For easier digestion, I have broken down for you the reasons I loathe this series.
1. The title
Is there really any need to include the fact that Amy is American? What is that supposed to imply? Either that all American teenagers are secretly pregnant or that when we watch a program on ABC Family, we don't automatically expect it to be set in the United States, I assume. Spoiler alert, but nothing about the lives of these teenagers stays secret. Each one of them is more than willing to discuss their sex lives with their parents.
2. Inbreeding
Another thing that really concerns me about this show is the very small breeding stock the school seems to have. These characters seem pretty afraid to branch out into anyone who isn’t in the main cast.
-Amy is the main character. She gets knocked up by Ricky at fucking band camp, of all places.
-Ricky is a bad boy in foster care. I don’t know what promiscuous bad boys are doing at band camp, but whatever. I’m not to sure why he cares so hardcore for his baby instead of doing the bad boy thing and just punching Amy in the ovaries when she told him he was going to be a dad. Also he works in a butcher shop with Ben.
-Ben has an Italian stereotype for a father and is in love with Amy despite her, uh, baggage. Too bad he knocks up Adrian in the third season.
-Adrian must have serious problems because she enjoys casual sex. She somehow becomes best friends with her foil, Grace.
-Grace was a celibate Christian and preacher’s daughter until she decided to seize the day and bang Jack.
-Jack is also a preacher’s son. (What the fuck? Am I watching 7th Heaven reruns?) After he breaks up with Grace, he starts dating Madison.
-Madison is Amy’s Catholic friend. She's Catholic enough to try to talk Amy out of getting an abortion, but not nearly enough to keep her legs closed. (Oops, realism!) She is also arguably one of the worst actors on the show, second only to Ashley.
-Ashley is Amy’s younger sister whose acting skill could only be improved if she were in a coma.
That’s about it - new characters are not introduced enough. Well... kind of. Actually I’m starting to think that the network itself has a small breeding stock. During episode 304 the fucking YOUNGEST DAUGHTER FROM 7TH HEAVEN just pops on the screen. What is this fascination with minister’s children, Brenda Hampton? What does it mean?
3. The gimmick
Remember Degrassi TNG before the original characters graduated and went off to college? It went there. They hit every issue from homosexuality to eating disorders to teen pregnancy. Yes, no fewer than three pregnancies and one pregnancy scare happened in this series. But at least they were a bit spread out and had different outcomes (one abortion, one adoption, one teenage mom). No such luck with Secret Life. The first season, Amy is pregnant. This is the basis for the drama. The second season, Amy’s fucking mother (played by none other than... Molly Ringwald?!) is pregnant and is uncertain as to who the father is. What a delightful twist! Secret Life of the American Housewife! Okay, that’s enough accidental pregnancies for now. There are other plots for high school drama, right? NO. The third season revolves around Adrian’s pregnancy. 7th Heaven references withdrawn. Now I feel like I’m watching that Lifetime movie The Pregnancy Pact.
4. The lack of realism
There is nothing real about this show. After Amy’s pregnancy is revealed, Ricky and Ben start to compete. She’s in love with Ben, but having Ricky’s baby. And everyone knows this. If you don’t know this, you must be braindead, because the script is written to make sure this fact is mentioned no fewer than sixteen times per episode. So according to Brenda Hampton and the savvy writers of Secret Life, get pregnant, and as long as you’re pretty, boys will actually fight over you! The footage of the birth is pretty hard hitting too. Show your sixteen year old daughter the clip of all of Amy’s friends and family walking in and out of the delivery room, from the outside, to “Stand By Me” and I’m sure she’ll get that it’s in her best interest to keep her whore legs closed. Okay, but this is a family program. Obviously we’re not going to get to see graphic closeups of a teenager’s vagina, and many people are made uncomfortable by seeing women in labor. Besides, it’s after the baby is born that’s important, right? Once those kids see how boring and unhappy Amy’s life is as a teen mom, that’ll set them straight. Except for the fact that the children are almost never fucking seen. It’s all too easy to forget that both Amy and her mother have to care for babies because they’re shown to the audience maybe an average of once per episode. What you actually do get to see during your forty minutes of viewing will most likely be a) teenagers gossiping in the hallway, b) Amy’s parents tooling around in the kitchen disagreeing about how to raise their children, or c) Ricky and Ben disagreeing in the butcher shop.
5. Copious use of the word “sex”
If I processed all the scripts to every episode with a word frequency counter, “sex” would be the most common after “the” and “and”. Since when do teenagers talk about this like medical professionals or guidance counselors? It could only sound more unnatural if they were referring to it as “copulation”, or in the case of one of the preacher’s kids, we might get lucky enough to hear “fornication”. I was in high school fairly recently, and no one was having sex. However, plenty of people were fucking, and most of the shy ones were doing it. Actual quote:
"I wanna take you to a movie and sit in the dark with you and hold hands, maybe make out a little. I wanna go to a late dinner and eat food with you. Then I wanna drop you off at your house and kiss you goodnight, and then go home and think about having sex with you. But I'm not gonna have sex with you until I'm ready to have sex with you and that's that!"
You show her, whatever boy uttered this sentence!
Imagine how fucking surprised I was to find out that Brenda Hampton produced 7th Heaven. I. Hate. Television.
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