Unpopular opinion, but R-rated “teen dramas” like Euphoria should just be set in college.
The characters don’t look or act like teenagers. They’re played by adults, doing adult things—clubbing, drinking, hooking up, and having way too mature relationships for high school. Yeah, some teens experiment, but not like this. If you removed the scenes at school, everyone would assume these characters are 21-25.
Character ages should make sense narratively. Nickelodeon and Disney shows like iCarly or Victorious worked because they were actually about teens, played by teens, written for teens. Even Spider-Man makes sense as a teenage story—he’s a kid juggling real responsibility. But with Euphoria, it feels like they just made everyone “15” for shock value.
If your show’s rated TV-MA and aimed at adults, just make the characters adults. It’d be more believable and way less creepy.
Teenagers should be piloting giant robots, not doing drugs and hooking up
teenagers should be strangling one another on dimly lit beaches surrounded by a sea of human-soul-tang and esoteric christian iconography, not going to clubs and having sex.
As a fan of teen comedies, I do think about this. If everyone’s going to look 25 and talk in this mature way, why is it even set in a high-school? The two factors I see are:
Once upon a time : by setting a story in a non-realistic / mythic setting, it’s easier to enter into the fiction of it. For adults, it has a nostalgia for a time before responsibilities when everything was possible, but that would be ruined if you had to face up to how akward and useless most teens really are. And for kids these ‘teens’ who look perfect and always know what to say are wish fulfillment. Everyone knows it’s not really like high-school, but peasants and the aristocracy knew that knights were nothing like those dipicted in chavalric ballads, but they both like to imagine that they were for different reasons.
Bottle episode : High school is a super convient writing drvixe, because you have these characters who have freedom and independence enough to move the story forward, but it’s also super easy to restrict any option that makes things difficult. There’s no need to worry about too many social circles, or why the characters don’t just do x or y. If you want a group of friends, who basically only interact with each other, it’s plausible enough. Even in college that’s harder to do, unless it’s a very small, exclusive group (like The Secret History) and even then it feels intentionally insular and incestuous in a way that a high-school clique doesn’t.
doing adult things like clubbing, drinking and hooking up
If you didn’t do these things in high school, that’s a skill issue. There are under 18 clubs. Teens also notoriously like to sneak alcohol and get drunk at parties and also have sex.
There are under 18 clubs
Yeah, but these are lame.
A lot of clubs allowed entry at 16 if you left your ID at the entrance. You’d get it back if left before midnight. Or … or you could just stay and leave your ID.
Then next week you just say “I fogot my ID last time” and they’d let you in again, keeping your ID.
I eventually got my ID back when I turned 18.
Yeah, but these are lame.
So they have that in common with adult clubs.
Haha, true.
But at least at that age adult clubs seemed cool
I really sincerely don’t mean this as an insult OP, but this post just makes it obvious you had a pretty safe and sheltered childhood.
Kids in my school were absolutely clubbing drinking, hooking up, doing drugs, getting pregnant etc. at 15 or 16.
Kids in my school were absolutely clubbing drinking, hooking up, doing drugs, getting pregnant etc. at 15 or 16.
I never said that they didn’t, but TV will glamorize it and make it look “cool” and “edgy” and romanticize it when it’s really not. There are teens who dated their high school teachers and got married, but just because this happens doesn’t mean we should romanticize this relationship on the screen.
I’m with this guy.
Because like it or not, TV sets an example.
Sometimes it can be used for positive things as well.
Developed in Scandinavia over decades starting in the 1920’s, the concept of a designated driver was imported to the United States on a large scale in 1988 through the Harvard Alcohol Project,[2] an initiative by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication, led by Jay Winsten. With heavy involvement by television networks and Hollywood studios, the campaign popularized the concept through public service announcements, as well as the encouragement of drunk driving prevention messages and designated driver references in popular television programs,[2] such as Cheers, L.A. Law, and The Cosby Show. The U.S. Department of Transportation used public affairs commercials with the phrase “friends don’t let friends drive drunk”.
I otherwise agree, but “young adults or adults” seems to imply young adults are not adults, which they are
“young adults or adults” seems to imply young adults are not adults, which they are
I know I’m saying younger adults or maybe slightly older adults, like the youngest being 21 and the oldest being 25 or something. If you want the characters to be in close proximity with each other and still have this school dynamic, then college is perfect; there are people in their late 20s or early 30s getting their PhDs in these teen dramas. The writers never actually show the awkwardness of high school; they only want to show them talking, acting and doing adult things but never really show the consequences or have teens realise maybe they are too young for this. If you want a show where the characters look, act, and do things 21-year-olds do with little to no consequences and no adults even asking the slightest of questions, then just make them 21 and in college.
In my experience, “young adult” refers to a specific stage in life, and takes place directly after teenage, but before your 30s (i.e. 20-30). In fact, the fact that the word adult is in “young adult” does imply that they are adults, just more to their larval stage.
Young Adult, as a literary genre, is aimed at the middle teenage years.
They’re played by adults, doing adult things—clubbing, drinking, hooking up
A lot of people do that in high-school …
I didn’t say kids didn’t do these things. I said Hollywood shouldn’t romanticise it or glorify it.
Do you think it’s okay for minors to do drugs, drink and have sex with adults? Do you think? Parents are “villains” for justifiably saying “your a minor this isn’t ok”?
