TV Learns to Capture Teenagers’ Complexities

It’s teen TV angst time when 19-year-old Alison falls into a coma after a boating accident. Life is no better for her rich boyfriend, Rodney, who is charged with the death of a local hood. New characters on “Dawson’s Creek”? Try “Peyton Place,” TV’s first prime-time soap, which premiered on ABC in 1964.

Teenagers--whether troubled, troublesome or in trouble--have long been a staple of the medium. Of course, Alison and Rodney (played by then-heartthrobs Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neal) were but two characters in a script teeming with adults.

Today, it’s the reverse. Dramas such as “Dawson’s Creek” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” not only revolve around young casts, they seem set in worlds where adults are largely absent.

But more significantly--over the years, TV teenagers have grown up. Their characters are more complex. Their growing pains have gone from comic fodder to dramatic plot lines.

This fall, that trend will reach new heights as even more teen-based shows make their way onto the small screen, including Fox’s “Manchester Prep,” NBC’s “Freaks and Geeks” and the WB’s “Popular” and “Roswell.”

For networks, the reasons behind TV’s teen explosion have less to do with a genuine interest in exploring the adolescent psyche than with the fact that young viewers are some of the most sought-after targets for advertisers. Just how sought-after became clear as advertisers began buying TV spots for the fall season and the WB, with a lineup that focuses heavily on the teen audience, watched its ad rates shoot up 50%.

But for TV’s writers and producers, the teen stories have also proven to be rich with possibilities, and along the way they argue, the shows are coming closer to capturing the teen experience. At a minimum, teens approve, tuning in each week in droves.

“All of the shows today go deeper than we did in regard to the problems of being a teenager,” says veteran producer Aaron Spelling, whose long-running prime-time hit “Beverly Hills, 90210” began nine seasons ago in the halls of West Beverly High. “I like to think teens are bright and light. But some of the shows today are really kind of dark.”

Too dark for many viewers--a sentiment that was also gaining momentum in Hollywood, even before the Littleton, Colo., shootings. “Tonally, most teen shows have been pretty serious. They may even glorify angst,” says Greer Shepard, executive producer of “Popular,” which premieres on the WB in September, and a midseason teen comedy, “Brutally Normal.” “There were a lot of fun, Dionysian aspects to my own teenage experience that I don’t think are being portrayed right now.”

Along with looking at the lighter side of teenage life, Shepard also will reintroduce a more pronounced parental influence into the lives of her young characters. “It’s easier to portray self-empowerment and independence when parents aren’t visible,” she adds. “But one of the big factors and sources of anxiety for most teens is the fact that the umbilical cord is still not severed.”

Although the hair-pulling anguish of shows such as “Dawson’s Creek” may not represent all teens, the emotional thrust of those programs emerged partly in response to years of less complex portrayals on series ranging from “Father Knows Best” to “The Brady Bunch.”

Starting to Explore Adolescent Emotions

The 1980s saw a shift toward more realistic teen portrayals--including Kevin Arnold’s hippie sister Karen (Olivia D’Abo) on “The Wonder Years” and the caustic Darlene Connor (Sarah Gilbert) on “Roseanne.” But it fell to “My So-Called Life” in 1995 for a new mold to be cast for teenage TV drama.

Created by “thirtysomething’s” Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (who are now in production on ABC’s divorcee drama “Once and Again”), the show starred Claire Danes as a 15-year-old navigating the sometimes treacherous path toward adulthood. Although ABC dropped the series after 19 episodes, “My So-Called Life” drew significant critical acclaim and achieved cult status with young viewers.

“We tried to talk about the internal experience of adolescence, when what had been portrayed before was the external,” Zwick says. As a means of comparison, he refers to the classic comedy “My Three Sons” (1960-65, ABC; 1965-72, CBS) and Chip, one of its young characters who, by mid-series, had entered his teens. “One week, [the show] was about Chip being president of the student class. The next week, it was about Chip working at a pet store. It was about what happened on the outside, rather than what happened on the inside.”

But throughout adolescence, Zwick points out, the reality is that emotions and hormones are raging on the inside. “The relationships, events and feelings in your life take on epic proportions internally,” he continues. “And I don’t think people described that on television before.”

Which is not to say that “My So-Called Life” was without a prototype. Zwick, Shepard and “Dawson’s Creek” creator Kevin Williamson all cite the NBC series “James at 15” as an important influence on their work.

“It was the only show of my youth that spoke directly to me,” adds Dan McDermott, TV chief for DreamWorks SKG, the studio behind NBC’s upcoming “Freaks and Geeks.”

Premiering in the fall of 1977, the drama focused on a teenager who moved with his family from Oregon to suburban Boston. “It wasn’t ‘The Brady Bunch,’ ” says novelist and series creator Dan Wakefield, whose latest book, “How Do We Know When It’s God: A Spiritual Memoir,” hits stores in August. “James had real problems. We were doing real stuff.”

In a broadcast climate much less permissive than today’s, “James” tackled weighty topics such as sex, drugs and alcoholism. The series lasted one season.

Ironically, it wasn’t just the envelope-pushing shows that frightened the networks.

“Portraying teens realistically was a sensitive subject,” recalls “Happy Days” producer Garry Marshall, who, in 1975, set his series about the Cunningham family in the 1950s to avoid contemporary issues. But even Eisenhower-age realism proved a sore subject for ABC’s censors.

“There was a big to-do about Fonzie being a hoodlum,” says Marshall, adding that the network wanted to replace the rebel teen’s leather jacket and boots with “a little Windbreaker, and little loafers with dimes in them.”

Marshall, whose latest film, “Runaway Bride,” just opened, eventually won, arguing in a surreal bit of logic that if Fonzie wore the Windbreaker on his motorcycle, the lack of protection it would provide him could result in injury, perhaps even death. The network’s response? The Fonz could wear his leather jacket as long as he was on the motorcycle.

So Marshall fired off a staff memo, stating, “Never let that man leave his bike.” And that’s why the Fonz often rode right into the Cunninghams’ living room.

Adapting to More Sophisticated Teens

For today’s teen viewers, such behind-the scenes battles may seem implausible, if not wholly absurd. Turn on the tube and there’s a vast array of teen characters, ranging from vampires to valedictorians. There are gay teens, African American teens and even a few teen virgins.

As television has sought more reality, teenage sex has taken an increasingly significant place within story lines.

Take, for example, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” The CBS comedy (1959-63) focused on the romantic exploits of a girl-chasing teenager. State Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), who played Dobie’s classmate Zelda Gilroy on the series, says that “there was nothing sexual at all” about the show, adding that if Dobie (played by Dwayne Hickman) ever got to kiss a girl, it was at most once or twice, and always “quite chaste.”

These days, Buffy refers to her vampire lover, Angel, as just that: her lover. But executive producer David Greenwalt says sexual permissiveness is not an end, in and of itself, “except for the fact that it enables us to explore significant issues,” he adds. Greenwalt notes that when the show’s star lost her virginity to Angel in a 1998 episode of the series, the good-hearted vampire turned evil.

“The metaphor was pretty striking,” says the producer, who also will oversee the WB’s “Buffy” spinoff, “Angel,” this fall. “Perhaps [Buffy] was dealing with powers she wasn’t ready to deal with yet.”

Despite such veiled messages, the fact that any message is imparted at all underscores an essential link between teen-targeted programming of the past and present. “Kids today know more than we did, because there’s more information available to them,” says Vida Spears, executive producer of UPN’s teen comedy “Moesha.” “That still doesn’t make them adults.”

And if TV is to serve not only as a source of entertainment but also as an occasional arbiter of ethics and values, Spears adds that the methods by which those values are transferred to impressionable teens must adapt to an increasingly sophisticated teen culture. “What we’ve learned over the course of the series is to let Moesha figure things out on her own,” she says. “The one thing that will make teens turn off the TV is a preachy lesson. You just can’t treat them the same way the old shows did.”