I was watching The O.C. recently when this thought struck me: three of our teen dramas have introduced a night club as a way of gathering the characters and featuring musical guests.
Beverly Hills 90210 started the trend (as they did with almost every teen drama characteristic) in 1994 with the After Dark.
One Tree Hill followed suit with TRIC in 2004.
The O.C. debuted The Bait Shop a few weeks later.
Dawson’s Creek was an exception, and we’ve yet to see if Gossip Girl and 90210 will do something similarly.
Another common feature: the evil character that, after a health crisis, vows to change his ways. On The O.C. it was Caleb and on One Tree Hill it’s Dan.
That’s enough randomness for now. Until next time…
TeenDramaWhore 
Well, 90210 had the Script play at the beach club and Gossip Girl now has an underground club at Chuck’s hotel (that they could potentially have bands play at) so maybe the characters will start going to these places more. And Dawson’s Creek had Hell’s Kitchen, but there were only a few times where we actually saw performances there. I think it’s a great that these shows have been able to get such great groups to play on the shows.
Those are good examples, too. Curious to see if 90210 and Gossip Girl really set it up like BH90210, OTH and The O.C. did. It’s almost a require cliche by now. But in all seriousness, like you said, it is pretty amazing how many bands they get and how many fans those bands earn from the appearances.
Just to add to your last thought about the evil characters changing their ways when they are sick you should at original 90210’s Valerie to that list. she thought she contracted HIV and was going to change her ways if her test came out negative.
That’s a good one! I don’t quite remember when/where I was talking about this but that is a great example. Oh, Valerie…
haha you were just talking about it in your last paragraph on here. it starts another common feature….
Oh, wow. Right. Forgot that I stuck that in there. Sorry.
I think using the clubs to introduce musical guests is really amazing; I can honestly say that a good amound of the music on my iPod was introduced to me from the episodes of OTH in which bands were playing at TRIC. I think having these live performances really adds to the programs and separates them from regular television dramas
I’m glad you feel that way, Izzie. While I think all of that is true to an extent, sometimes it just felt so contrived and repetitive.