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It's a shame this show was never made available commercially, especially considering Francis Coppola's film is so incomplete without it. The series, created and produced by Coppola, starts up right where the movie ends, introduces the tomboy named "Scout," and continues on through about a year of the characters' lives afterwards as the Curtis brothers struggle to stay together. Sadly, the series lasted less than one season, despite Alan Shapiro & S.E. Hinton's pilot episode being the highest rated show in FOX's history up to that point. Jay Ferguson's intelligent portrayal of Ponyboy surpasses even C. Thomas Howell's in the film, and Tim Shepard (a major character in the show) blows his movie predecessor off the screen. The pilot and series end on a high-note, perfectly balancing out the tragic ending to the film.

Only thing wrong with this movie-- the decision to "update" the story to make it contemporary. Some novels lend themselves to that kind of reinterpretation easily, but S.E. Hinton's early works aren't among them. The book, set in the late 60s, was essentially a follow-up to "The Outsiders," picking up a few months after its TV Series left off. The character of Ponyboy was taken out of this film for obvious reasons (why would he still be 16 in 1985?), but other Outsiders (most notably Tim Shepard) remained intact without aging a day-- effectively destroying any continuity it might have had with the film it was undoubtedly cashing in on. As result of this questionable rewrite, the novel's focus on the greaser/soc conflict dying off is completely absent, as are other time period-specific subplots. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted this to stand on its own from Coppola's then-recent "Outsiders" adaptation, but this likely hurt "That Was Then...This Is Now" in more ways than it helped it.