T E L E V I S I O N Dawson's Creek The WB Tuesday 9:00 p.m. PST My So-Called Life MTV Monday through Friday 7:00 p.m. PST - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK The Man in the Iron Mask Leonardo DiCaprio is king of the beasts Love and Death on Long Island A snobby novelist falls for a teen heartthrob John Sayles An interview with the director of "Men With Guns" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK The Big Lebowski The Coen brothers break out of the irony ghetto Twilight Older actors set aglow in Benton's small noir The Gingerbread Man Robert Altman goes Southern Gothic with his potent new thriller - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - Blue Glow DAILY TV PICKS - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE ARCHIVES MOVIES TELEVISION INTERVIEWS FEATURES

BY JOYCE MILLMAN | I miss Angela Chase. I think about her entirely too much. I guess I should get over it -- I mean, it's been three years since ABC canceled "My So-Called Life." But the show just sticks with me. And I'm not the only one. There are a lot of "MSCL" orphans out there pondering the MTV reruns for the fourth, fifth, sixth time, looking for clues to how it all would've turned out if ABC hadn't pulled the plug after a mere 19 episodes. All we've got is that last image of Angela, the smart girl who wants to be cool, driving off with dreamy, barely literate Jordan Catalano, while poor Brian Krakow, the brainy geek next door who really loves her, watches forlornly from astride his bicycle. What happens next? Does Angela sleep with Jordan in the back seat, even though he betrayed her with her friend Rayanne, and even though she knows that Brian ghost-wrote Jordan's love letters to her? Does Brian bicycle furiously over to lover's lane and fling himself across the windshield, like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate," and carry Angela off on his handlebars? I guess I can't get "My So Called Life" out of my head because even though I'm old enough to be Angela Chase's mother, Patti, I didn't really identify with her (well, sometimes I did, but I'm not telling you which episodes), I identified with Angela. I'm not saying that everything that happened to her happened to me when I was 15; what I mean is, there's a little Angela in every woman. And a little of the messed-up Rayanne, and the goody-goody Sharon, and the chubby, bubbly Delia, the girl who had a crush on Rickie even though he was gay. (I can't speak for the guys who are hooked on "MSCL," but I bet they've bonded with Jordan and Brian and Rickie in the same way.) "My So-Called Life" was the most soulful, realistic, wise and empathetic show about high school ever. Every ill-fated crush, every stolen kiss, every bad decision, every emotional turf war -- they were in there. OK, there were a couple of lame episodes (the '50s flashback, the one with Juliana Hatfield as an angel), but mostly, "My So-Called Life" was a gift. Watching it was like being ambushed by your secret self, the person you were before you became you. And I guess it's so hard to let it go because you want to see these characters make your mistakes and your choices and come out OK. "My So-Called Life" has been on my mind even more than usual lately because of "Dawson's Creek," The WB's teen drama that some misguided critics are calling things like "the new 'My So-Called Life'" and "the best new show of the season." Trust me -- it's neither. "Dawson's Creek" doesn't have the startling "Hey, that's me!" emotional resonance of "MSCL." It doesn't even have the hilariously campy cluelessness of "90210." It's pure product, as glossy and paper-thin as a teen idol pinup. Fittingly, after just a handful of episodes, "Dawson's Creek" has become the No. 1 show with teens (particularly with girls). But, thanks to a deep-pocketed publicity campaign, "Dawson's Creek" is getting noticed far beyond the Jane/16 magazine axis, mainly because of the sudden cachet of the show's creator, Kevin Williamson, who wrote the teen slasher-flick hits "Scream," "Scream 2" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer." A trailer for "Dawson's Creek" touting the Williamson connection began playing at Blockbuster video stores months before the show's Jan. 20 premiere. There were full-page ads in magazines and posters on the sides of city buses. The four young stars of "Dawson's Creek" were featured in the J. Crew catalog (the show's official clothing supplier). After "Dawson's Creek" had been on the air for just six weeks, TV Guide put the cast members on four individual collector's covers -- an honor usually reserved for long-running shows with huge, obsessive followings, like "The X-Files" and "Star Trek." "Dawson's Creek" is being treated like a hit, even though it averages Nielsen ratings points in the 6s and 7s, representing between 6 and 7 million viewers a week. ("ER" regularly gets ratings in the 20s.) "Dawson's Creek" is more like an illusion of a hit, and it illustrates how the business of TV has been monkey-wrenched by the emerging networks. Imagine if "MSCL" had this kind of backing from a network with as little to lose and as much money to burn as The WB. Instead, it was at the mercy of ABC, and ABC was at the mercy of the Nielsens, which meant a lot more back when ABC, CBS and NBC were the only real players. "MSCL" had exactly the same Nielsen numbers as "Dawson's Creek" (sometimes higher), yet, in industry terms, it was considered a loser. N E X T+P A G E+| KIDS WHO TALK LIKE SCREENWRITERS