Teen shows appeal to older audience

By Ellen Gray
Knight Ridder News Service

College-aged Madison Kellner and 16-year-old Ephram Brown have an ongoing romance on WB's "Everwood." The WB/Richard Cartwright 'Everwood' 8 p.m. Mondays The WB

WB promos for the episodes — which have teased about an "illegal" act between the two — aren't helping.

While I'm wondering why there hasn't been a similar outcry about the college guy 16-year-old Meg Pryor's dating on NBC's "American Dreams," I'm also guessing most of the foes of Madison are decades younger than I, and may be more concerned about her proximity to Ephram than they are about statutory rape.

(For what it's worth, a December 2002 issue brief from the Colorado Legislative Council reports that while 17 is effectively the age of consent in Colorado — where fictional Everwood is located — consensual sex between a minor of 15 and 16 with someone less than 10 years older is not considered a crime. So unless Madison's older than she appears, I think she's safe from the law, if not from the wrath of teenage girls.)

If I'm concerned about anything, it's about how much time I'm spending these days watching teenagers on TV.

Among CBS' "Joan of Arcadia," NBC's "American Dreams," Fox's "The O.C" and the WB's "Everwood" and "One Tree Hill," I easily spend more hours each week with the demographic occupied by my sons — one 14, the other nearly 21 — than I do with my peers on NBC's "The West Wing" and CBS' "Judging Amy."

I know for sure that I'm more interested in Ephram's love life than I am in Bob Guiney's, ABC's "The Bachelor" having made me more than anything grateful to no longer be in my 20s.

The writing for these teens — some of them, of course, portrayed by actors in their 20s — is often more genuinely romantic than you'll see on shows featuring older characters.

Love, particularly, seems to be something to be taken seriously, and so perhaps I feel more kinship with these youngsters than I do with their more brittle older counterparts, the disillusioned daters of "Friends" and "Girlfriends" and "ER."

It's not all about the hooking up, though. In a medium that has long had problems sustaining family dramas, some of these series have become springboards for multigenerational stories you don't see on shows where parents exist only to provide stunt-casting opportunities.

Networks like the WB may not be courting me — or anyone older than 34 — but as long as they're bridging that generation gap, they're going to get me anyway.