Teenagers have always been a handful for their parents. I am very sure that Cain and Able were perpetually making Adam and Eve want to tear their hair out. No matter what period of history you might be talking about the teenager has faced similar problems. The specifics of the troubled teens face may alter from one generation to the next but the fundamental issues remain largely the same. In recent years drugs, alcohol and sex have become the foremost problems that teens and their parents must face. Add to that the persistent issues of social cliques, peer pressure and rebellion and you have a difficult situations for young people who are undergoing major physiological and emotional changes and you have the most turbulent times possible. Many films have taken on these tumultuous times like ‘Blackboard Jungle’ or ‘Rebel without a Cause’. Typically television has taken on a mode glossed over viewpoint. In the old days that many of us grew up in we watched shows like ‘Leave it to Beaver’ or ‘Ozzie and Harriet’. In the later they spent an entire episode debating whether or not the parents should entrust a house key to their teenaged son. Skip forward to the current day and you usually get teenagers that are all beautiful, oversexed and almost completely without any parental influence. What was direly needed was a series that depicted a more realistic look at the current American teen. Thankfully there is one network that thinks about things like this; the ABC Family Network. As a division of the Walt Disney Company they have a corporate commitment to quality family entertainment. Many may equate the term ‘family entertainment’ with something that is diluted to the point that no adult would want to watch. While the series on ABC Family are not brutally explicit as their premium cable cousins they do provide some of the best shows around. One of their flagship series is ‘The Secret Life of the American Teenager’. This series does deal with issues that the modern teen faces on a daily basis. Some, actually many, of them are those that parents would rather not think about. The truth of the matter is we have to. The families depicted here are not the ones we grew up watching in the fifties and sixties. They are plagued by problems and dysfunctional to at least some degree; in other words, normal. The first season is now available on DVD and it is well worth adding to your home collection.

The main theme of the series is a 15 year old girl, Amy Juergens (Shailene Woodley). She is an average teen trying to make her way through the jungle that is high school. Amy is pretty much close to the social nadir, in the school marching ban playing the French horn. IN a little nod to a much raunchier flick Amy had a one shot hook up with the drummer of the band, Ricky Underwood (Daren Kagasoff). That was all it took because in the very first episode Amy discovers that she is pregnant. Unlike many teen oriented series on TV the parents here are concerned albeit confused as to how to cope with the problems their kids are going through. They try their best to be supportive but the generation gap is still alive and well. The series was created by Brenda Hampton who hit in bit with her previous TV series the long time family favorite ‘7^th Heaven’. The look and feel of this series is almost too close to that one and does make it difficult for the show to establish its own identity. The music is almost identical and many regular and recurring cast members of ‘7^th Heaven’ are present in particularly in the adult roles. If you heard this show playing in the other room you might mistake it for a rerun of ‘7^th Heaven’. Like many shows lately there is some confusion with the length of the season. The DVD is listed as the first season and contains all eleven episodes aired to date. I have read that the first season will continue at the start of next year with another twelve episodes. Whether this will be marketed as the second half of season one or season two remains to be seen.

Amy’s home life is a good one. Her parents Anne (Molly Ringwald) and George (Mark Derwin) are doing all they can to hold the household together. They are experiencing some marital problems and doing their best to keep it fromm their kids. Adding to the degree of difficulty is their other daughter Ashley (India Eisley) who just turned thirteen. She has always lived in the shadow of Amy and is starting to act out. Once Amy’s pregnancy is revealed Ashley feels even more neglected than ever with almost all of the parental attention going to her big sister. Amy is usually surrounded by her two best friends Madison Cooperstein (Renee Olstead) and Lauren Treacy (Camille Winbush). The pair is different as night and day. Madison is flighty and prone to inadvertently prone to reavling too much information and gossip. On contrast Lauren is the more level headed of the little group who is typically the voice of reason in any given situation.

The series may focus on Amy’s dilemma but the ancillary cast is given enough story time to make this a true ensemble cast. The school’s ultra good girl is Grace Bowman (Megan Park). She shares the family values of her devote Christian family and at one point was show wearing a promise ring. She has an older brother with Down’s syndrome who is extremely protective of her. She had been going out with a football player Jack Pappas (Greg Finley II). They broke up when he was caught making out with Adrian Lee (Francia Raisa). She is the girl in school with a reputation of being easy. As the series moves forward she begins to see that her use of sex is to hide a deep seated insecurity and feeling that without sex boys won’t like her. She has a friend with benefits in Ricky. He is also hiding much of his real self and is in continuing therapy as a victim of childhood sexual abuse. One boy at the school has had a crush on Amy for awhile, Ben Boykewich (Kenny Baumann). He goes to the school’s guidance consular in order to rearrange his schedule to put him in the same classes and activities as Amy. Eventually they become and couple. When Ben finds out about the baby he is wiling to marry her.

There is a lot going on in this first season. All the interrelationships are sometimes hard to track and are in constant flux but they do seem to be such that teens can relate. The stories do more than just brush the surface of some complex and important issues. There are character prototypes that kids will readily identify with and hopeful find some help in watching. Here they go beyond just showing the behavior they try to probe the causative factors. The show has some room to improve and grow but for a freshman series it does well in gaining a foothold on the TV landscape.