Sixteen Candles

The budding love story of Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) and Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling) cannot be properly told without mentioning the intertwining romance of Caroline Mulford (Haviland Morris) and Ted (Anthony Michael Hall). Also worth mentioning are the romance between Jake and Caroline, and the numerous passes that Ted makes toward Sam.

Samantha Baker sees Jake Ryan as the ideal man; he's popular, gorgeous, kind, and I'm sure it helps that he's also wealthy. As much as she fantasizes about him, and dreams of sharing her first kiss with him, she lacks the courage needed to so much as speak to him. Even though they share several classes, Jake has no idea who she is until she misplaces a note detailing the fact that she would like to make love to him. Naturally, Jake's primal impulses take hold of him, and he begins searching for information on who Samantha Baker is.

At first, Jake seems like a nice guy who has just lost interest in his vain and selfish girlfriend. In Samantha he sees someone more innocent, someone far less likely to run around on him or use him for his family's wealth, as he fears Caroline might already be doing. We sympathise with Jake because Sam wants us to want him to want her. Unfortunately, his approach of discussing her possible sexual practices with his friend let us know that he's not quite as innocent as Sam would have us believe.

Jake begins to actively pursue Sam, though he refuses to break things off with Caroline before making sure that he has a sure thing with Sam. Both Sam and Jake end up sending each other mixed signals at the school's dance, as Sam attempts to speak to Jake, but runs off as soon as he flashes a smile toward her, and while Jake can't get Sam out of his mind, he also can't keep Caroline out of his lap.

While Sam and Jake are pursuing each other, they are both being pursued by Ted and Caroline, respectively. While Ted's advances toward Sam are overly sexual, and exceptionally awkward, Caroline is doing everything she can to keep her man interested in her.

Though he's incredibly desperate, and far from romantic, Ted doesn't seem like such a bad guy at first. He certainly doesn't accept the repeated rejections offered to him by Sam, but he manages to come across as merely tenacious. At least until he asks to borrow Sam's underpants. His character manages to avoid taking a darker turn at that point by offering Sam a well-meaning heart-to-heart wherein he reveals that Jake Ryan is interested in her. When he learns that she, too, is interested in Jake, he immediately becomes more of a confidante and does seem to genuinely care for her.

Caroline, meanwhile, has spent an entire night trying to gain Jake's attention. She knows full-well that she could bed any of the boys in her school, but she seems truly committed to the relationship that she's chosen, and doesn't understand why Jake is avoiding her, worrying that he's stopped loving her. In fighting for Jake's affection, she manages to get her hair caught in the door that he slams shut, but never once shows any anger over the fact that he causes her golden locks to be unceremoniously chopped off.

With their romantic interests temporarily disposed of, Jake and Ted have a run in with one another, wherein Ted delivers Sam's underpants to Jake and reveals that she's at least as interested in him as he is in her. This is where both characters take a wrong turn in regards to Caroline. Jake facilitates the date-rape of his current girlfriend by offering to let Ted take her home, on the condition that he doesn't care what happens to her, as long "[Ted] make[s] sure she gets home," and doesn't "leave her in some parking lot somewhere."

Ted tries to refuse, but finds himself, like many of the young women at his school, unable to say no to Jake Ryan. Ted does, however, fail to correct Caroline when she later thinks he's her boyfriend and allows her to give him a blow job. He proves himself actively horrible when he later has his friends take compromising pictures of himself with Caroline. At the close of the film, we're lead to believe that Ted lost his virginity to Caroline; he claims to have been too drunk to remember, though he showed no signs of inebriation at any point during the film.

When Jake arrives at the church parking lot looking for Sam, he instead intrudes on Caroline kissing Ted. Caroline comes forward to Jake and breaks things off, which is something that Jake should have done far earlier in the film to spare Caroline the pain of being date-raped. Caroline apparently sees something in Ted that no one else does, because she makes the baffling decision to start a relationship with Ted on the basis that she thinks she might have enjoyed having sex with him in Jake's car.

With Caroline out of the way, Jake takes his chance to tell Sam how he feels, and the two share a private birthday party for Sam. He tells her to make a wish, but she claims "it already came true," and the two kiss.

Jake and Caroline were a dysfunctional couple, and likely only had come together at all because they both were popular and attractive. I'm unable to say that their entire relationship was entirely superficial, but the only surprising thing about their breakup was that it was relatively amicable.

Sam and Jake, as a couple, seem like a good fit, but only if you're unaware of how he treated his previous girlfriend. Considering the fact that Sam is likely never to hear the true story of how she and Jake finally came to fruition, it's plausible that the two could be very happy together. Unfortunately, he's likely to go off to college at the end of the summer, and she still has another year of high school to complete, so I'm actually not that hopeful that the two lasted for much longer than the end credits.

Caroline and Ted are a couple I can't quite wrap my head around. She's a beautiful senior, and he's an acne-ridden freshman. Not only do they appear to have nothing in common, but I just can't imagine Caroline being in any way attracted to Ted.