What I love about my two favorite high-school-is-hell TV shows are two very different things. We all know about the joy of Buffy—the very literal metaphor of the high school built on a mouth of hell, where all the wonky doings of the demony undead correspond to something real and tangible in lives:

• the unpopular girl everyone ignores becomes, after a time, the invisible girl, who seizes the opportunity to give her tormentors a taste of their own medicine;
• the fear of the boyfriend turning into an asshole after you sleep with him takes on the new face of evil as he, instead of not calling, stalks, harasses, and kills your friends before attempting to end the world;
• the torture of sharing a dorm room with another person becomes the literal roommate from hell, who not only listens to Cher albums on repeat—her toenails continue to grow after they’ve been cut!

Popular inverts the metaphor by positioning real-life experiences in the fantasy of high school. In the Popular universe, real people exist to represent archetypes, not vice versa, and dramatic events from the world of adults are transposed into the hyper-emotional realm of the adolescent.

In the Homecoming Queen episode, Popular lampoons American politics by factionizing the four candidates (three popular, one unpopular) into (campy) camps.

Texan firecracker Mary Cherry uses the wealth of her mother, Cherry Cherry (played uproariously by Delta Burke) to bribe her way to the crown while literally spangling herself in red, white, and blue sequined dresses to extoll her Americanicity.

Token minority Popita Fresh, initially too lacking in confidence to campaign, is recruited by a Farrahkan-esque Svengali into “representing the minority voice,” as it were, and confronting her popular caste-mates as an opponent.

Dowdy, chunky Carmen Ferrera, nominated as a cruel joke by a popular girl, tries going the natural route, minimal campaigning, until it comes out that her campaign manager may have instituted a smear campaign against an opponent—featuring a picture of the poor girl in full-on frumpy sick mode.

Glamor-girl and American-sweetheart Brooke McQueen tries to take the high road, supporting a “positive-campaigning” platform, but ultimately, during an interview by the Chess Club, the “New Hampshire of Campus Organizations,” she buckles when asked to name the people sitting in front of her, with whom she’s taken classes for 10 years.

The spirit of Popular offers the conventions of the American high school as a lens for critiquing our adult culture. Buffy uses metaphors from the adult realm to comment on youth. Both shows provide something a little more substantial than commonly found on television.