After Saved by the Bell (1989-1993) demonstrated that Saturday mornings didn't have to be all cartoons, every kid in the country suddenly started eating their Cheerios to impossibly buffed teenagers in impossibly affluent high schools. California Dreams (1992-1997) may not have been the best of the Saved clones-- I don't know if "best" is operant here -- but it was the most beefcake heavy.
The premise: two Iowa teens, Matt (Brent Gore) and Jenny, move to California, where they form a band called California Dreams. Wait -- why are you dreaming about California, when you live there?
We pause this profile to quote the famous "California Dreamin'", which I heard many times during dark dank winters in the Midwest as I plotted my move to the gay freedom of West Hollywood:
I've been for a walk on a winter's day.
If I didn't tell her, I could leave today.
California dreamin' on such a winter's day.
Most of the Saved clones had the same basic characters: the schemer, who works every angle yet fails every class, and still gets into Harvard; the surly outsider who resents the schemer getting everything so easily; the goofball who litters his speech with nonsequiters; the popular girl, who ends up with the schemer; and the smart girl, who ends up with the surly outsider. In California Dreams, Michael Cade, left, is the schemer, band manager Sly Winkle (sly wink, get it?)
William James Jones, left, is surly outsider Tony Wicks, the band's drummer and sometime soloist.
In Season 2, Aaron Jackson joined the cast as Sly's cousin Mark Winkle, performing the goofball role.
William and Aaron were cute, but they didn't get a lot of teen idol attention. Michael and That Chest were the definite stars. Shirtless photos littered the teen magazines and the gay celebrity websites.
I didn't watch California Dreams often -- on Saturday mornings, we usually watched Joel and the Bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000, then had lunch, browsed bookstores, bought groceries at the Gay Safeway, and went to the gym. In the evening, we watched Mama's Family and The Golden Girls, then went cruising at Mugi or the Faultline...uh-oh, I feel "The Way We Were" coming on.
Or has time rewritten every word?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?
Michael was born Michael Ocello in Elmwood Park, New Jersey in 1972. He was interested in acting, but avoided drama club so he wouldn't be bullied -- "when I was in high school, being in the drama club wasn't cool," he notes in a teen magazine interview. Sounds like he was worried that people would think he was gay, which was a major concern in the late 1980s.
But the day he graduated in May 1990, he started taking acting lessons. After a year, a few commercials, and a lot of bare chests, he moved to California where he could be open about his...um...acting. It took only a few months for his chest to get a guest shot on Baywatch as Young Bobby, brother of focus character Eddie (Billy Warlock)
Michael also appeared in Chaplin (1992), the biopic of the silent movie star, as his nephew Sydney Chaplin Jr.
