The Breakfast Club was unique because of how Hughes achieves his story goals: through long, drawn-out conversations that built to teary emotional realizations. The movie is basically a stage play unfolding in a series of close-ups, yet that didn’t stop it from becoming a big box-office hit.
Inspired a wave of more angsty films about growing up, including Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful (also written by Hughes), Stand by Me, For Keeps, Dead Poets Society, Say Anything, and School Ties. Even the more arty hits of the early ’90s—like Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused and, yes, Boyz n the Hood—feel loosely connected to the character-driven origins of The Breakfast Club. That approach eventually filtered into television, with high-school dramas, becoming the standard-bearer for emotionally mature teen storytelling.
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Effy is painfully aware of her subtly unfortunate reality, sinking into a depression that progressively worsens throughout her four seasons on the show. To the other characters, Effy seems somewhat like a “femme fatale”,she’s both a source of fascination and resentment while they do not understand Effy and her often erratic ways. During the first season, she has taken a vow of silence in a futile effort to be noticed, disturbed that her parents favor Tony. Nonetheless, Tony is the only person that Effy truly cares about, because Tony is the only person that understands her. In the third season, Effy becomes the central character, and her vices of drinking, doing drugs, partying, and having mindless sex as exemplified in the previous seasons become even more detrimental.“ She sinks even further into depression, uncharacteristically paying little attention to her appearance. A love triangle develops between Effy, Freddie McClair, and James Cook. While Effy truly loves Freddie, she clings to mindless engagements with Cook, afraid of emotional intimacy becoming tormented by the vulnerability that she feels in being in love. In the fourth season, Effy’s depression develops into full-blown psychosis. She tries to commit suicide more than once but is saved on each occasion. Ultimately, she is hospitalized for her mental issues and is abused by her psychiatrist who, almost falling in love with Effy himself. The fourth series ends with Effy laughing unaware that Freddie has been murdered.
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