Teenage Circus: Teenagers on TV

All teenagers on TV at this current moment seem to fall into one of two Cold Case box set very distinct categories. They are either the rebellious troublemakers who wreak havoc on their parents (see the Scavo twins in Desperate Housewives dvd box set or Michael Hewes in Damages), or they are the intellectual, well-behaved children who act as foils to their immature and irresponsible parentsCriminal Minds dvd box set
(see Julie Mayer in Desperate Housewives or Becca in Californication).
Even shows that could once be relied upon to provide us with relatively normal young characters, such as Law and Order: SVU (see Detective Stabler’s recurring spawn), have fallen into this trap. Gilmore Girls Recently we were given “Swing”, an episode that detailed the life of Stabler’s daughter, Kathleen, disney 100 years of magic dvd box set and her fall into delinquency because of bipolar disorder. Even the once well-behaved children have been shown to have their moment of rebellion; Golden Girls 1-7 dvd consider Julie Stark’s (of the legal drama Shark) improbable pingponging between “sweet, smart heart of the show” and “criminal source of personal drama.” Grey’s anatomy dvd They just can’t make up their minds.
My question is: why? Is it impossible to depict complex teenage characters? Writers seem to be almost seduced by Gilmore Girls the ‘easy drama’ that wayward teens provide, but spend precious little time developing them as people or exploring Scrubs dvd their motives for such actions. It is not the actions themselves that I resent, but the apparent laziness of the writers while creating such characters. We can have complicated hard drinkers and Criminal Minds dvd box set adulterers like the titular Grace of Saving Grace as the leads when they are adults, but when such qualities are present in the younger generation, they are reduced to mere cardboard cut outs, Gossip Girl dvd box set excuses for more drama in the lives of their frazzled parents.
Take the aforementioned Michael Hewes of Damages. Despite having everything he could possibly wish for given to him by his rich disney 100 years of magic dvd box set and successful mother and stepfather, he is—apparently—unhappy. He is portrayed as a budding sociopath in the first season of the legal drama, Golden Girls 1-7 dvd shown sending a bomb to his mother’s workplace and pretending to the school psychiatrist that his mother’s unsettling dreams Desperate Housewives dvd box set are his own. Why? It is inferred that Michael longs to see his icy mother lose her cool, to “rock her world”, as Andrew van de Kamp did to long-suffering mother Bree through the second season Criminal Minds dvd box setof Desperate Housewives, yet nothing is confirmed or truly developed. Little of a maternal bond is shown between Patty and Michael, but nothing is shown to suggest that there would be anything else.