We may be in a golden age of television drama (as I argued a while ago, I think we passed the zenith of that golden age a few years ago, but we are still in the penumbra), but it is becoming clear to me that one exception to otherwise well written, close and accurately observed scripts has to do with the depiction of adolescents. Dramas as good as "Mad Men" (which I have been binge re-watching in preparation), "Homeland" and "The Americans" (one of my current favorites), and even to some extent "Breaking Bad", seem to rely on adolescents the way bad daytime soap operas used to rely on multiple personality disorder (now DID) and hurricanes - to provide cheap obstacles and plot complications that have no real connection to character development.
I have raised three children, two now past adolescence and one right in the middle of it. I am a college teacher, and so spend most of my working days with what would be characterized as late adolescents; and I am a psychologist who has spent a fair amount of time studying adolescence. It seems odd to me that most of the teenagers I remember seeing in TV dramas in recent years are so unrealistic, not just because the shows are so realistic (character wise) in most other ways, but because you would think everyone knows something about adolescence. Yes, adolescents are more ego centric and dramatic (at times bordering on histrionic). Research suggests they are more extraverted, open to experience and neurotic, and less conscientious and agreeable, than adults. But they are not nearly as irrational, one dimensional and narcissistic as they seem to me on TV. I wonder if TV writers either don't have children, are for some reason using various stylized images of adolescents from shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as templates populate their work, or if maybe they are using their own life experience, and the teenage kids of upper middle class white suburbanites really are as obnoxious and shallow as depicted on these programs. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
