TV Tackles the Uneasy Teens : Prime Time Focusing Sharply on What It’s Like to Be Young Today

Last month, four Palisades teen-agers were killed when their speeding car slammed into a light pole and ricocheted into a tree. The 17-year-old driver had been drinking.

Meanwhile, “Just Say No” messengers from Nancy Reagan to Jesse Jackson take their anti-drug crusade to schools all over the country. Teen-agers are getting pregnant in record numbers. One local high school offers counseling for gay and lesbian students. Another has opened its own chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. And 18-year-old crack dealers drive their BMWs to the funerals of their murdered peers.

There is pain in growing up 1980s-style--pain, confusion, pressure, stress--and no easy answers.

Enter “21 Jump Street,” “TV 101” and “Knightwatch.”

Perhaps to save the day, more likely merely to reflect it, prime-time television is focusing sharply on what it’s like to be young today.

Fox Broadcasting’s “21 Jump Street,” now in its third season,was the first of the current crop of youth dramas, seizing upon the social issues confronting today’s teen-agers and riding the pretty faces of a heartthrob cast to some of the best ratings of any series on the still-struggling fourth network. The show stars Johnny Depp, Holly Robinson and Peter DeLuise as baby-faced cops who go undercover at various inner-city high schools.

“It goes back to Patrick Hasburgh (the creator of “21 Jump Street”), who was committed to doing shows about real teen-age problems,” said Bill Nuss, producer and writer on the show. “In ‘The Mod Squad’ and shows like that, the adults were always exploiting kids--the adults were always the bad guys. We try to avoid that. The show works for our audience because it rings true for them. We’re talking about things that interest them. We’re telling their stories.”

“Jump Street”--which uncovers the pathos in such problems as drunk driving, racism, steroid abuse, abortion, guns in schools, AIDS, pornography, crack and date rape--is not the first show to examine the serious side of adolescence.

“Mr. Novak” and “The Mod Squad” captured the attention of teen-agers in the ‘60s by chronicling the often-troubled relationships between adolescents and adults, while “Room 222” (1969-74), “James at 15” (1977-78) and “The White Shadow” (1978-81) were lauded for their sensitive and sympathetic portrayals of the social dilemmas facing high schoolers.

But serious youth dramas have never been a television staple. They usually have had difficulty generating broad interest in their somewhat narrowly focused subject.

Indeed, “Jump Street’s” ratings have been passable only because it airs on Fox. But because of what they call a fiercely loyal teen-age audience and the fact that Fox shows can be seen in only about 85% of the country, the show’s producers contend that if it were on ABC, CBS or NBC, “Jump Street’s” ratings would be at least twice as high.

Teen-agers, they said, watch every Sunday so that they can talk about the show with their friends in school the next day. Rock radio stations such as KROQ-FM often refer to particular episodes of the program, and the show’s stars have become teen magazine sensations.

The major networks have noticed.

ABC and CBS have inserted similarly issue-oriented dramas for and about the younger generation at 8 p.m. in their fall schedules. While neither “TV 101,” which debuts tonight on CBS, nor “Knightwatch,” which airs for the third time Thursday on ABC, is a carbon copy of “Jump Street,” both feature attractive young casts and intend to tackle pressing social issues from abortion to homelessness.

“We must be doing something right,” Nuss said about these new youth dramas. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

The producers of these other programs are sensitive to accusations that they are merely “Jump Street” rip-offs. They claim that their programs will be neither as black and white nor as preachy as “Jump Street.”

“You can’t tell people how to behave. You can only show them what’s out there,” said Kevin Sullivan, creator and executive producer of “Knightwatch,” which follows the lives of an ethnically mixed, blue-collar Neighborhood Watch group of young adults (a la the Guardian Angels), who patrol and protect a gritty inner-city community. Though this show probably resembles “Hill Street Blues” more than it does “Jump Street,” the young stars are forced to cope with community and interpersonal crises as they hold down jobs by day and walk the streets by night.

“I don’t know what’s right all the time,” Sullivan said. “I make mistakes. These characters will make mistakes. They are not model citizens and every issue they come across in the community cannot be solved in 48 minutes on television. That kind of TV formula cheapens the reality of the street. I want to show people what’s actually happening in this working-class community, show them alternatives and let them choose for themselves.”

“Yes, we deal with some heavy social issues,” said Karl Schaefer, creator and executive producer of “TV 101,” a half-serious, half-frivolous look at the high school years through the eyes and video cameras of a high school journalism class. “But we’re not going to get on a soapbox at the end of each episode and tell kids what to do and how to think. Lots of our episodes end with our characters stuck in the middle. They tried to do the right thing and it didn’t work out. Just like life.”

That’s not the case in its debut episode tonight, however, as “TV 101” offers a strong anti-drunk driving message by showing the “stoner” member of the journalism class mourning publicly for his best friend, who was killed while driving intoxicated. But in subsequent shows, Schaefer says, this character will “fall off the wagon” because, after saying “no” to marijuana and beer, he doesn’t know what to say “yes” to instead.

“Lots of people want to be lead around by the nose,” said Scott Brazil, co-executive producer of “TV 101.” “Lots of parents want their kids to watch a show that tells them not to drink, not to have sex, not to do this or that. But if parents really want to get involved with the kids, if they really want to talk to them and see what they’re going through, then I think this show can help them.”

For now, however, getting anyone to watch at all is the biggest challenge facing “Knightwatch” and “TV 101.” In its first two outings, ABC’s “Knightwatch” has run third in its time slot behind NBC’s “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World” and CBS’ “48 Hours.” CBS’ “TV 101” will be competing with ABC’s Top-10 sitcoms “Who’s the Boss?” and “Roseanne” and with NBC’s “Matlock.”