Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Rated R for Ridiculous.

Secret Life of the American Teenager started off as a very typical ABC Family show. By typical, I mean slightly bad acting and some serious life lessons we will all take to heart. It's a show about a 15 year old (maybe she was 14 at the time) girl that gets pregnant. You obviously expect the show to be about the hard life of being a teen mom and why you should do everything to prevent that. Which it does, but really, I'd prefer my teenage daughter watch Grey's Anatomy. At least if they are watching a show that has a lot of sex they A. are adults in the show and B. it's much better acting.

I got sucked into the show about half way through the first season. It was some cheesy show created by the same person that does 7th Heaven. Seriously, innocent, right? I thought so. Some teenage girl gets knocked up and has this debate of whether or not to keep the baby. For the sake of having a show, she obviously keeps it. The show continues, slowly but surely, about her sad teenage mom life.

But wait, it isn't sad. The dead beat baby daddy (Ricky) turns around and gets a job to support his son. The mom (Amy) gets a job at the church nursery..conveniently. Her parents get a divorce but her mom is pregnant with her dad's baby so obviously they are slowly falling back into love. Oh and oh so Christian Grace has sex and her dad dies because of it (and by dies I mean he was embarrassed to be on the show so he quit immediately). There are various other actors like Amy's sister Ashley whose best friend is gay because you can't have a show without without someone being gay-thanks for sticking with what's PC, ABC Fam.

That's a hunch of what I have been watching for an hour every Monday night. This show is progressively getting more and more morally...wrong. They always try to get their line in for the teenagers watching like "just because your parents don't talk to you about sex, doesn't mean they don't care" or "Follow your dreams, don't make a decision based off of what your boyfriend thinks you should do". Those are fine. However, let me explain to you what the last episode's punch was.

"Just say Me" rather than "Just say No". I'm going to let you figure out for yourself what that means. Maybe to you it means something different than what the ten girls in the show took it as. See Grace's mom told her that instead of needing a boyfriend for sex there is an alternative way. A way that "lower's blood pressure, relaxes you, and you cannot get an STD or pregnant". I almost threw up on the tv. That was the.entire.episode. I'm really thankful they got the part in there about religion. It went something along these lines: "Yes, we are Christian but we don't follow all the rules, most Christians don't. What matters is that we are good people".

From what I have gathered with this show the lessons to be learned are the following: Sex before marriage is fine-as long as you are not a devout Christian-otherwise your dad will die in a plane crash. 15 year old's cannot abstain. Parents cheating is fine as long as they are honest. And really as long as other people are doing it-it's perfectly fine-whatever it is.

In the mean time, I would advise anyone with teenage daughters to just skip to Desperate Housewives. At least they have consequences for their actions, the religious ones feel guilt rather than justify, and the actors don't look like Bob Saget just fell out of a 1980's TV screen.

2 comments:

Meganps said...

HA - you wrote this on a wednesday. woot woot. i told you it's on on tuesdays. except it wasn't on today....bummer.

and I love the pic you have at the top of your blog...remember when he loved blowing raspberries on your cheeks? oh man. and his cute chubby cheeks!

rachel said...

Ummmm, this show is a guilty pleasure for me! It's soooooo bad - the stories, the acting, the drama - I love it. I wish I didn't