Have you ever wondered where you will be 10 years from now? What career path life will take you on? Will you be living with your parents, or alone in a single-bedroom apartment? Will you be happily married and living in a colonial with two kids and a dog, or will you already be divorced and given up on love?
At one point or another, everyone thinks about his or her future but no one can predict where he or she will end up.
The ABC show “My Generation,” which airs Thursdays at 8 p.m., is depicted as a comedy-drama that follows the lives of high school classmates in Austin, Texas, 10 years after graduation. The show is set in present day and has flashbacks to the students’ high school days.
Entirely fictional, “My Generation” can best be described as a tedious one hour program punctuated by high moments.
When the trailer for the show first came out during the summer, it promised to be an interesting drama that would motivate viewers to rethink stereotypes and the idea of maintaining the status quo. However, the trailer proves to be better than the actual show, which might have been enjoyable were it not entirely fictional.
Although the characters are affected by real-life events such as Sept. 11, the economic crisis and the war in Afghanistan, everything else in the show is made up. The show has qualities of both soap operas and reality shows, but it lacks a certain element, which makes it bland.
What was fun to watch in the season premiere was all of the labels that the producers gave to the different characters when they were in high school, and how these labels became almost ironic 10 years later. During the season premiere, viewers were introduced to the different characters and it was shown how they are all connected in one way or another.
During the season premiere, Steven Foster, the over-achiever who turns into a bartender/surfer, is informed that the girl he slept with on prom night (Caroline Chung, who goes from a wallflower to an assertive single mom) has a nine-year-old son who is his.
Foster, who dropped out of Yale after his father was sentenced to prison for committing fraud, is connected to Kenneth Finley, the nerd turned schoolteacher. Finley’s father committed suicide after the company that Foster’s dad worked for cheated many individuals, including Finley’s dad, of their life savings.
Finely is connected to his pregnant ex-girlfriend Dawn Barbuso, who is now his temporary roommate. Barbuso, who was the punk back in high school, is now married and is a soon-to-be mother of Rolly Mark’s son. Mark, once the jock, but now a soldier in Afghanistan, is linked to Andrew Holt, who was and still is the rich kid who is now in a loveless marriage with the beauty queen, Jackie Vachs. It is hinted that Holt still has feelings for his high school sweetheart Brenda Serrano, the brain turned aide to a congresswoman. Serrano is connected to the Falcon, who was the rock star in high school and now calls himself a DJ/producer. All nine characters all know each other and the show centers around how 10 years after high school graduation, their dreams and aspirations drastically changed.
In reality, how many people actually stay in touch on a regular basis with nine of their high school friends 10 years after high school graduation? Forget about 10 years, how many people are actually close with that many high school friends a few years into college? In a small town it might possible, but even that is highly unlikely.