ABC Family is rebranding itself with a vengeance, folks. "A new kind of family," promises the ad campaign. How's the target demo going to feel about an original series with a parental discretion advisory up front? A show on a family network that the family shouldn't watch — it's like a televised Klein bottle.
The Secret Life Of An American Teenager promises an up-to-date angle on fictional adolescence. But there's little on display in the first episode that wasn't done more convincingly — and more entertainingly — in Pretty In Pink. It's unfortunate that Molly Ringwald herself is around to remind us of the unflattering comparison. She plays Amy's mom, and Amy's just found out that her unsatisfying one-night-stand at band camp with the drummer has left her pregnant.
Amy and the rest of her freshman class are forced to carry around props to signify their roles. Amy: French horn. Adrienne, class slut and girlfriend of drummer Ricky: batons. Jack, boyfriend of super-Christian and purity-ring-bearer Grace: letter jacket. I'm stunned that class Lothario Ricky doesn't have a pair of drumsticks jammed in his back pocket, and that Grace isn't toting one of those Bibles that zips up.
Instead, Ricky lugs around a permanent ogle, which we learn from his psychiatrist Ernie Hudson is a defense mechanism against his horrible childhood filled with sexual abuse from his father. By the way, Ernie Hudson? Excellent ghostbuster, very poor shrink. Someone should tell him that the talking cure only works if the patient talks; it's not supposed to be the professional telling the patient what's wrong with him. And Grace has a backpack full of abstinence cliches like "true love waits."
Meanwhile, just to complete the Pretty In Pink picture, we've got a Jon Cryer type named Ben who lusts after Grace — seriously, there's a scene where she walks down the hallway in slow motion and Ben turns slack-jawed to keep her in view while a pop song plays on the soundtrack — but has been advised by his geeky friends to start with Amy, who's more his speed. And a new counselor has just started at Burnt Orange High School, whose single status will undoubtedly get him in trouble with the oversexed fifteen-year-olds (but doesn't have much to do this first episode).