The year is 1998. You’re 17 years old and it’s Wednesday night. You have eaten dinner, completed your homework and talked to your friend on the phone about the latest school scandal. You sit in front of the television in your living room and fight your younger sibling for control of the remote. It is 8 p.m. and time to escape for one hour to a town called Capeside, where every teenager has an extensive vocabulary and a laundry list of emotional turmoil. You’ve been waiting all day to watch Dawson’s Creek and live vicariously through Dawson and Joey.
Now, fast forward 15 years. You will find a teenager holding an iPad as they power through this month’s Netflix pick. Long gone are the days of religiously watching shows about adolescents burdened with relatable issues, no vampires or musical numbers in sight.
The teen drama is dead.
Is this an alarmist declaration? Certainly. Many teen drama series continue to thrive on the small screen, although they are unlike the admittedly cheesy gems The WB survived on in the late ‘90s.
Let’s rewind once more to 1990. Beverly Hills 90210 popularized the genre and became a pop culture phenomenon with its remarkable 10-year run. The series followed privileged high schoolers in Los Angeles as they grappled with sex, drugs, bad grades and everything in between. Granted, the series didn’t invent the teen drama, but it was one of the first to find success. It influenced a wave of series aimed at teenagers: Party of Five, the unfortunately short-lived My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks, Felicity and Dawson’s Creek all emerged before the year 2000. Each series put their own spin on the archetype but did not enter the sub-genres of sci-fi, mystery or fantasy like Smallville or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Teen dramas established their dominance on The WB with shows like Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill and Everwood. However, the series that re-popularized the genre was 2003’s The OC, which like Beverly Hills 90210 centered on affluent teens with more problems than a math book. The series catered to viewers with a desire for intense drama, love stories and dry wit. Yet, The OC couldn’t sustain the longevity of its predecessors and its competition One Tree Hill. This is where the decline began. An uprising of sub-genre teen dramas swallowed the “teens for teens’ sake” shows whole.
Why does there have to be catch to teen dramas? “It’s about three friends who fight crime at their boarding school in San Diego.” “It’s about teenagers with superpowers.” “The main character falls in love with a werewolf with a penchant for show tunes.” That’s not to say that there is a problem with sub-genre teen dramas or that there isn’t an audience for them (because there clearly is). They are original, unabashed analyses of turbulent teen life with a twist, and many of them have done it well. Take Veronica Mars (coming soon to a theater near you), which was about a young woman who solved mysteries…in a high school setting. It was part film noir and part comedy with a side offering of teen angst. It was all there.
The steep decline continued, though. With this year’s cancellations of Gossip Girl and 90210 (a mildly successful reboot that lasted for half the time of the original), the days of teen dramas without strings attached are numbered. Evidently watching high school folk with accelerated lives has lost its appeal and originality. (Options are limited for making a love triangle intriguing.)
Television viewers have evolved. We want more drama. We don’t want something anchored in realism. The idea is to escape our reality and indulge in a hyper-reality where anything can happen. Can you throw on a hoodie and ruin peoples’ lives in the Hamptons? Sure! Can you be tormented and stalked by a mysterious entity via text message? Of course! But when the hour ends, we return to our reality of work and/or school unscathed and relaxed. It’s an understandable concept and a genius one at that.
Given the evolution of the television viewer and the increasingly portable and laissez-faire ways in which we watch television, weeding out shows that don’t draw a large audience is a natural progression. But would a few decent nostalgic teen dramas hurt anybody?
Current sub-genre teen dramas The Vampire Diaries and Glee have a loyal fan base and strong ratings. Conversely, The CW’s The Carrie Diaries, a basic high school show set in the ‘80s, notches numbers that prove sub-genre is in and old school is out.
Do you miss old school teen dramas? Sound off in the comments.
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