Before Shailene Woodley was a huge movie star, she didn’t even have a speaking part on Everybody Loves Raymond. How cute was 12 year old in that 2004 episode?
Before Shailene Woodley had a little sister on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, she had a big sister on The OC. How awwwdorable was the 11 year old in that 2003 episode?
Shailene Woodley was a guest on Conan O’Brien’s talk show yesterday and she told him she has a special talent with her feet. She can spread her toes far enough apart that she was actually able to clasp a friend’s foot like the average person does someone’s hand. Then she asked the TBS host if he wanted to try it and of course he said yes. Then the two of them took off their shoes and tried to hold feet. Did it work? You will just have to watch to find out.
After five seasons The Secret Life of the American Teenager, the show that made ABC Family what it is today, is saying goodbye at 8p. We don’t know who will end up with who, who will break up with who and what will happen to everyone? And depending which cast member you ask, you will also get a different response if us fans will be happy with the ending.
When Daren Kagasoff, who plays Ricky, was asked, he said “Very happy, very happy. I think the fans will be happy too.” While Ken Baumann, who plays Ben, said, “I think it is a very emotional ending and it’s an ambiguous ending. I know that it’s going to frustrate a lot of people. I’m very curious.” Then he added, “Regardless, I think that it is an appropriate ending. I think that it makes sense with the sort of arch of the entire show and I think that—yes, it’s just really emotional. It just felt right. It just felt right to me when I read the script and was there watching it be filmed.” I guess we will have to see who got it right. And I wonder if Kagasoff liked it because Ricky wound up with Amy, and Baumann didn’t because his character didn’t?
Oh and the two men did agree that tonight’s episode is the best one of the series, so it sounds like the show is going out as good as it was when it started.
Then at 9p The Fosters makes its ABC Family debut. Stef Foster (Teri Polo) is a divorced cop, who is living with her partner Lena Adams (Sherri Saum), who is a HS Vice Principal. Stef has a musically talented son, Brandon (David Lambert), with her ex-husband. The couple also adopted a set of twins, Mariana (Cierra Ramirez) and Jesus (Jake T. Austin), and they come with their own set of problems. The two have different opinions on whether or not they should meet their drug addict mother who abandoned them all of those years ago. Now that she has come back in to the picture, they have to decide whether they want her to.
You would think that there family is full enough just the way it is, well that is all going to change with a phone call. Lena is asked to foster a troubled teen, and as much as she wants to say no to Callie (Maia Mitchell), she can’t. But Callie really doesn’t want to be with them, she just wants to be with one guy. She will runaway from her new home to be with him, and what happens next will change all of their lives.
So how will this family of five change with their new addition(s), we will have to tune in every week to find out in this drama with a lot of heart that is brought to us by Queen As Folk’s Peter Paige and Bradley Bredeweg. The Fosters is the perfect addition to ABC Family and I have a feeling that viewers will be adopting this show very quickly.
Molly Ringwald sat down with Vulture to talk about her new jazz album and they asked her about two of projects that dealt with teen pregnancy. She admitted she doesn’t like that the final products for For Keeps and The Secret Life of American Teenager are glamorizing teen pregnancy.
It’s funny, last night I did a story for the organization the Moth in Santa Barbara — I got home at 3:30 in the morning, so I’m a little foggy today [laughs] — but I actually talked about the movie that I did, For Keeps, in that, because I feel like it glamorized teen pregnancy. And the original script that I’d agreed to do did not. But whenever you do a movie, whenever you do anything, it’s a collaborative effort, and sometimes the script that you agree to do turns into something else. And I was pretty much a teenager at the time, and it was this runaway train that I didn’t know how to stop. And so I was very unhappy about that, and I felt like the movie was, I won’t say unfairly criticized, because I agreed. I really did feel like it glamorized teen pregnancy. And then I did this series, and in the beginning I didn’t feel like the series glamorized teen pregnancy, but then I felt like it ended up doing the same thing. So I feel like I have yet to be involved in a project that shows what it’s really like. They always seem to end up glamorizing it. And I guess when you have a movie star playing the teenager, it’s a temptation to make them look like a young movie star — I did it, and then Shailene [Woodley]. But, yeah, I feel like, unfortunately, both of them do kind of glamorize teen pregnancy.
I have to say that I so agree with her about Secret Life, but I don’t think For Keeps glamorized it. I fell that film showed the struggles of being a teen mom more realistically than most. When it comes to Secret Life, the show makes it seem like teens can live as an adults and yet still have their teenage lives. It started out as positive, but became a show full of bad messaging on all fronts. I wonder if this why we have barely seen Ringwald on the ABC Family in recent years. If it is, I wouldn’t blame her.
