We have settled into the era of nostalgic retellings of the media moments reaching 20 and 30 year anniversaries. Last year marked 20 years since The O.C. debuted on Fox in summer of 2003. To mark the occasion, Welcome To The O.C., an oral history of the making of the hit phenomenon by Alan Sepinwall, was published (and immediately joined my library holds list). The year before that marked the 25th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s debut. Also on my library TBR pile right now: Into Every Generation a Slayer is Born: How Buffy Staked Our Hearts by Evan Ross Katz, an analysis of Buffy’s powerful fan reach and staying power, which came out in 2022.
Perhaps the most nostalgia-filled contribution to this genre of book-length pop analysis of teen drama that joined my library stack was Thea Glassman’s 2023 Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek: How 7 Teen Shows Transformed Television. Writing as a fan first, and media journalist, Glassman briefly tells the behind the scenes production tale for how seven different teen shows were made, and how they pushed the boundaries of what could be made for television around the turn of the century.
While the first two books offer deep dives into the microcosm of one particular show, Glassman’s is absolutely a project that dives heavily into the nostalgia of this entire era of teen drama television. (An era I may have a lot of experience with myself!) But by outlining multiple shows’ stories, naturally there isn’t space for (or the space there is, isn’t devoted to) complicating the shows’ legacies. What it can do is set up comparisons and through lines from one show to the next, describing the culture of a genre in its early days.
The comparison points between the stories of the 7 shows (4 of which I included amongst my thesis’ sample of 6 in 2012) are revealing about the way the teen drama genre created itself in a broadcast TV landscape. The way shows were developed, marketed, and backed or dropped by networks on a weekly broadcast schedule shaped and defined the at times poignant, at times melodramatic content that we now think of as classics and staples of the genre.
Freeks, Gleeks and Dawson’s Creek is an uncomplicated celebration of the memories and affection for these shows and characters. The fan response and engagement to each of these shows forms a part of the narrative, alongside the creation stories as told by select writers, actors, and producers.
From the creators’ side, what struck me was the frequency with which producers and writers expressed the feeling of surprise at seeing their show categorized as a teen drama. Many attempted to distance themselves from this perceived limitation. For some, the cross-genre voice of the show confused networks and marketers, for others the label felt like a dismissal. There’s a hesitation to claim the teen drama identity, a feeling that to be a teen drama is to give up the opportunity to be quality television. It reads like internalized agism, or genre-ism perhaps. An ironic mirror to the power dynamics teen characters often fight for within the shows themselves. These innovative, creative people working to create something authentic and meaningful featuring teen characters, wanting to give those characters something solid and real to inhabit – and yet chafing at the genre label of “teen drama.”
It might be presented as a business or marketing issue, but behind that narrative there’s the implicit power dynamics of working within a devalued genre associated with teen girls in particular that is continually put on the defensive. It’s a genre (and an audience) that is held to the standard of its best examples and held down by the reputations of its worst examples. It’s an audience, and therefore a genre, that will always appear niche, even if the numbers and actual demographics watching beg to differ.
This drive expressed by show creators to be innovative and to push genre boundaries and expectations (to not be “just teen drama”), has undoubtedly led to some excellent television shows. It does strike me as funny that such early examples from the genre were hesitant to embrace the very corner of television that they were in the process of making. But also, that those genre expectations everyone was attempting to defy were almost universally taken from/in contrast with (ratings and longevity juggernaut) Beverly Hills 90210.
Let me tell you sweetie, you are what you create. Teen drama isn’t that one thing. It is the amalgam of all of you put together.
Glassman concludes that each of the shows profiled pushed television forward with a number of firsts, proving that interesting, creative choices (queer representation, authentic dialogue, or over-wraught “phycho-babble” if you’re Dawson’s Creek etc) could be made and could work. In this, she celebrates the era’s successes, and credits them with lasting impacts on Hollywood and the broader television landscape.
In a certain sense, you can’t get Heartstopper, where literally every member of the ensemble of main characters is queer (or at least in a queer relationship), without MSCL‘s Rickie Vasquez, the first teen character to come out on television. But it’s also been 30 years. Progress, increased visibility and representation for marginalized identities, has to shift along with the culture. There’s a certain inevitability to the argument that the early examples of a genre broke new ground, when the ground had yet to be tread.
To me, the notability of the 90s and early 00s that drew my focus, was that it was a scene setting era of a new genre. Teen drama hadn’t existed in such a format before Degrassi: Junior High (followed by High) dove into earnest, serialized TV episodes of Teen Issues. (Family sitcoms featuring teens and John Hughs movies, yes, but the teen drama as we know it was a creation of the late 1980s.) These shows, making choices about how to represent teen life, created amongst them the shared language of the genre that they inhabited and built onto. Naturally, what that language is and includes grows over time.
While at the outset, the shaping of a genre, each show negotiates its contribution to the teen drama canon. The collection of shows, in conversation with one another, and with the network and production forces, creator visions, the material conditions in which they come to be, set the stage. Their legacy, in turn, is defined by the connections forged with audiences, and the impressions left behind in the cultural imagination.
Coming to the end of Freaks, Gleeks and Dawson’s Creek, feels slightly hollow. While I believe it’s a worthwhile project, the conclusions outlined above are my own. There was a decided lack of final chapter to wrap up what this collection of stories is for, or draw the connections between these notable shows, from the anecdotes and comments found in individual chapters. Glassman stops short of critique or analysis, content to present the seven momentous chapters in teen drama history, and allowing us, the reader, to make the meaningful connections between their stories.
There is also a certain unabashed reverence for shows that broke boundaries in some ways, but in others are often relics of their time. The problematic portrayal (or lack thereof, for most early teen dramas) of racialized characters, the toxic work environments behind the scenes that have come to light in recent years, a dated understanding of mental health struggles and addictions – and relatedly, the concerning recurring trope of the troubled girl who is so out of control she is literally destined to die – are at times mentioned, but waved away in favour of the positive connections forged by fans, or interesting stories the writers wanted to tell.
For me, this winter has been a season of revisiting an impactful era of teen drama, through these books. A thematic reading list of oral history, celebration, and cultural critique. It has left me curiously aware of how “behind the scenes” narratives can be a source for meaningful material critique, AND can feed our fan(atic) impulses towards celebrity gossip and parasocial relationships with fictional characters (and by extension the artists and creators who wrote and portrayed them.)
After all, who is going to read these books (aside from pop culture nerds like me), but fans. The people who loved, and want to continue to love, the shows they connected with during their formative years. Through nostalgic retellings, we continue to process, explore, and settle into our own memories of youth. Nostalgia will forever afix teen drama classics in our cultural zeitgeist, a legacy that’s hard to shake.
