Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The unbearable lightness of teenagers' lives
I'm not sure why it's "the" American teenager in the title and not "an" American teenager and heaven knows none of these kids bear much resemblance to any teenagers I've ever known or know now aside from their relentless self-absorption. Whatever, I got hooked watching The Secret Life of the American Teenager because of Molly Ringwald and couldn't not watch after that. It had its season finale last night and just as confused about what I think of it as I was at the beginning. I know I like Ashley best (she's the imperfect daughter and is played by Olivia Hussey's daughter, India Eisley) and Molly Ringwald's a close second. Everyone else is almost unbearably breathily emotional, a description that doesn't make much sense unless you've seen the show. There are plenty of big issues (pregnancy, divorce, religion, intolerance, emotional and physical abuse, handicaps, just to name a few) and every episode touched on almost all of them just a tad manipulatively and casually, to the point where sometimes I had to scream and stop watching or skip ahead. Here's the basic story outline:

  • 15-year-old gets carelessly pregnant, doesn't even like the guy let alone want to be his girlfriend or wife or the mother of his child

  • same girl meets really nice guy soon after discovering she's preggers and they realize they're each other's soulmates even though . . . .

  • same girl's two supposedly best friends spill the beans and pretty soon everyone knows that goodie-two-shoes isn't so pure after all

  • meanwhile back at the ranch (just kidding) the putative father is a rotten guy who'll twist and turn every way he can to get girls to, er, play with him

  • but then we learn that his parents were wastes of space and he was abused so it's really all so sad and understandable

  • except that his main squeeze (literally, in this case) is the school slut who we would hate except that she's also brilliant even though her father has been absent for 16 years (yes, all her life)

  • but since she wants to be in charge of her life she tracks him down and finds out he's the town's D.A. and when she confronts him he decides he want to get involved in her life now and suddenly he's the only parental unit in the whole show who acts like one
      There are a bazillion other things going on. Like the actor who played Smallville's Clark Kent's father (John Schneider) plays the father of the "Christian good girl" which is just too recent and the roles are too similar so every show I had to remind myself that we're not in Kansas any more. And Grace, the aforementioned "Christian good girl," is ridiculously stereotypical, down to and including being blonde and sticky sweet and about to fall hooklineandsinker for the 15-year-old's bad-guy-father-to-be, of course. And there's a black girlfriend and a Latina slutty girl and all the rest. But it's somehow hard to resist despite way too many coincidences, juxtapositions, convenient overlaps, etc., and a tremendously unpleasant smug self-righteous attitude about all those platitudes. And yet . . .

      • Labels: , ,

      Permalink | | posted by jau at 4:11 PM


      0 more:

      Post a Comment

      < home