Let's Hear It For The Man-Boys: The Most Unrealistic Teens In TV History

Posted at 9:00 AM Sep 08, 2008

By Piper Weiss

Let’s face it: Teenagers are taking over the world, or at least the world of entertainment. But have we ever seen a proper televised representation of adolescents in that temperamental period between 13 and 19? As far back as the days of the Fonz, networks have been hiring adults to play someone half their age, and even when the cast is comprised of kids, the script doesn't necessarily reflect their youth. So essentially, a teen in the world of television equates to a 35-year-old who wears a leather jacket, loves pizza and once had a bad experience with a completely made-up drug at a rave. Here's our list of the most maddeningly unrealistic. Cowabunga!

10. Perverted Justice Girl, To Catch A Predator
She’s short, she likes milk and cookies and has the voice of a lady muppet. She tells sexual predators she’s 13 when they message her online. Producers tell us she’s just a really young looking 18 or 19-year-old. We say there’s no way she’s over 10.

9. Michael Jackson, "Thriller" Video
Picture this: you’re on a movie date circa the 1950s with a dreamboat guy from high school when, all of a sudden, he turns into... Michael Jackson! Not only was it hard to believe Jackson was a teenager, even by 1980s-by-way-of-'50s standards, but it’s doubly hard to stomach the
fact that he’s on a date with a girl who he’d like to make out with. In retrospect, the video (silly YouTube won't let us embed the clip, so this will have to suffice)─which portrays the deep-seeded, dangerous sexual desires of a man who on the outside seems to have his shit together─was really just a cry for help.

8. Nick, Family Ties
In pre-turn-of-the-century-TV times, all you had to do was put on a leather jacket and you were instantly a rebel teen. In the fourth season of Family Ties, said jacket, along with an earring and the catchphrase "ay oh!" were simultaneously employed by Mallory’s new boyfriend Nick, a motorcycle-riding trash-dump artist. Totally teenagerish, right? Consider him part of a regal lineage. Actor Scott Valentine drew his inspiration from the Fonz and paved the way for Joey Lawrence’s eponymous character on Blossom. Whoa. (Note a young Penelope Ann Miller in the below clip as well.)

7. Andrea Zuckerman, Beverly Hills, 90210
She was supposed to be the outsider that unpopular, ambitious teens could relate to. Instead she was more like your single aunt who shops at Loehmans and binges on tasty cakes in the bathroom with the lights off. It was sad. A nation of real teenagers watched her fruitlessly
hit on Brandon with their hands over their eyes and made the following notes to self: Complaining about school paper deadlines and P.T.A. slacks are not a turn-on for high school boys.

6. The Cast Of City Guys
This was the Saved by the Bell producers’ way of tapping into the "urban" market. The show centered around a white and a black friend attending a New York City public school that, aside from some graffiti, looked exactly like the Bayside High. Granted, the series finally allowed a black character to say something other than, "Kelly, you looks fine!" But that didn’t make these teens any more believable, as evidenced by plotlines in which Cassidy’s college date "roofies" her, Jamal becomes a black panther until he realizes he’s racist too, and Jamal accuses someone of being a skinhead and then finds out the guy has cancer. At least someone’s finally talking to teens about the pressing skinhead/cancer issue.

5. Raven, That’s So Raven
She was on The Cosby Show almost 20 years ago and just turned 23 this year. Nonetheless, Raven Symone has yet to make it into the upper echelons of high school. The actress who plays her best friend on the show, Chelsea, is 24. And regardless of Raven's psychic powers, her Eddie Murphy-style costume changes or her ever-present
parents, there is no getting around the fact that she has the body of a grown woman. You know what’s sooooo Raven? Stunted emotional growth.

4. The Cast Of California Dreams
They may have been "surf dudes with attitudes," but they were definitely not teenagers. In this TNBC show, Matt and Jenny Harrison were West Coast high school kids who played in a slow jamz-style rock band. There was plenty of hyjinx and tomfoolery, thanks to their manager, Sly Winkle. And while the show offered up some diversity to the teen TV lineup in an Epcot center kind of way, only blond lead Kelly Packard was able to make the transition from rockin’
teen to adult success as a Baywatch babe. The rest of the cast has yet to show such
range.

3. Jill, Jessa and Jinger Duggar, The Duggar Family
These real-life teens who share screen time on Discovery Health with their 15 other siblings are 17, 16 an 15, respectively. But aside from a skin breakout here or there, there is nothing teenagery about them. No door slamming, no stash of hidden weed, no jagged emo haircuts or
posters of Pete Wentz, no miniskirts rolled up to their assholes. Instead, the Duggar teens spend the day braiding their hair and making military-grade lasagna in floor-length tunics in preparation for their first missionary trips. But they do have their own little ways of
indulging. According to their website, Jessa’s crack is sewing. Just wait till she turns 18 like her brother John-David. His drug of choice? Playing broomball.

2. Sean Blumberg, Felicity
The only teenagers I knew who lived in 6,000-square-foot lofts in Soho while attending NYU were the Olsen Twins. But Felicity’s token fat friend, Sean Blumberg, seemed to beat the odds. His unexplained wealth and ability to share an interior decorator with the cast of The Real World were implicitly, and offensively, explained away by his Jewish-sounding last
name.

1. The Hogan Family Teens
Twins Mark and Willie (played by Danny Ponce and Josh Licht) and older brother David(Jason Bateman) seemed like normal sitcom teens. They were actually pubescent (or at least stunted), they liked sports, their dad was a pilot who wasn't around much and their mom, Valerie (Valerie
Harper) basically ruled the roost. If they had a fault, it was that they were total mamma's boys. But that all changed when their mom suddenly died in a car accident and was replaced by their aunt, as portrayed by Sandy Duncan. For the Hogan boys, their mom's sudden and brutal death doesn't seem to ruffle their feathers too much. No phobic manifestations, no anti-social issues, no fears of abandonment, not even wistful reminiscence of the woman who raised them from birth. In fact, six months after her death, in the episode entitled "Movin' On," the newly structured family toasts to dad's new job, Aunt Sandy's new digs and Mark's new science project. Um, how about "to mom" anyone?