Take a photo of a barcode or cover
328 reviews for:
Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson's Creek: How Seven Teen Shows Transformed Television
Thea Glassman
3.88 AVERAGE
328 reviews for:
Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson's Creek: How Seven Teen Shows Transformed Television
Thea Glassman
3.88 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
emotional
funny
informative
This book takes a look back at some of the most influential teen shows from the 90s and 00s. As a millennial this definitely strikes a nostalgic chord because I remember watching many of these shows growing up. It is amazing to realize how groundbreaking some of these themes and scenes were at the time when you consider how far we have come with our media. I would love to go back and watch these shows now as an adult with the perspective gained from this book.
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plays in millennial nostalgia and I am here for it. I need to go back and rewatch the tv of my youth.
If your niche is pop culture or entertainment history, this is a must read. Glassman dives (almost too) deep into the development of our favorite teen TV series. I appreciated her journalistic approach to storytelling, but felt that by the end of each show's chapter I was inundated by the amount of industry name dropping. Sidenote: I'm just over trying to catch my breath from my high school and college crushes on Jordan Catalano, Pacey, and Seth Cohen.
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
interesting read. kind of crazy to see how far teen shows have come
funny
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
This felt like 6 shows that had adults playing teens, and 1 that actually cast teens. After Fresh Prince, So-Called, and Dawson’s, it felt like the book deteriorated into ways show business is horrible to people - people in show business, fans, and people in general - and how that was expressed in the next four shows. There was a lot of “no one had ever done this before,” but she said the exact same thing about the show before it when it did pretty much the same thing.
Maybe I’m not the target audience? I grew up watching Fresh Prince and Dawson’s Creek. The rest of the shows I never watched and hadn’t even heard of some of them. I have seen some episodes of Friday Night Lights, but everyone I knew who watched that show was a middle aged woman, so I never saw it as a teen show. When I asked these fans now, they were all baffled that anyone would call it a teen show. “It had teens in it, but it wasn’t specifically aimed at teens. It was a family show maybe” was the general consensus.
If Glassman was trying to bring new fans to these shows, she utterly failed. At first, I thought I’d check out the shows I hadn’t seen before, but that quickly deteriorated. I do want to check out My So-Called Life. Hearing about the crappy way Apatow treated the Freaks and Geeks cast, I’m not about to support that. Five minutes into the discussion of The OC the creators were quoted as saying “too Jewish” twice. Nope. Then it turned out the directors and crew talked crap about the actors behind their backs. Double hope. I was actually really excited to watch Glee. I knew several fans when it was on the air, and I just didn’t watch it for whatever reason. Then she talked about the writer/creator of Glee venting his own body shaming, homophobia, racism, and general bad humanity through the characters - making actors say and do horrible things to each other for his own joy? Hard pass.
If you grew up glued to the TV in the 90s and early 2000s, this book is pure nostalgia. As soon as I saw Dawson’s Creek in the title, I knew it was for me. Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek dives deep into the making of and behind-the-scenes stories of some of the teen shows that shaped a generation. I’ve watched (and rewatched) four of these shows – Fresh Prince, Dawson’s, The O.C., and Friday Night Lights. I only made it through the first couple seasons of Glee and have just seen a few episodes of the others, but I still knew enough to find it all really interesting.
One thing I loved: Glassman shows how each series paved the way for the next – how the risks, successes, and even flops of one show opened the door for the next generation of teen.
Highly recommend if you love pop culture deep dives and reliving your teenage (or still current) TV obsessions.