Kick back with us this week and talk about Young Americans...
Episode links:
- Creek of the Week's first Young Americans episode can be found here!
- Summer School’s in Session: A YOUNG AMERICANS Rewatch (Forever Young Adult)
- WB's New Prep-School Drama Gives a Starring Role to Coke (Wall Street Journal)
- The Daily Show: August 22, 2000 - "AD NAUSEAM: HOUR LONG COMMERCIAL"
- Rawley Academy: Pretty as a picture (Baltimore Sun)
- A behind-the-scenes look at the WB's ''Young Americans'' (Entertainment Weekly)
- Review: Young Americans (Entertainment Weekly)
- 'Young Americans,' More Gorgeous Teens on the WB (Washington Post via LA Times)
- Picks and Pans Review: Young Americans (People)
- "Young Americans": Wow. If you set out to parody a WB... (Chicago Tribune)
- Reality Lite (The Prospect)
The *only* reason the incest storyline didn't bother me as much as it bothered you is that I was pretty confident the entire time that they were not actually siblings. Why? Because pilots do not establish the universe the way it's always going to be. Pilots always have an element of change built within them. Pilots spring from something massive shifting for the characters that have so far lived without their story being narrated. So the Friends lived their lives until Rachel ran from her wedding and suddenly there was a dynamic shift in their stories. The Cheers gang had their own existing universe until Diane walked in as the "outsider" and joined the group. The Cohens were going about their lives until Sandy brought a kid from the wrong side of the tracks home one day.
ReplyDeleteSo, pilots spring from massive change. But shows cannot sustain solely on riding that wave. At some point, the tides shift and things are not as they were established. So if a pilot announces that two characters are dramatically related, I'm pretty confident that by the end of the season, we'll find out that they're not. And that's exactly what happened!