Entertainment Weekly's THE 50 BEST TEEN TV SHOWS EVER

Mainly inconsistencies with characters from season to season (and sometimes week to week). Also, Kevin Arnold is way more of a bitch than you remember, and Winnie Cooper sucks. So maybe not flaws so much as false memories.

Which, in a weird way, makes the teenage experience VERY accurate.

oh kevin arnold is the ultimate bitch

i see him as my god-father in some ways, he's such a fucking asshole. winnie cooper sucks and is also by far the best thing happening in the neighborhood, it's hyperrealistic

The Wonder Years remake is going to make some dumb people very mad.

are there characters in the background who are like FUCK KEVIN AND WINNIE? I don't remember them, as a kid, other than the occasional bully in the show or whatever (and the older brother, who is trump dominating in Louisiana in 2016), but in general it seemed like the message was that you were supposed to root for them. but you know what? fuck kevin and winnie

This is Buffy, but Elite and Euphoria are both great fun and I wish I had had shows like them when I was a teenager.

kevin's whole message and storyline is that he wants all these things handed him to him. winnie demands absolute perfection. the older brother just logrolls over the entire thing while the feckless dad votes against unions and the mom is on every pill of all time. it is a great show

My impression watching the show as a kid was that the oldest sister Karen was a flake, but upon rewatching she was one of the only people in the whole Wonder Years universe that had her head on straight.

buffy.

“never have I ever” being on this list as high as it is is weird

The Wonder Years remake is going to make some dumb people very mad.

Oh yeah, when the trailer dropped a few months ago, there was some real ugly shit on twitter (but what else is new?). Imma check it out, though.

41. Pretty Little Liars (ABC Family/Freeform, 2010)

this show sucked ass

i figure it won't get enough votes so i am going to vote for gossip girl

I will forever eternally hate this show because ABC Family canceled Bunheads to keep this dumb show afloat. xp

We’re actually rewatching The OC right now, for the first time since the original run and slogging through the rough third season. It’s still incredibly trashy fun, but #3 seems really high to me. Beyond Brody, I really love Peter Gallagher and Rachel Bilson’s performance holds up with a lot of charm (so much more that Mischa Barton ever had).

Always liked Rachel Bilson.

I've only seen three or four (i.e., numerous episodes or in their entirety), so not an informed vote, but I count Friday Night Lights and Freaks and Geeks as two of the greatest shows ever of any kind. (One minor quibble with designating FNL as a teen show: the coach and his wife are the main characters.) FNL gets my vote.

Shout out to American Vandal. Glad to see it included. Sex Education was snubbed. I have fonder memories of the Wonder Years than last few posts.

Anyway voting Freaks and Geeks.

They should have just picked it back up with Fred Savage playing a 47 year old Kevin Arnold dealing with the Republican creep and tech-bubble crashes of his late-boomer friends ca. 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eFRdSGving

have watched a few of these but scanning through the list the only one I felt a flicker of warmth or affection towards is Welcome Back, Kotter so I voted for that

just feel totally burnt out on buffy, I have to acknowledge it as good and significant but I can't help but feel the proliferation of "whedonesque" dialogue was too high a price to pay (both in scripted productions but also in fandom and online)

Daria by a country mile

I had to vote for The Facts of Life for teaching me everything I know about girls.
I'm surprised that neither of the original Degrassi series is listed here, are they now regarded as embarrassing ancestors of the later version?
Lavator Shemmelpennick: Fifteen was a Canadian series noted for having its dialogue entirely improvised (based on pre-written outlines), which is why every conversation scene ended with reverse shots of the two actors staring at each other, trying to decide if they had come up with enough lines to convey what was supposed to be happening in that scene.

I watched the shit out of some Fifteen back in the day. Starring a young chipmunk-cheeked Ryan Reynolds!

Comments upthread about Winder Years pretty otm. Even at the time, I thought Kevin Arnold was a pretty big turd. It's a pretty turd-ish name. 'Kevin Arnold'.

My So-Called Life was a great show and so was Buffy, but I felt such a rush of affection when I saw the O.C. in the list that I may have to vote for it.

post u mean "Kevin Amold"

kevin's older brother and older sister were both right. his sister for obvious reasons, but his older brother had to deal with kevin. it's no wonder he had to call him an asswipe all the time

haven't watched wonder years in a while but in my head the older brother's name is Jason and he's always like "good morning, asswipe" to kevin as he joins the kitchen table

lol, that's a very polite way to address an asswipe

actually maybe he was always addressing kevin's seat cushion?

His older brother called him a butthead all the time (pretty sure you couldn't say "asswipe" on network TV in 1988), and the actor's name was Jason Hervey, previously seen as the child actor in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

And in back to the future. "What's a rerun??"

I only just watched Freaks and Geeks in its entirety for the first time earlier this year and it was...pretty good but not great? I think an essential element that I found lacking and that is most definitely present in my favorites of the genre (your My So-Called Lifes and your Gilmore Girlses) is the sense of getting a peek behind the curtain at the interior lives of the characters. Much of the show just felt kinda arms-length, like they didn't want us to know the characters too intimately or understood what really made them tick. I'll acknowledge that there were some exceptions (like Lindsay's grandma dying and driving her to rebel (although that wasn't really referenced past the first ep), Sam dealing with his dad's divorce). Nick was probably the most developed character. I dunno, it was well-observed and entertaining but it just didn't suck me in.

the star power on freaks and geeks is just unfair, an unimpeachable show for that alone

xp i think that’s a fair critique of freaks and geeks though i wonder if they would have gotten there if they’d had more time.

I found every character on F&G dislikable, a core piece of the teen TV world is that even villains aren't supposed to be wholly terrible (even if it requires a gay dad controversy for redemption).

that gay dad episode was so good

Usually the 1st season of a long running show isn't good relative to when it hits its prime, so it's a shame we never got a chance to see "prime" Freaks and Geeks. Yet we got 27 seasons of friggin Everybody Loves Raymond.

everybody loves raymond. everybody. right?

I found every character on F&G dislikable, a core piece of the teen TV world is that even villains aren't supposed to be wholly terrible (even if it requires a gay dad controversy for redemption).

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, September 4, 2021 5:49 PM (seventeen minutes ago)

kids suck!

Mainly inconsistencies with characters from season to season (and sometimes week to week).

I watched a bunch of Boy Meets World episodes recently and funnily enough, there's a similar diregard for continuity (Corey Matthews is Kevin Arnold's little brother irl). I don't think it matters that much, the show is heavily stylized and the dialog is strangely expositional. But clearly it wasn't designed for binge watching.

Only seen about half of these shows.

Any excuse to post this will do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXipPKsbUHA

But clearly it wasn't designed for binge watching.

This is a great point. Not only could you not just pull up an entire series on Netflix or whatever, but you couldn't even really buy shows by the season until dvd—some series came out on vhs, but only very select titles like Twin Peaks, etc—so the producers of these dgaf about continuity because why bother.

Freaks and Geeks was the best fuiud

I loved F&G so much two decades ago I am a little afraid to even think about it now, especially given the later careers of the various principals.

same here

I’m old. Square Pegs. The gay surfer guy with the headphones was my hero. And never forget Buffy and her little Nicaraguan orphan.

my niece was just a little younger than Rory growing up, and she also had that super-bonded relationship with her mother (my sister). They loved Gilmore Girls so it meant a lot to me

Not only could you not just pull up an entire series on Netflix or whatever, but you couldn't even really buy shows by the season until dvd—some series came out on vhs, but only very select titles like Twin Peaks, etc—so the producers of these dgaf about continuity because why bother

Kind of related, but I was recently going back though random WKRP's, and was reminded that they had to do a clip show for their 8th or 9th ep because they'd been taken off the air for a couple months, and that was the easiest & cheapest way to relaunch the show.

Just remembered that Topanga on BMW had like three different sets of parents (one of her dads was Peter Tork!).

I was hardly a regular viewer, but I don't remember Boy Meets World being anything but terrible. I do have to wonder, though: does it represent possibly the last time that one of these shows could be so blatantly homoerotic without (as far as I can remember) ever feeling the need to seriously acknowledge the existence of queerness?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

in the end it was between Gilmore Girls and Friday Night Lights for me, ended up choosing Gilmore Girls since I know it won’t get as many votes

Write in vote for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Maynard G. Krebs 4evrrr.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

gossip girl beat gilmore girls….. my powers work

I just opened this thread a couple hours ago and voted for F&G. Glad I could push it to 1st. Surprised at B&B's high showing, though it is deserved.

glad Freaks and Geeks won. The love for Beavis and Butt-head is incomprehensible to me and makes me suspicious of ilxors' opinions on every other subject

I forgot to vote for Dawson's Creek.

At the last minute I went with my heart and voted for The O.C. I'm glad I did.

44. Clone High (MTV, 2002) 0

:(

in the end it was between Gilmore Girls and Friday Night Lights for me, ended up choosing Gilmore Girls since I know it won’t get as many votes

― Dan S, Wednesday, 29 September 2021 00:16 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Should fp this but wont