home, for she has no interest in going to a party where she wasn’t actually invited. As Angela keeps pleaing, her desperation repels Stacy all the more. “You know what? You are even weirder than I thought!” she yells as she runs away from the car. This smacks of Mallory telling Jeanette what a freak she is for continuing to break into Martin’s house. A twisted little hobby she adopts presumably for the “thrill” of potentially getting caught.
Imagining all the horrible things Stacy will say about her the next day at school, all the feelings of not belonging mount within Angela to drive her into the murderous rage that follows, using the “vegetable knife” her sister left in the car to do the deed. Crude, sure, but effective. Some would even say “Italian.”
Like Skylin, Santa Mira is rocked with the news of someone so popular having something so terrible happen to them. As the school year kicks off, Monica Whitley (Kathryn Morris), the other outsider of the school thanks to her goth aesthetic, ends up being the one to be mocked, goaded and threatened with violence for the crime that Angela committed. She takes on the hatred that Jeanette was subject to (and, as it turns out, rightfully so), as everyone assumes she was the only one with any possible motive–considering how regularly she got into arguments with Stacy after the latter made fun of her.
In the same way Jeanette reaps the benefits of Kate’s absence, suddenly Angela is nominated for Secretary Treasurer of the Larks when she delivers a speech in defense of keeping the group together. Something that occurs after another friend of Angela’s, Jaime (Marley Shelton), attempts to disband it as a way to honor Stacy. As a result of this slight elevation in “status,” things further pick up in her social life when a jock named Darren asks her to go to a party with him. And, with all these “positives,” it appears as though Angela might be perfectly capable of living with her sin, until the FBI gets involved. Having drawn up a profile about the murderer that notes her as being “…driven by fear of inadequacy and a desire for acceptance,” this, too, reeks of Jeanette’s description. Poor, hopelessly-on-the-fringe-no-matter-what Jeanette.
On her birthday in 1995, Jeanette spends her time watching a taped news report, rewinding the part where the newscaster says, “Friends and family of Kate Wallis describe her as a popular, bright and fun-loving girl.” An eerie moment on many levels, it’s almost as though she wishes he was saying it about her, yet knows she could never be described that way.
While Angela’s obsession with Stacy and being “like her” took a far more dangerous, irrevocable route, Jeanette’s antics–though never fully exposed in the end–lead to more lifelong psychological trauma for Kate. One supposes popular girls just have that effect on fellow basics who don’t get the same kind of attention, whether because they don’t have enough money or because they possess dull, lifeless brown hair. As Regina George from Mean Girls said of Janis Ian: “She was, like, weirdly obsessed with me.” In the end though, it all really boils down to what Janis asserts: “You think that everybody is in love with you when actually everybody hates you!” Jealousy and hate interweaving to create a fine line between “admiration.”
