"Cautionary Tales for Teens"

Martin Tahse's After School Specials are a new addition to the YA DVD collection. This article does a good job of describing both the context in which these shows were created and originally received, and how they might come off now. It turns out they were never supposed to be hilarious.

Try out some of these shows (there are scads!), then see if you agree with this statement from the article:

"Indeed, today's teenagers are precociously cynical; raised on Harry Potter and MTV, Cook says, they are more accustomed to dark themes and quick cuts. They prefer TV to talk to them sideways, from odd angles. If her students today saw an After School Special, she says, 'they'd puke. . . . They would find it draggy.'"