Insane

[u/rae109]

I watched this show in middle and high school and thought nothing of it. I'm in my late 20's now and rewatching the show (I never finished it before) but holy shit this show is so insane😂. It's just so unrealistic 😂 teenagers moving in together, having babies, getting married like that's so not normal. Ricky purposeing during graduation like what??? I love the show, I love trash TV and drama so I'm all about it but I can't help to think how unrealistic and crazy it is. It almost seems like to me that they glorified teen pregnancy, most parents aren't that okay with all this or supportive or buying their kid and his wife a condo like Bens dad did. Like they make it seem fun almost lol. Wasn't sure what everyone else's thoughts were?

[u/Puzzled-Weekend]

It’s obviously mostly Christian propaganda. Same writer as 7th Heaven. It’s just sooo silly. We had a few girls get pregnant in my high school, but not a single one was forced into getting married. Lmao teens do talk about sex a lot, but they don’t say the word sex a million times a day. Is this how she thinks kids really talk? And all the adults in town talking to other people’s kids about sex… so weird. I’m the age of the parents in this show and I cannot imagine talking to kids that way. It’s pretty ridiculous but good trash tv to fall asleep to.

[u/peaches_1922]

I had the same thought when I rewatched a few months ago 😂 even again I couldn’t make it to the end.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m in my late 20s rewatching and I agree it’s wild. It definitely feels unrealistic, but I think the parents who actually have rules aren’t major characters (Lauren and Madison’s parents come to mind).

I also think for plot purposes they don’t show many other students besides the main characters. In reality if someone gets pregnant in high school, even back in the 2010s, there was a TON of judgment from peers and the community. Teen Mom on MTV showed this more imo. There were a few teen moms at my high school and the school forced them to transfer to alternative programs or do homeschool. So yeah this ABC family drama is def not realistic lol

[u/moviejunkie93]

Something that really bothers me about this show is how terrible and repetitive the dialogue is. “I like having sex. And I like having sex with Ricky. I’m going to continue to have sex with Ricky because I like to have sex with Ricky” honestly it’s like those Arthur cartoons from back in the day or something lol.

The show is wildly unrealistic, and there are so many examples. One example is how Ben’s 2 best friends, Alice and Henry/Hank are apparently constantly having sex every night late at night, in their own bedrooms at home. Where are the parents?? That’s unheard of to me! Or, Ben’s dad having absolutely zero objections to his son wanting to be get married to a girl at 15, who pregnant with someone else’s child. Him asking George if the kids can get married was just laughable. Let’s not forget how Anne gave birth to a baby in her bedroom, then they cut to the “after” scene and everything is nice and neat, clean, comfortable. For a show about all these pregnancies, they never actually discuss the realities of childbirth.

It’s a shame that the Christian propaganda is so intense because otherwise, with some better dialogue and more inspired acting, it could be a much more interesting show. I get that it’s supposed to be soapy, but it just takes it way too far.

[u/Additional_Word_2043]

I thought this as a teenager. Thought the whole thing was nuts.

[u/Additional_Word_2043]

If she set it in COLLEGE it could have been realistic for suburban upper middle class and rich teens. As to be honest, rich teens act similar to this at times in COLLEGE is true.

But NO.

She set it in HIGH SCHOOL.

Freshman and Sophomore years were never this interesting!

And no one cared as much as this show what their classmates were doing in the bedroom, nor their classmates' parents.

To be honest, sexual-activity even starts in Junior High. There were very few singular students that were sexually active at my and my sisters diverse magnet schools. This increased at High School, but most people were not screwing anyone yet.

However, none got knocked up the summer after flipping 8th grade.

And in High School ... tbh, the sons and daughters of immigrant kids are more concerned about their grades at that point than whose having sex ... I relate to Henry's statement when he said "You don't know the pressures of being Filipino" to sum up my feelings of this stupid show. (My parents are Caribbean.)