The show was meant to be an insider’s look at the worlds of teens that parents and teens could watch together. It’s so campy and so single-minded (as good ol’ YouTube will attest to in a minute) that virtually every episode I’ve seen is completely unbelievable. Seriously, who as a teenager ever talked or acted like this? The core audience of the show seems like teenage girls, but I wonder how many of them watch just to giggle as 1 character will rattle off the word “sex” 47 times in a 90 second stretch.
I do wonder how many people like Krissy and I watch though. We stumbled upon the show a few years ago during the summer when there was nothing else on TV…no games, no movies, nothing on the DVR. We were channel-flipping, somehow landed on ABC Family, and stuck it out for a few minutes. We ended up screaming at the TV due to the stupidity of all the characters (and for the awful acting), but it was so bad that we couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen next. Somehow, we kept finding ourselves tuning in for at least part of “Secret Life” every week until we finally just decided to add it to our DVR queue.
And now, here we are…hating all the characters and the show as a whole, but still watching. Ben is so weasel-y, spineless, and entitled that you just want to wring his skinny ostrich neck. Grace is fake, selfish, and a complete c***tease. And I’m still not convinced that the actress that plays Ashley isn’t a china doll cyborg from another planet. For what it’s worth, the adults on the show are all kind of funny in their own way, and every time I see the 1 mom I say, “Hey, there’s the girl from all those John Hughes movies all grown up!” but for the most part they are only meant to be side props to the teenagers’ ridiculous adventures in adolescence.
"Look at yourself, you f****** swan!"
Of the kid actors, I only find 2 of them to be redeemable in any way. 1st is Shailene Woodley, who was really pretty good as the older daughter in The Descendents. For any “Secret Life” watchers, you will be completely taken off guard by her on-point use of the word “t***” as well as the many variations of the word “f***.” (Weirdly, when she was only a little kid she also played Marissa’s younger sister in “The O.C.” for all of 6 episodes before she was effectively killed off and sent to boarding school or something.)
The language in The Descendants is a little saltier than what "Secret Life" fans might be used to.
The 2nd, and I’m not proud to say this, is the actor that plays Tom, who is basically Grace’s mentally challenged older brother. As un-P.C. as it is, it’s impossible for me to watch him deliver a line without cracking up. The only thing that probably saves me from going to hell on this 1 is that it looks like the show’s writers have started to purposely exploit his condition for comic relief over the last few episodes. At 1st, it seemed like his character was meant to diversify the cast and show the family interactions of a mentally challenged person, but the show doesn’t use him that way at all, so why should I view him that way?
Overall, I’m not sure how much more of a shelf life the show has. The nature of teen soaps is that the characters age-out of whatever situation they are in, and any effort to continue the show past that is usually far-fetched…unless they change the name to “The Secret Life of the American 20 Year Old,” or something. It seems like the writers did stagger the ages of the characters so all of them don’t move on to college at the same time though, and it’s possible that an influx of new younger characters could take over the show, but I’m not sure that’s the best idea. “Secret Life” has already clumsily taken us through teenage sex, teenage pregnancy, teenage marriage, and teenage lesbianism. What’s next, teenage cannibalism? Besides that, is anyone going to want to watch Ricky and Grace’s half-brothers carry the show once the current crop of characters graduates? Then again, why are we watching now exactly?
No comments:
Post a Comment