Anyone who has seen "The OC" or, more historically, "Dawsons Creek" can identify very quickly the kind of show this is. A coming of age teen drama which explores sex, drugs, school, relationships and all other things teenagers care about from the applied perspective of some 17 year olds (despite the show being written by 40 year olds and staring 20something year olds). And of course, as is the rule of teen dramas, everyone's good looking except the characters whose plot line is that they aren't good looking.
Your stereotypes are all present and accounted for. From the tortured pretty boy 'new kid', to the hot (and inexplicably ignored by her peers) geeky girl, to the misunderstood bitchy cheerleader. This show won't surprise you by presenting you with complex characters, the only surprise you'll get is when the convoluted plot throws a curve ball.
The writing on this show is appallingly lazy. Cheap get outs that I had hoped writers had moved beyond seem to be alive and well in One Tree Hill (people surviving fatal accidents, random long lost relatives appearing...REPEATEDLY). There's no "meat" to the plots, just every standard teen drama plot line possible ran through in a hollow, half hearted manner.
All you need to keep a show going nowadays it seems is a contemporary young person soundtrack and lots of partial nudity. Oh that and constant advertising such as the repeated blatant advertising of Sunkist soft drinks and the pimping of a few bands (including one drawn-out section with Fall Out Boy).
The stories and character actions are painfully melodramatic (though I suppose this is typical of teenagers and teen dramas really). Characters engage in a perpetual love hate relationship with one-another in a heart-on-sleeve world. Miss 3 episodes and you'll miss a "I hate you and never want to see you ever again" break up and make up.
This isn't compelling television. This is background noise sandwiched between pieces of pseudo-intellectualism (tip: opening and ending your show with quotes from good pieces of writing doesn't improve your show, it just makes it worse by contrast). Most of the entertainment I've gotten out of this show is laughing at how genuinely unbelievably poor the writing is (my favourite being characters flashing back to scenes they weren't in).
WATCH THIS IF: You're looking for background noise while doing something else You've never seen a teen drama (it's not the best, by any stretch, but it's so vanilla that it covers pretty much all the bases)
Your stereotypes are all present and accounted for. From the tortured pretty boy 'new kid', to the hot (and inexplicably ignored by her peers) geeky girl, to the misunderstood bitchy cheerleader. This show won't surprise you by presenting you with complex characters, the only surprise you'll get is when the convoluted plot throws a curve ball.
The writing on this show is appallingly lazy. Cheap get outs that I had hoped writers had moved beyond seem to be alive and well in One Tree Hill (people surviving fatal accidents, random long lost relatives appearing...REPEATEDLY). There's no "meat" to the plots, just every standard teen drama plot line possible ran through in a hollow, half hearted manner.
All you need to keep a show going nowadays it seems is a contemporary young person soundtrack and lots of partial nudity. Oh that and constant advertising such as the repeated blatant advertising of Sunkist soft drinks and the pimping of a few bands (including one drawn-out section with Fall Out Boy).
The stories and character actions are painfully melodramatic (though I suppose this is typical of teenagers and teen dramas really). Characters engage in a perpetual love hate relationship with one-another in a heart-on-sleeve world. Miss 3 episodes and you'll miss a "I hate you and never want to see you ever again" break up and make up.
This isn't compelling television. This is background noise sandwiched between pieces of pseudo-intellectualism (tip: opening and ending your show with quotes from good pieces of writing doesn't improve your show, it just makes it worse by contrast). Most of the entertainment I've gotten out of this show is laughing at how genuinely unbelievably poor the writing is (my favourite being characters flashing back to scenes they weren't in).
WATCH THIS IF: You're looking for background noise while doing something else You've never seen a teen drama (it's not the best, by any stretch, but it's so vanilla that it covers pretty much all the bases)