Slumber party!

I'm not ashamed to admit I borrowed the entire Felicity boxset from a female friend and watched them all. Granted, I watched them all with my girlfriend at the time, but I'm not going to deny enjoying every minute of it. Those who know me also are aware of my undying loyalty to Party of Five, My So Called Life and perhaps to a lesser extent, 90210 and Melrose Place.

My question, moreso in regards to the first few examples, is what has happened to the serialized drama on television these days? There are no more hour-long shows devoted to growing up, friendship, life, love and, in the case of Felicity, wiccan dimensional travel to alternate realities.

Every show on television these days has to have a gimmick. Even the best dramas currently airing (Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Dexter) are inherently based on a circumstance. The characters are well developed, but the narrative is by far the backbone of all those shows. Mad Men may be an exception I suppose, but that isn't really a drama as it is watching a high society train wreck with sordid candor.

The only heir to the serialized-young-adult drama is Friday Night Lights, which, surprise surprise, I also adore. But despite surviving into season 4, it still suffers dismal ratings. It's the same mysterious fate that befell MSCL, and I've never figured out why Felicity and Po5 became cultural behemoths instead. My theory would naturally be that shows that are too real aren't escapist enough. MSCL was borderline depressing at times, but to be fair, as much as Felicity entertained in that now familiar JJ Abrams fashion, Po5 at times hit pretty hard too. I mean, it starts with a family losing their parents in a car crash.

I find these "chick shows" (full emphasis on air quotes there) to be some of the better written products on television solely because they are character driven, and can't resort to gimmicky plots without being called out on it. Unlike a show like Lost or BSG where things can be made up on the fly, the believability and reliability of characters is the most important facet in the writing. This, as a result, almost always leads to good television.

I didn't want this to be yet another 'watch FNL' post (which you should). Rather, I'm curious why this formula isn't attempted more often. Certainly the difficulty in pulling it off and maintaining an interesting set of characters and plot developments is time consuming compared to an arc about serial killers that certainly must come to a predictable end. Writing life empathetically is one of the toughest things to do.

Throw me in with the emotastic tween demographic if you will -- well crafted teenage girl drama is bar none always the most engrossing form of television. Respect.