Popular

Popular is an American teen comedy-drama television series that aired on The WB, created by Ryan Murphy and Gina Matthews, starring Leslie Bibb and Carly Pope as two teenage girls who reside on opposite ends of the popularity spectrum at their high school, but are forced to get along when their single parents meet on a cruise ship and get married. The show was produced by Touchstone Television and ran for two seasons on The WB from September 29, 1999, to May 18, 2001. Plot Brooke McQueen (Leslie Bibb) and Sam McPherson (Carly Pope), students at Jacqueline Kennedy High School, are polar opposites. Brooke is a popular cheerleader and Sam is an unpopular reporter for the school newspaper. Their respective groups are forced to socialize when Brooke's father and Sam's mother get engaged and the two girls have to share a house. The plot of the first season revolves around the girls' school life, rival groups of friends, mutual animosity and plan to separate their parents. At the end of the season, Sam finds Brooke's real mother and encourages her to come back to town, which breaks up the engagement and splits the new family apart. By the second season, Brooke and Sam realize that their parents were happy together, and therefore team up to reunite them, a move which results in the girls slowly becoming close friends, and even referring to each other as "family", though tensions rise when they both get involved with the same boy. Also, a reversal of fortunes takes place, with Brooke resigning from cheerleading to focus on her studies, and Sam experiencing a surge of sudden popularity at school. In the end of the second-season finale – which turned out to be the unexpected series finale when the show was cancelled – Brooke is run over by a drunk and angry Nicole Julian (Tammy Lynn Michaels).