Marry Boff Kill: The Ultimate 90s Hunk-Off

(Note: Originally I wanted to call this post the Ultimate 90s Spunk-Off, mainly because I haven't called a guy a spunk in years, but the phrase 'spunk-off' actually sounds vaguely dirty, and not in a good way. In a teenage boy way. Ugh, those teenage boys.)

So we've all played Marry Boff Kill. The rules are so simple, I'm pretty sure there are monkeys out there playing it and actually making pretty rational decisions. You pick who you want to marry, who you want to boff, and who you want to kill. It's incredibly addictive, and soon you'll be Marry Boff Killing people on the street. (Hopefully not literally.)

Today's round of Marry Boff Kill will involve me pitting hunky (spunky?) 90s heart-throbs against one another in the ultimate game of love, lust and, uh, brutal death. Feel free to play along yourself -- everyone has a different idea on who to marry, boff or kill. It's what separates us from the animals. Except, of course, the monkeys.

Marry: Steve Sanders. Oh, the adventures we'd have as a married couple! We'd cruise around in the 'Vette, exchanging eggs and avoiding crafty Palm Springs trannies. And we would throw the best dinner parties.
Boff: Brandon. It was a toss-up between him and Dylan, but Brandon won out in the end because I find him slightly better looking. As long as he doesn't ruin the mood by talking about politics and how much more his parents loved him compared to Brenda.
Kill: Silver. Like you didn't see that one coming.

Marry: Jordan Catalano. Admittedly, I would eventually grow weary of his aloofness and insensitivity, but the 'boff' option means that I'd only get to do him once. And for someone who looks like Jordan Catalano, the only way to boff him is repeatedly. Repeatedly and often. So marriage it is.
Boff: Rickie Vasquez. Yeah, I'm not really sure how it'd work, either, considering that he's an out and proud friend of Dorothy. Maybe he's having a bad day and feeling really bad about himself, or maybe we're trapped in a snow cave and need to create some body heat, I don't know. I really haven't thought this through.
Kill: Brian Krakow. You know you're going bad when I'd rather boff a gay guy with absolutely zero sexual interest in me than you, Brian Krakow. Your death will be painful.

Marry: Pacey. Because Jesus, you guys, it's Pacey! Pacey's awesome! He's funny, he's handsome, he has a freakin' boat and his own convention! Plus, my fantasy brother-in-law could get me out of speeding tickets.
Boff: Jen. Don't look at me like that! I couldn't very well say Jack, now could I? I've already filled up my gay boff quota with ol' Rickie up there. Who else am I going to boff? Dawson?
Kill: Dawson. Hopefully he'll make his crying face.

This one.

Marry: Spike. Sure, he's evil a lot of the time, but who isn't in Sunnydale? We'd have to fix up the crypt a little, but nothing a trip to Ikea couldn't rectify. Plus, I wouldn't have to cook for him.
Boff: Angel. Actually, that could end badly...
Kill: Xander. I feel like he'd think he was funnier than me. That just really doesn't work. Plus, he had the syph, so I'm not letting him anywhere near my lady business.

Marry: Nick. Definitely a toss-up between him and Daniel, but I feel like Nick's more the marrying type. As long as we keep the non-alcoholic beer away from him.
Boff: Daniel. Preferrably on Lindsay Weir's bed while her teddies watched from the floor.
Kill: Ken. I really, really want to kill Sam, but I thought I'd just stick with the freaks on this one. PS: This is one of the only times I'd ever choose to kill Seth Rogen. I have an inexplicable crush on him, but Nick and Daniel are just too damn delicious. Them's the breaks, Rogen.

Marry: Brad. Tall, blonde, cool -- dude has it all. As long as he doesn't have that awful Backstreet-Boys-meets-a-buzzcut hair he used to have going on. That's a dealbreaker, ladies.
Boff: Randy. He's kind of a smarmy dick, though, which is why I went for the boff and not the marry.
Kill: Mark. I almost put him down as a sympathy boff, simply because nobody liked Mark and I feel sorry for the guy, but I just couldn't pass up an opportunity to fantasy lay JTT.

Marry: Uncle Jesse. Oh God, Uncle Jesse. Mullet, non-mullet, family man, non-family man -- any which way, I would marry him. Just as long as we didn't have to live in the Tanner's attic. Have mercy!
Boff: Steve. I was looking for a way out of boffing Danny Tanner, and Steve seems like a sensible option. I think he'd really appreciate it, too, considering DJ wouldn't let him touch any part of her body that didn't have fingers.
Kill: Uncle Joey. By stabbing. With a rusty knife. Repeatedly. In the face. And maybe a couple of times in the junk. And I might also let Comet eat his remains while he was still alive, a la Mickey Rourke in Sin City.

Marry: Slater. Okay, so he's kind of an a-hole, kind of a mysogynist. But he's also kind of totally ripped, and if Jessie "I'm So Excited" Spano can handle him, I'm sure I could.
Boff: Zach. Yes, he's an absolute dreamboat, but I'd get too sick of his bullshit to be married to him for any lengthy period of time.
Kill: Screech. Because seriously, fucker's had it coming for years.

Your turn!! Go forth and Marry Boff Kill 'til your heart's content!

An Open Letter To Jordan Catalano

Dear Jordan Catalano,

You and I don't know each other very well, but I feel compelled to write to you anyway. See, My So-Called Life was one of those TV shows that my mother didn't want me watching when it originally aired, so I had to be stealth. I don't know why I kept tuning in week after week, since I was really quite young and understood approximately 5% of what was happening in any given scene. But you see, Jordan Catalano, things have changed since the nineties. Things have happened. More specifically, DVDs have happened. Now, thanks to this modern wonder, and also my friendly local librarians who purchased it for their library and saved me like forty bucks, you and I are finally getting a second chance, the second chance I always knew we deserved.

This is you, in case you've forgotten.

There are so many things I want to say to you, Jordan Catalano. (There are actually more things I want to do to you, but you're only like seventeen or something, right? So that's gross, right? I'm thinking I'd better keep this post clean and, more importantly, legal.) You are a very strange soul. You do the weirdest crap, like, all the time. It's no wonder Angela Chase is literally crazy about you. And not in the cute, "Aw, I'm so crazy about you, Jordan Catalano" kind of way, either. There are times when I feel like she's literally a half step away from flying over the cuckoo's nest because of the things you do.

You're a man of few words, Jordan Catalano, that's for sure. I like to think you actually possess a deep fountain of emotion under all that teen angst, but your communication skills need a little work. And surely you're not as dumb as you seem, but trust me, Jordan Catalano, you do seem dumb sometimes. I mean, like when you told Angela that you wanted to make snow for a living. Do you really think that's a thing, or have you just seen Edward Scissorhands too many times? If you take Winona Ryder movies that seriously, I fear that the never-made second season of MSCL would've had you and Christian Slater running around trying to knock off all the Heathers.

Stripey you!

There are some people out there (mainly mentally-unstable Brian Krakow fans) who think you're mean, that you don't deserve the wonderful Angela Chase. And admittedly, Jordan Catalano, there are times when I've thought something similar, the most obvious being:

-- The time Angela was upset over a rumour that you two had sex, and your extremely thoughtful way of dealing with the situation was to tell her that since everyone's talking about it, maybe you guys should just do it anyway. Like really, Jordan Catalano, you were going so well with the whole "I'd never screw you and then tell everyone about it" speech and then, bam! Ruined.

-- When you made out with Angela in the boiler room til your heart's content, then refused to be seen in public with her. Angela Chase is hot, okay, Jordan Catalano? Way Hotter than Cynthia Hardgrove and her semi-precious pimple. No amount of Shakespeare appreciation and hallway hand-holding is going to make up for that.

-- That night you were supposed to meet her parents, and totally just didn't show. Not even a phone call or anything. Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is for a fifteen-year-old girl, to get all excited about a boy coming over to the point where she actually told her parents, and then you stand her up? I was so mad at you, Jordan Catalano. Wait, not mad. More like disappointed. Disappointed and mad.

-- And oh yeah, that time YOU HAD SEX WITH RAYANNE GRAFF IN THE BACKSEAT OF YOUR CAR. What were you thinking, Jordan Catalano, what? Getting drunk with Rayanne, alone, in a parking lot? How did that sound like a good idea to you? And in your car, of all places? That car was a metaphor for yours and Angela's relationship! Of all the places to do it, you go and defile poor old Red with your manwhoreness? Not cool, Jordan Catalano. Not. Cool.

Pictured: Not cool.

Okay, so reading the above points might point to the fact that the Krakow lovers are right, but let's look at it this way -- you're a teenage boy. It's actually quite refreshing to see a teenage boy doing dumb teenage boy stuff. Sometimes I feel like teen show writers have never actually met a seventeen-year-old male in their lives, but you? You're terrible at expressing yourself. You're self-involved. You didn't go to the Dawson Leery school of Vocabulary No Teenage Boy Should Ever Know. Plus, have you met Brian Krakow? He's not exactly the catch of the year. He's exactly as socially stunted and clueless about women as you are, Jordan Catalano, only he gets to hide behind his "awkward nerd" persona all the time, like it's an excuse to be unnecessarily cruel to Delia Fisher or something.

Plus, let's look at some of the heart-throb characters of today's teen shows for a second, shall we? I've compiled a list of swoon-worthy sex gods from the noughties (and one from your era, the nineties) for the sole purpose of proving that you're really not so bad.


Noah Puckerman (Glee) -- had sex with, and subsequently knocked up, his best friend's girlfriend; proclaimed to love said best friend's girlfriend while simultaneously having sex with pretty much anything that moves; throws nerds into dumpsters; generally acts like a jerk-ass prick to everyone, all the time.


Logan Echolls (Veronica Mars) -- treated Veronica like dirt for approximately 74% of the show's run; slept with his best friend's stepmother and, later, his best friend's only long-term girlfriend; set fire to a hotel in Mexico and promptly ran away as fast as he could; started a relationship with the daughter of the witness in his murder trial in an attempt to blackmail him into not testifying.


Dylan McKay (Beverly Hills, 90210) -- was always kind-of a violent asshole to begin with; fell in love with his girlfriend's best friend while she was in France; acted like a put-out douchebag when she got mad at him for it; slept with a girl he knew his (and my) buddy Steve Sanders was interested in; invited his best friend's girlfriend to go on a trip around the world with him in an attempt to prove that they're soulmates; started a relationship with a girl simply to get close enough to her father to kill him. Like, that's not code for anything. I mean seriously kill him with a gun. Goddamn, Dylan's a tool.


So you see, Jordan Catalano, you're not so bad. Even when you do the worst kind of teen shit, you always seem to make up for it somehow. Like before, when I told you that no amount of hallway hand-holding would make up for publicly dissing Angela? Well, I lied a little. That moment was wonderful. And when you helped out poor, homeless Rickie? Sure, whether taking him to a seedy abandoned warehouse was the best idea is debatable, but it's the thought that counts, I suppose. And that scene in the final episode when you're talking to Angela's mother? Maybe it's just because my mother screwed me up so badly, but that's like the MSCL crowning moment of awesome for me. It was really important to me that she like you. I know it's a sad state of affairs when I need a fictional mother to approve of a fictional boyfriend who isn't even mine, but there you go. See, I may not be a teen, but I'm still angsty.

You really like plaid, don't you, Jordan Catalano?

The fact is, Jordan Catalano, you are the most appealing un-appealing teenager ever. Nobody can ever quite work out what you're thinking, but that in itself basically gives us all carte blanche to believe that you're thinking whatever we want you to be thinking. You may be a slow learner, but with Brian Krakow on your side, surely it won't be long 'till you fully understand that Metamorphosis can never be a true story. I think what I'm trying to say is that I love you, Jordan Catalano. More than Dylan McKay, slightly more than Logan Echolls, maybe not as much as Noah Puckerman. (Don't be offended. His 'Sweet Caroline' number was ever so slightly more panty-dropping than your 'I Wanna Be Sedated', and that song about your car was forever ruined when you banged Rayanne Graff in the backseat.) The fact that we have found each other again after all these years is, like, serendipity or some new-agey crap. And this time, Jordan Catalano, I won't ever let you go.


Faithfully yours,

Lorelai.


A Note To Anyone Reading Who Isn't Jordan Catalano: I'll have a My So-Called Life recap up for you this week, as soon as I work out which of the nineteen fantastic episodes I want to do. Suggestions are welcome.