Review: The Secret Life of the American Teenager

I've been trying to make a change in the television shows and films I review. I've become known for attacking television shows and certain films so I wanted to make an effort to find things to write positive reviews for. Then I watched The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

I'll try to keep this short and non-preachy.

Premise:
This show is about a young woman who has a baby at the age of 15, keeps it and dwells within a group of friends who are focused on sex, God, blind faith, gossip, death, pregnancy and sex. This is a teen / preteen drama with comedy mixed in to make things seem a little lighter. Keep in mind that this series is viewed as a positive, enriching form of entertainment by the religious right TV Networks.

Characters:
I won't profile the characters here. They're not worth the effort. The characters are shallow, single minded, emotionally parasitic simpletons. I'm not just talking about the 'ensemble' of teenagers, but the adults as well. If I were reading it in screenplay format I'd need to keep cast notes close at hand to continually remind myself which characters are adults and which are teens. There's little difference for the most part. There are few adults who display any social intelligence or seem to have evolved past high school. Another big problem with this show is that the characters don't have hobbies, many talents or traits that help them stand out. They're all cardboard cutout archetypes with no depth.

Writing:
I've seen school plays and short stories from the desks of nine year olds that manage to cram more craft into their work. The dialogue is flat. The lines focus on a topic and repeat the core word over and over again. Example:

Adult 1: “What's your real reason for moving out? Is it so you can have sex anytime you want?”
Ricky: “Well I would like some privacy for those times when I want to have sex. You know I have sex.”
Adult 1: “I know and I don't like it.”
Adult 2: “But we know it's a fact of life and we can't ignore it.”
Adult 1: “Why don't you give up having sex for a while and see how that goes. That is an option. A cheaper option that moving out of the house so you can have sex.”
Ricky: “It's not just to have sex, I swear! I want some time alone for myself too. It's healthy to be alone sometimes. I'm never alone! I love you both and I love that you take care of all the kids who ussually are all around here. But I have no time alone. Not here, not at school, not at work, not at Amy's (His baby mamma), it's never just me. Or just me and Amy and John! And it's just going to get worse. Her mom's having a baby.”

For clarity, Amy is the Teen's baby momma, John is his newborn son. The show resolves this plot line with his boss (his baby momma's boyfriend's dad), giving him a one room apartment above his place of work for “a few dollars towards utilities.” Oh, and I'm sure you guessed it, the focus word here is sex.

Entire conversations go on like this.
I understand the motivation behind this kind of writing. There are a lot of names for it, but let's call it 'keyword writing' for the purpose of this review. They drop keywords (like sex), to ensure that their audience always knows what the topic is and so those keywords keep hitting certain psychological triggers. They used to do this for material written for developmentally challenged children (in the 60's to the late 80's), but most educational writers don't anymore because it becomes a barrier to reading normal material. Developmental children need to be challenged a little so they can eventually read at a grade nine or higher level. This show is written at a grade four language level.

The major plotlines include; A girl whose father dies on the same night she loses her virginity. She believed that God punished her out of wedlock activities by killing her father for several episodes until a cardboard cutout of a Priest / Reverend told her everything was fine. Another major plotline focuses on a woman becoming pregnant after sleeping with her soon to be ex-husband, who lied about getting a vasectomy. She's engaged to another man. My third example involves the star of the show telling one adult after another that she and her newborn son is going to Italy for the summer with her boyfriend (not the father), and that no one can stop her. No one seems to realize that this girl needs a reality check, it happens so often that it's a running theme.

Directing:
The direction in this show is actually very good. They make good use of the sets, props and of subtle background motion to establish a scene fast and show all the performers in the appropriate light for the scene. I hope the directors and the rest of the background crew are just padding their resumes so they can move on to a much better show. I've seen work from most of the directors who have signed up to do episodes of this series and the performances on the other series are much, much better. That leads me to conclude that the script and lack of acting talent is exactly what's killing every single scene, not the directing. To quote Harrison Ford; “You can write this shit but you can't say it!”

Performers:
Most performances on this show are equal. They're beneath amateur. I've seen better puppet shows. I could do better wearing a hockey mask while being water boarded and I'm not known for my acting for good reason. A few of the better performers include: Ken Bauman, Jorge Pallo, Steve Schirripa, John Schneider (who left the show), and a couple of others. They don't get enough screen time to enrich the quality of the show. In fact they only get enough time to give you a momentary relief from the exasperatingly bad performances rendered by the other actors.

Soap Box Statement:
Okay, so I said I'd keep this review un-preachy. Not bloody possible. If the average North American teenager is as breathtakingly stupid as the characters in this show the western world is utterly, hopelessly lost. Doomed. North America will look and feel like one great big trailer park in twenty to thirty years thanks to television shows like this that make teenage pregnancy look like it's not a big deal, dresses up thirteen year olds like prostitutes, and takes the art of conversation to a low unlike I've ever seen.

Thankfully, I know that this show isn't a reflection of teenage life in America. There are a lot of teens who are very energetic, intelligent and adventurous. They enjoy texting, reading, interaction with people of all ages and socializing intelligently while engaging in a wide variety of hobbies.

The most frightening thing about this series is that there are teens and pre-teens whose parents are so absent or incompetent that they aspire to be like the teens in this show. They're out there, teenage pregnancy is on the rise, high school completion is in decline and yet more of this sort of television is being produced every year because the most desperate, unchallenged teens tune in like the little lost people they are.

In my opinion, there are no redeeming points to this television show. If archeologists find a copy in the rubble three thousand years from now and they use it as a record of our cultural behavior they'd conclude that we were a bunch of gossiping, single minded, selfish, rutting idiots who were doomed from the start.

RL


I hope they find Gilligan's Island instead. They might come to appreciate our sense of humor.

Virtuality - Some of the worst science fiction I've ever seen.

Again, I'm throwing bricks in a glass house, but I just can't keep quiet.

It seems everyone is worshiping the ground Ronald D Moore and his cohorts walk on. Sadly, I'm not drinking the kool-aid.

Jonestown references aside, the "two hour movie" Virtuality is really a television pilot. Critics loved it, which surprised me. I couldn't have disliked it more.

The actors are fine, there are several who I've seen before and they're good performers. The performances are par for the most part with some impressive moments scattered throughout, so I have no complaints there. It's just too bad their considerable talents are wasted on this bit.

The technology the crew uses in this "feature" does not surpass what is available right now. I'm not talking about the unimaginative virtual reality trip the characters go on, but the control systems and gadgets that are used on screen. I can order better than what they have from Hong Kong today. I realize this isn't set in some super-future, but even ten years on we'll have better gadgetry than what we see them interacting with in Virtuality. It was unconvincing.

The pacing and flat direction of this snore fest reminded me distinctly of a film called Silent Running, a hit science fiction film that came out before Star Wars (1972). Silent Running is a film from an era of science fiction we generally do not miss because it was typically drawn out, under featured, under funded and bland. For its time Silent Running was a great film and should be considered a pre-George Lucas classic, but no one's rushing to remake it simply because the film's message is one we hear every day and the pacing isn't something that would keep audiences interested.

That brings me to my next point; the interiors. They were flat, bland, had padded panels everywhere which don't make sense since they'd hamper any efforts to make repairs or take quick measures in an emergency. They also looked like they were designed in the 70's, and I'm not talking the outrageously colourful Austin Powers 70's design, but the 'everything is clean, shiny and perfect' boring 70's design. The garden they show during this pilot is nothing short of pathetic. Even the most advanced genetically modified plant life on earth cannot provide any significant amount of food, medicine, oxygen or anything else in the quantity that they display. I've seen bigger planters in public buildings, frankly.

Now we go on to the general concept of the show. Virtuality is about a vessel that is seeking a new home for us earthlings because we've ruined our planet. It's a ten year voyage so they have an artificial intelligence and a virtual reality system to keep them entertained. The artificial intelligence and virtual reality system is damaged or corrupt causing injury and death. I have a few things to say about how they handled these concepts.

First of all, the flat, emotionless artificial intelligence makes HAL look like an Robin Williams by comparison. Secondly, their idea behind virtual reality is nothing new at all, in fact Star Trek has managed to explore most of the ideas that you'll see in this show (if it gets picked up as a regular series), already. Artificial intelligence is also a factor in Caprica, the upcoming Battlestar Galactical Prequel prime time soap opera from Ronald D Moore and it is handled exactly the same. It's like Ronald D Moore just realized that virtual reality is a solid Science Fiction concept and he's "pressing at the boundaries" of the idea. I have news for him; virtual reality has been around for a very, very long time as a concept as has been demonstrated quite well in films such as The Matrix. He does nothing new in Virtuality, in fact his version of virtual reality is pedestrian and boring for the most part.

The most interesting virtual reality scenario included is a direct rip off of several old anime concepts that isn't adequately explored probably because the writers knew they were ripping off countless anime classics based on the idea of a crime fighting rock star / secret agent rock star. Oh, and the music? Fun the first time it was on screen, but irritating when they revisited the band scene.

Virtuality was also predictable and at times even irritating. The whole thing is sort of packaged as a reality TV show like Big Brother. They do a half assed job of it, making it look a little more like a scripted television series rather than creating an atmosphere for the viewer that is similar enough to a reality TV show to draw them in, to make it more immersive. I didn't feel that I was rooting for one character or another, in fact they gave the most interesting characters the least screen time. This is a problem that plagued Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine, two series that Ronald D Moore worked on extensively.

After seriously blundering with the whole last season of Battlestar Galactica it shouldn't surprise me that Ronald D Moore and others from that show have managed to thorougly cock up Virtuality right from the start. Why does this matter? I'll tell you. If this show performs poorly it makes all the network execs think twice about other science fiction shows. If it performs really well and continues to be this bland and terrible, then network execs will actually ask; "is it like Virtuality?" whenever someone else comes along with a good science fiction show pitch.

In all honesty I hope this show turns into something decent when it gets picked up as a regular series. Many space science fiction shows without a big franchise behind them fail, it would be nice to see this show turn around so well that I end up eating my words (that happened with the Sarah Conner Chronicles), but I don't see it happening. I'll watch the show if it gets picked up as a series in hopes that they somehow take this very thin concept and develop it into something worthwhile regardless of the terrible pilot and I suggest any science fiction fan does the same. If anything it's good to support science fiction TV, at least for a few episodes. I guess the biggest reason for my disappointment is because I know Ronald D Moore can do better, much better.

Well, that's my rant, I'm finished throwing stones in this glass house for a little while. Now back to work on Spinward Fringe Rogue Element. I'll try not to pull a Ronald D.

RL

[What did you think of Virtuality? Speak amongst yourselves in the comment section!]