julie is f'n bipolar

I'm not so sure about your means of expression, but you might be on to something with the idea that Julie is bipolar. She clearly had a couple of depressive episodes, and she also had sort of delusions of grandeur, like when she's convinced that she's going to be a great clothing designer, and doesn't need to go to school like everyone else, to do it. She also did poorly in school, in spite of the fact that she was just as smart as Barbara, who did pretty well. She was also what people used to call "oversexed," which is another symptom.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ann had a touch of it too, though-- maybe a subclinical case, where she had moos swings, but they didn't interfere with her functioning, but she passed the trait along to Julie, who got a much more serious case.

It would explain why Ann was so surprisingly sympathetic to Julie leaving her family-- kinda makes you wonder if there was ever a point when Ann was planning on divorcing Ed, that she thought about leaving the girls with him.

People didn't know a lot about bipolar disorder, so it'd be a little surprising if that subtext was meant to be there in the sense that someone looked it up in the DSM-III and wrote Julie accordingly. It's more likely she was based loosely on someone who happened to be bipolar.

Everyone thinks someone is Bipolar simply because a he is emotional or moody. Neither Julie nor Ann fit a clinical definition of it. I hear HS kids saying this all the time. It's silly

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Julie and Ann were both crazy. At least Barbara was the voice of reason and hot to boot. Too bad she didn't marry Max instead of that goofy dentist. At least one of the last episodes had her and Max kissing.