The Evolution of The Teen Show

By Charlotte Dekle

We all love a good teen show. When you’re in that stage of adolescence, it’s comforting to watch people succeed when you feel like a failed attempt. When you’re an adult, you can look back on it and reminisce about that awkward stage in your life where you didn’t fit in. Teen shows were derived from the wholesome family sitcoms of the 50s-90s. Shows like Leave It To Beaver, The Brady Bunch, Happy Days, and Full House. Each week you would learn a new lesson and maybe laugh along with the ideal families. On the other end of the spectrum, some shows showed a less than ideal family such as Married...with Children and The Simpsons. But I’m not here to talk about the family sitcom. Many sitcoms shifted from being about the parents to be about their rambunctious children. Case in point: One of the most famous Simpson’s character is Bart Simpson, the troubled child. This child is a centerpiece of any modern teen show: the bad boy that you can’t help but be drawn to. Family Shows have been around since television’s inception, but shows for teens are a relatively new concept. While the family sitcom persists, ala Modern Family. The teen show has gained traction as the mirror to what the teens go through during the show’s run. Some have been more dramatized than others. I can assure you that most teens haven’t gone through the perils of drug abuse or alcoholism. But there’s always the one teen drama character who has and it makes you remember, at least my life isn’t that bad!

IMO all teen shows can be separated into three categories: teens being teens dealing with things, teens solving mysteries, and supernatural teens being superior. Of course, many teens shows can overlap into multiple categories. One thing these categories all have in common, they all star attractive people. Let me break down these categories a bit more and how they matched the cultural zeitgeist of their era.

teens being teens

This category usually involves teens living their lives but usually taken to an extreme. The 90s and early 2000s pioneered these types of shows, usually a very special episode every week. Examples include Beverly Hills, 90210 and The OC which they dealt with everyday teen issues like drug abuse, and alcoholism. Both take place in California and focus on people who are lower to middle-class meeting the idle rich who live in these expensive cities. Every one of these very special episodes may look very preachy by today's standards, very much with the don’t do drugs kids mentality. But not every teen show was an issue of the week. Some of them like Freaks and Geeks and My So-Called Life felt more realistic in its portrayal of teen issues because they were just acting like teenagers. Both shows were short-lived, only running for a single season. This says a lot about the culture at the time of the late 90s and early 2000s. The 1990s are often remembered as a decade of relative peace and prosperity: The Soviet Union fell, ending the decades-long Cold War, and the rise of the Internet ushered in a radical new era of communication, business, and entertainment. The 2000s were known as the “all about me decade.” This was due to the rise of reality tv. Reality tv that was supremely dramatic, and was matched by the long-running teen shows of the time. Beverly Hills, 90210 dealt with these serious issues that enticed a generation. If you’re Gen Z, your parents probably watched this show. It may seem old fashioned to you but it was revolutionary at the time. Most of the television shows for teenagers before that were either family shows with rambunctious kids or child geniuses. We’ll get to the child prodigies later. But Beverly Hills, 90210 and The OC were for teens and about teens and enthralled teens to come back week after week with attractive actors and dramatic storylines. A more modern update to this show is Gossip Girl, euphoria, and 13 Reasons Why. They all deal with dramatic scenarios with attractive actors. The latter two deal with them in more gritty than the glamorized Gossip Girl which is one of the first shows to utilize social media as a crucial part of the plot. This fits well with it being a peek inside the lives of the 1% which echoes the Paris Hilton or Kardashian reality television of this time. On the other hand, 13 Reasons Why has been criticized for its romanticism of the topic of teen suicide, where there was an initial spike in the Crisis Text Line following the pilot. euphoria has been praised for its handling of issues such as “experiences of sex, drugs, friendships, love, identity, and trauma.” Other than attractive stars, there is something else in common with the cast of these shows. They are majority white. This has thankfully been updated with modern shows that focus on minority groups such as On My Block or Never Have I Ever. Other shows that are in the category of teens being teens include Love, Victor which deals with sexuality with a deft touch, The Wonder Years which is in more of the Freaks and Geeks wheelhouse than The OC. Some international teen dramas have gained traction in the US: ala Degrassi (Canada), Skins (UK), Sex Education (UK), and Skam (various countries). Note: 13 Reasons Why also kind of fits into the next category which we will discuss next week.