American High

While I only watch the first two episodes shown by Fox and it's hard to say much. I must say this was a rather interesting show while it lasted. It was like the Real World (the MTV show), only more interesting. What I really liked about this show is seeing real teens instead of flat stereotypes we see in the movies. It's a shame that Fox decided to pull the plug before giving it a second chance. Fox could had been showing the rest of the series last summer instead of re-running the same nine episodes of Titus over and over again.

American High is one of the worst TV shows I have ever seen.

First off, they try to capitalize on the success of Survivor, by making a million knockoffs of it, without realizing what a terrible show itself it is. And they have the most godawful camerawork known to man. It is bad, but in a good merit, it makes it seem more realisitic, not like Survivor.

But that's not what makes the show terrible. What does is the fact that every single kid on this show is an obnoxious, self-destructive loser who all do nothing but party. An excellent example of this is the character Morgan. He introduces us to the show by saying "Blow your arm off, and suffer the consequences". Then he says "never do homework, and just party". Then, he says, "my biggest fear is not becoming something in life". That is the most bizarre and ironic thing I have ever heard.

Oh, and they only show the glamorous side of high school. Every character is happy, is always having fun, and has a girlfriend/boyfriend, or they play sports, an so on. Okay, sure.

While Fox didn't have the nerve to continue running this fine program, PBS picked it up and not only ran the entire season once, but is re-running it summer 2001 (check out pbs.org for local times). There's no way to compare this show to Big Brother or any other "reality TV" shows. This is not filmed on a studio soundstage or in a professionally decorated mansion with contestants who are trying to win $1,000,000 and/or start an acting career. These are real kids who are struggling with real issues. They're not driven by winning money or becoming a VJ. Because of this, they are probably the most fascinating characters on TV in the past few years.

The reruns that I saw in the summer of two-thousand-one on PBS were very interesting, seeing how other people live their lives, and what obstacles they had to face.

Now that I look back I wonder why FOX canceled this series, sure it does not have very much-- wait, actually it has no hype, but it's still a very good series.

If they happen to do something like this again, hopefully they will put some hype into it, it might make the show last longer. The idea was great, the content was good, I'd rate this show 3.5 of 4 stars.

I have to say that when I first read/heard about the premise of this show, I thought that it would be simply crap. I've viewed quite a few of these "reality" shows (eg. "Survivor", "Big Brother",...) and some of these shows are almost laughable. I didn't even bother to check out the first couple of episodes of "American High" that were shown on Fox. I had no idea what I was missing out on. I was surfing through channels, unable to find anything good to watch at 10 PM on a Wednesday night. I stopped on PBS, which is a very rare occurrence, and I found a show that actually held my attention. I had no idea what I was watching until a little bit into the show. I was very surprised at how good this show actually was. I think it's very interesting and informative to see so many different types of teenagers. Whether you love them or hate them, you get a good look at what their lives are really like. Now I really look forward to watching this show every week (It's on for an hour, but it only seems like twenty minutes to me). I never got to see the beginning of this series, and I hope that PBS either re-runs the series in it's entirety or that they start all over again, following new teens. This show has really been an enlightening pleasure to watch. This show gets 10 stars in my book.