This Early ’80s Sarah Jessica Parker Sitcom Had the Perfect TV Bat Mitzvah

Muffy Tepperman's new wave bat mitzvah in "Square Pegs" is the blueprint.

“I can’t believe that Muffy is having a New Wave bat mitzvah.”

That’s how Sarah Jessica Parker’s character, Patty Greene, opens the ninth episode of “Square Pegs,” the short-lived sitcom created by one of the original “Saturday Night Live” writers, Anne Beatts. Patty and her best friend Lauren (Amy Linker) are high school freshmen constantly trying — and mostly failing — to fit in among their Weemawee High School cohort. They have two male buddies, comedy nerd Marshall (John Femia) and rocker Johnny Slash (Merritt Butrick), but the girls’ fruitless efforts at social climbing form the premise of the series, which is set in an unnamed suburb. Beatts, who died in 2021, grew up an hour outside New York City, and based the show on her own high school experience.

“Square Pegs” was before my time — it ran just 20 episodes over one season, in 1982-83, but the series was groundbreaking for its focus on teen girls’ perspectives, for its pop culture references and hip musical guests (the Waitresses provided the theme song and appeared in the premiere) and for its deliberately female-heavy writers’ room and directing credits (Jewish director Kim Friedman directed or co-directed half of the episodes). Sarah Jessica Parker was post-“Annie” on Broadway and pre-“Sex and the City,” but despite Patty’s nerd status, there are already shades of Carrie Bradshaw in her delivery of acerbic one-liners. Beatts’ SNL background informs the show’s plots and characters: Marshall does an impression of Gilda Radner’s iconic Roseanne Rosanadanna character, fellow SNL writers Rosie Shuster and Margaret Oberman co-wrote the “Muffy’s Bat Mitzvah” episode and in an effort to attract more male viewers, Bill Murray, at the height of his movie stardom, guest-starred as a cool substitute teacher.

But back to the bat mitzvah. Muffy Tepperman, played by Jewish actress Jami Gertz in her first TV role, often acts as a foil to Lauren and Patty. While they are desperate to “click with the right clique,” Muffy appears defiantly unconcerned with how others perceive her. She is the resident preppy dresser, in her monogrammed sweaters and baseball hats, and she speaks pompously to her fellow classmates, telling them “it would behoove you” to do whatever it is she wants them to do, which is usually donating to provide increasingly frivolous amenities for the Guatemalan child the school sponsors. Despite appearing mostly impervious to peer pressure, Muffy is deeply concerned with her bat mitzvah being a social event to remember, and as such, has booked the band Devo (“the coup of the century!” she crows) to perform.

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As outcasts, Patty and Lauren spend the majority of the episode angling for invites. The latest in a series of schemes the girls come up with to try to become popular, Lauren and Patty have already tried guilting Muffy with favors and gifts, to no avail. Finally, they convince Muffy that Johnny’s band, Open 48 Hours, is the perfect substitute when Devo cancels on her (to do SNL, of course), but even after saving the day, they’re still not invited until Marshall and Johnny demand their inclusion. But when Devo gets bumped from SNL, Muffy uninvites all four of them, relenting only when the band needs Johnny to run the soundboard. Patty and Lauren get to attend, though Muffy forbids them from eating the hot food or talking to anyone but each other.

The bat mitzvah depicted on “Square Pegs” is only the party; as Muffy explains, “The reason why I’m celebrating a year late is because Daddy made me go to China for a ‘growth experience,’ so we had the meaningful part there.” But she does describe its religious significance, telling a gentile classmate, “A bat mitzvah is when a young Jewish girl is called to the Torah before God and her immediate family to become a woman.” Muffy may not be the ideal Jewish ambassador, given her tyrannical qualities (she’s described by her own grandmother as an “adorable little fascist”), but Gertz is hilarious in the role, and we do get Jewish family representation in Muffy’s parents and grandmother, the latter of whom appears to spark a romantic connection with Johnny. The party menu includes blintzes (deemed “weird” by Jennifer, the most popular girl in school) and gefilte fish (“from a jar!” cool girl LaDonna laments). Gertz’s own father plays the rabbi, who compliments her “unusual” bat mitzvah theme.

And while “All in the Family” spinoff “Archie Bunker’s Place” aired a two-part bat mitzvah episode one year prior in 1981, bat mitzvah themed-content was hardly as prevalent on 1980s TV as it’s become in recent years. “Muffy’s Bat Mitzvah” was the series’ highest-rated episode, which means that teens across America may have had their first exposure to a bat mitzvah through the show. Beatts, who converted to Judaism after discovering a love of Jewish writers during her time at McGill University, included multiple Jewish characters and references throughout the series; in “Muffy’s Bat Mitzvah,” Marshall describes his own bar mitzvah the year prior.

Gertz has said of the series (in an interview included in its DVD extras): “I think it was ahead of its time. I think CBS just didn’t know what to do with us… It was a bunch of young, wild writers who didn’t fit the mold of what Hollywood was. They came from New York, they came from improv, they came from sketch comedy, and here they were going to be on primetime and write for teenagers. ‘Was it appropriate? Was it inappropriate?’… I’d like to think if it had been today it would have gotten a much longer run, but it’s something to be proud of.”

Gertz also went on to play the mother in “Keeping Up with the Steins,” a whole film about competitively extravagant bar mitzvah parties. So while “Muffy’s Bat Mitzvah” may not be the most well-known, religious, or educational bat mitzvah episode, it provided the blueprint for more recent depictions of the rite of passage as rife for comedy and drama centered around teens’ anxieties about their social status, as well as a place to highlight kickass music, and has earned its rightful place in the b-mitzvah pop culture canon.

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Late Take is a series on Hey Alma where we revisit Jewish pop culture of the past for no reason, other than the fact that we can’t stop thinking about it?? If you have a pitch for this column, please e-mail  with “Late Take” in the subject line.

Melissa Baumgart

Melissa Baumgart (she/her) writes and teaches writing to children and teens in New York City. She studied Radio/TV/Film and History at Northwestern University (where her favorite class was Cultural History of American Television) and has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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