When I tell people that I rarely fall asleep before 1am on weeknights, I'm usually met with either screwfaces or rants about how unhealthy that is or how I need to stop watching bullshit television and get some rest. Both valid points, facts that I consider every night as I sit in bed flipping through cable looking a flick to captivate me long enough for my eyes to grow too-heavy. it's a terrible routine, but one I'm a bit too weak-minded to conquer.
The other night, at around 1:30am, I was met with the throwaway teen comedy Whatever It Takes (2000), which is one of the many lowest-common-denominator "nerdy teen wins over popular looker" flicks that hit in the wake of She's All That's success. Perhaps the one redeeming quality for those flicks was that virtually every one co-starred a young on-the-riser who'd go on to bigger, more credible things: Entourage's Adrian Grenier was in the god-awful Drive Me Crazy, for instance. In Whatever It Takes, James Franco (whose career is hotter than Paris Hilton's fire-crotch these days) played the douchebag jock, and he actually exuded "moronic masculinity" much better than the film deserved.
"Why would you put myself at the mercy of only five hours of sleep just to watch Whatever It Takes in its wholeness?," you may ask. Two excuses: 1) shamefully, I'm a fan. For my cheddar, it's actually the best of its kind, full of enough asinine sight gags, occasionally snappy dialogue, and young character actors with talent to win me over without much effort. But 2), and this brings me to the "essence" of this post, seeing it on the tube the other night reignited my once-potent eyes for Marla Sokoloff, who steams up the screen with her half smiles, gaze-into-us-baby eyes, and utterly underrated frame.
And now, the true point to all of this: where in the hell is Marla Sokoloff? Somebody get me a milk carton, because she's been missing in action for far too long.
To give a full picture of my longtime love for this chick, I have to confess one of my darkest secrets, one that I've foolishly shared with a select few over the years.....I'm a closet Full House junkie. Actually own one of the season sets on DVD, which I conveniently bury under stacks so it's left unseen by the naked eye. Will watch from start to finish whenever a rerun airs. Have been the butt of endless insults spewed by my parents and brother as a result. Couldn't give a fuck less that Blender magazine once rated it as the "gayest" show ever, or some shit like that. It was, and remains, the ultimate guilty pleasure.
Full House was a show I watched religiously back when it was first airing, so I was around the same age as Stephanie Tanner, grew up alongside her. Initially had a thing for her, Miss "Future Druggie" Jodie Sweetin, but that all evaporated the moment badass Gia, played by---you guessed it---Marla Sokoloff, stepped foot on the screen to coax Stephanie into doing drugs in the girl's bathroom. Love struck, and was thankfully allowed to grow as her character hung around, given an expanded presence as Stephanie's best friend in later seasons.
So when I first saw Sokoloff in Whatever It Takes back in 2000, you can imagine the joy. She'd grown up into one of the more intriguingly attractive actresses in the game, and I was pleased. Shit, I even tuned into a few episodes of The Practice just to check her in action, and I loathe hourlong lawyer shows. She dated James Franco for a short time, I recall, but other than that she kept a low profile, making it that much tougher to stay abreast. No surprise that she stayed out of the lights; her most recognizable facial expression was that disinterested, cold, you-gotta-work-for-this scowl.
Perhaps I should've watched more of The Practice, though, because that's pretty much the last notable thing she did, and that ish ended in 2004. So, again, I'll lather the question into pop culture: where the hell is Marla Sokoloff, and why isn't she working? It's most likely a voluntary decision to exile herself from the entertainment industry. Whatever the case, I demand answers.
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