Created and produced by Brenda Hampton (7th Heaven),The Secret Life of An American Teenager was proposed to the Fox network nearly a decade ago. Fox eventually passed on the show, as did Lifetime. Not wanting to give up on the idea, Hampton eventually drafted six scripts for the show and submitted them to a variety of networks including The CW and ABC Family. Hampton’s persistence paid off, after ABC Family picked up the series, and the premiere gave ABC Family the highest premiere viewership ratings ever for any program on the network.
Secret Life stars Shailene Woodley (Crossing Jordan, The O.C.), Molly Ringwald (yes, the Molly Ringwald from The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink), India Eisley, and Ken Baumann (Riding the 9). Their performances anchor this otherwise melodramatic and cliché-ridden show in reality, offering characters that seem to have some depth to them.
Each of the characters on this show are built for massive melodrama. Amy Boykewich (Woodley) is a fifteen -year-old freshman who plays French horn in the band. She finds herself pregnant after a none-too-memorable one night stand at band camp. Ben (Baumann) is the male version of Amy. A nice band geek, who doesn’t seem to know his right foot from his left a lot of the time. While Amy and Ben are the “good” kids, Secret Life also gives us a promiscuous pair of teenagers. Ricky (Daren Kagasoff), who is so compelled to sleep with a succession of girls (he is the father of Amy’s baby) that he’s in therapy for it, and Adrian (Raisa), who wears lip-gloss like a tramp stamp, but underneath it all, you get the feeling she’s just a very lonely girl.
I had never seen Secret Life before receiving it a couple of weeks ago on DVD. I was surprised at how many groups of people the show tries to touch upon. The Christian point of view is represented by Grace (Megan Park, The Butcher’s Daughter), a cheerleader, and Jack (Greg Finley), a football player. Of course, at the beginning they were dating each other, but peer pressures and infidelities broke them apart. Anne and George Juergens (Ringwald, Mark Derwin), are Amy’s parents. She and George have a very rocky marriage. She eloped with George shortly after she discovered she was pregnant with Amy at 18, and George cheated on her with Adrian’s mother. Kathleen and Marshall Bowman, played by Josie Bissett (“Melrose Place”) and John Schneider (Smallville), whose take on his character is so goofy here that it recalls his years as Bo on The Dukes of Hazzard. He’s supposed to be a gynecologist, but he looks, talks, and acts more like an old surfer dude.
Secret Life doesn’t really take an open and honest look at teen pregnancy. Amy goes on as long as she can without telling her parents she is pregnant. However, it doesn’t make much sense, since her younger sister (India Eisley) can tell she is gaining weight and her body is changing. Despite this, the denial of her pregnancy to her parents carries well into the first season.
Despite some flaws, The Secret Life of the American Teenager has sensitive performances from the younger members of the cast that help to explain the series success. Teen pregnancy isn’t an easy thing to deal with, and Shailene Woodley and her young co-stars do an admirable job of taking us through the peaks and valleys.
The video quality is Disney decent-nothing special, but no deficiencies either. It’s just a good-but-not-great picture with a fair amount of detail for a DVD, colors that seem true enough (especially skin tones) and a pleasing widescreen aspect ratio (1.78:1).
Same with the audio, which is a solid-but-unspectacular English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround with French and Spanish subtitles.
The set doesn’t offer much in the way of extras. There’s a brief “On the Set with the Cast” featurette that covers the usual ground, and a bonus song download, “It’s Over,” by Jesse McCartney.
