The Secret Life Of The American Teenager

I read somewhere, probably on Slate or Zap2it (as a side note: Slate and Zap2it run the full spectrum of interesting publication name all the way down to completely retarded publication name. See if you can figure out which is which.) that The Secret Life Of The American Teenager rated better than Gossip Girl.

A show from ABC Family, those same folks that brought the world Greek and... well... the second season of Greek, was kicking Blair Waldorf and her posse? How could this be? What kind of uber-teen show was this that it was taking down the Queen of teen?

I decided to check it out and found a show that was less Gossip Girl and more Degrassi Junior High. The Secret Life Of The American Teenager or TSLOTAT or Secret Life or whatever you want to abbreviate it to takes place in a Grant High School where the kids like to talk about sex. This is the secret life of the title, turns out teenagers talk about sex, news flash everyone.

The show packs as many characters as it can into the locker lined halls of this high school just so they can each have a unique view point on the whole gamut of sex talk. There’s the girl who had sex for the first time and got pregnant. There’s the guy who got her pregnant who sleeps around because he was sexually abused by his dad. There’s the geeky guy who hasn’t had sex, but wants to have sex. There’s the uber-Christian girl who’s saving herself for marriage and has a promise ring. There’s her quarterback boyfriend who’s also a Christian but is so desperate for sex he sleeps with another girl. This other girl doesn’t have sex until the third date and is dating the sexually abused guy.

On top of them there’s a little sister who wears promiscuous clothes. There’s the dad who doesn’t want her daughters to have sex. There’re the Christian parents who insist on the promise ring. There’s the down syndrome brother who ... has down syndrome. There’s Molly Ringwald who’s there to remind us no matter how good you think your teen drama is it’s not The Breakfast Club good. There’s the councillor who appears to talk to the kids about sex.

Even our two leads, the pregnant girl and the geeky guy, both get a chorus line of characters to help them talk through their issues. Geeky Guy gets a pair of Asian kids who I’m not sure if they were dating or brother & sister because they were both Asian and I got confused. And Pregnant Girl gets a black girl and a red head who were definitely not dating or brother & sister.

These characters all had names but they were things like Grace and Jack and John and I forgot them all by the time the show had ended. The Geeky Guy was good if obviously not a real teenager and the pregnant girl was alright although she could only cover the emotional range of ‘concerned’ to ‘overly concerned.’

In case you didn’t pick up on the subtly of the first episodes theme – it was about SEX. It felt like watching one long brochure of the dos and don’ts of sex. They tried to cover all the bases and it was weird hearing a character use the expression ‘my Lord Saviour Jesus Christ’ and have it not be played for laughs but despite the show’s earnestness the whole thing was kind of goofy. Sure it was goofy enough to be watchable, but I think I prefer my goofy teenage shows to include Chuck Bass overacting... but never say never.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

You may have noticed I’ve switched from ‘Average’ to ‘Alright’ in this ratings system... although more honestly you probably haven’t noticed, nor cared.