There’s nothing more powerful than a teen emotion.
You’ll never feel love like you did the first time your crush kissed you.
You’ll never feel despair like you did when that same person broke your heart.
Claire Danes, Wilson Cruz, A.J. Langer, and Devon Gummersall on ‘My So-Called Life.'.Danny Feld/© ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection
Teenagers are nothing if not raw nerves walking around in outfits they’ll inevitably regret.
(I’m looking at you, low-rise jeans.)
Those adolescent years exist in the high highs and the low lows.
The cast of ‘Beverly Hills, 90210.'.mikel roberts/Sygma via Getty Images
The hormones and the emotions and high stake-ness of teen years, that’s gold.
it’s possible for you to’t manufacture that stuff."
That’s precisely why those years make for such great television.
Benjamin McKenzie and Adam Brody on ‘The O.C.'.Everett Collection
It is all just pure wish fulfillment."
It would take networks a while to figure out the value of those pubescent hormones.
The whole genre was basically non-existent."
The cast of HBO Max’s ‘Gossip Girl’ reboot.HBO
A show likeMoeshawas passed over by ABC and CBS before finding a home at a new connection called UPN.
One of my favorite shows ever wasThe Wonder Years.
I was never a white 12-year-old kid but I understood everything Kevin went through."
“I knew the fans were there,” creator Darren Startold EW in 1991.
“Teenagers really respond to what they like.
And they like to see something that says, ‘I’m not alone.’
Look, on our show, the dysfunctional family is the norm.”
To say the fans were “there” is a massive understatement.
The fans were, more accurately, everywhere, and they were rabid.
Thankfully, the WB saw what others couldn’t.
“Prior to that, with the exception of90210, teen shows got canceled,” Plec says.
But the teen show still hadn’t quite infiltrated other networks the same way.
UntilThe O.C.once again proved its influence.
“And then out of the blue comesThe O.C.”
We never approached it as doing a teen show.
As teen shows slowly became more prominent, different twists on the genre started to emerge.
“Along came the more hooky kind of shows,” Berlanti says.
“It needed a high concept package around it.”
“They go places we were not allowed to go.
There were a lot of restrictions.
And that’s not even everything.
“Once HBO’s putting their hat in the ring, the content changes.
I want to be part of the Peach Pit kids.
I want to be friends with Seth Cohen.
I want to live on the Creek and row my boat to Dawson’s house.'”
No matter how the genre changes, those will be the things that keep fans coming back.
And the fans will come back, because the superpower of any teen show is its fandom.
“There’s nothing like a teen fan of a teen show,” says Berlanti.
“I can’t think of a genre where a fan matches the power of that.
Then the teen genre within that is the one where it seems to go straight into their veins.”
It’s the kind of fandom Berlanti has witnessed many times in his life.
It’s that kind of intense obsession that helps these stories stand the test of time.
Read more fromI Want My Teen TV, EW’s summerlong celebration of teen shows past and present.
