22 Teen Drama Storylines That Need To Be Retired

As a teenager, I absolutely WORSHIPPED Chuck and Blair from Gossip Girl, and I wasn't the only one. Presenting abusive, creepy, and toxic behavior as romantic is so damaging to young girls AND boys, and it's time to just give it up. Blair ending up with Chuck on Gossip Girl and Lydia saying she still loved Jackson on Teen Wolf were both bad, but Serena calling Dan’s incessant stalking and invasion of her privacy a “love letter” on Gossip Girl really took the cake for me.

I'm fine with inter-parent relationships on a show (Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa McCall from Teen Wolf SHOULD 100% HAVE ended up together, change my mind). But why is it always between the parents of two characters who are dating/previously dated (like Rufus and Lily on Gossip Girl, Alice and FP on Riverdale, and Melissa and Chris on Teen Wolf)?? It just makes everything weird and kind of incestuous, and it's completely unnecessary.

Bonus points if these parents' other kids are dating and the secret kid means they share a half-brother (like in the case of Scott from Gossip Girl and Charles from Riverdale, shown above)...which is then super awkward. Also, do this many people have secret children with their high school sweethearts, then stay in their hometown and raise their other kids right next to said high school sweetheart without ever telling them about the secret kid?

Does this really happen that often?? If I ever find out I have a secret half-brother, I am going to make SURE he gets a DNA test. I also feel like Sean from 90210, Chic from Riverdale, and Derek/Ian from One Tree Hill were all super sketchy from the start and people should not have fallen for their stories.

I am 100% here for a mental health storyline that's done well. Teenagers absolutely need to see depression and other mental illnesses depicted. BUT, so often we see a despondent (usually male, though Cheryl from Riverdale is a good female example) character attempt suicide (like Nathan on One Tree Hill) or threaten to attempt suicide (like Chuck on Gossip Girl). They're saved by a good friend or girlfriend, and then IT IS LITERALLY NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. We never see them getting help.

I feel like shows do this to avoid the problem I just brought up...aka so they can use a suicide attempt or self-harm for shock value without having to deal with the repercussions of a character with mental illness. It's super triggering and inappropriate, and even further glamorizes self-harm and suicide.

I obviously didn't include the actual triggering parts of the above scenes (that would sort of defeat the point of me calling them out), but the screenshots are from the scenes I'm referring to. From the graphic sexual assaults of Hannah, Jessica, and Tyler on 13 Reasons Why to Alex's graphic suicide attempt on One Tree Hill, teen TV shows often would rather show something for shock value than be mindful of their viewers who may have actually experienced these things.

I'm not sure why teen shows still find this "edgy" (looking at you, Riverdale). It wasn't when Pacey slept with his teacher in Dawon's Creek, and it's not now, either. It's creepy and gross, and the actors playing 16-year-olds sleeping with their teachers are never ACTUALLY 16. That makes these relationships look like they're between two consenting adults and obscures the true creepiness. If Lucy Hale had been an actual 16-year-old, seeing her with Ezra on Pretty Little Liars would've been a lot more disturbing.

Tripp and Serena on Gossip Girl were problematic, but the One Tree Hill example pictured above was particularly bad. Alice was super abusive toward Mouth, and then Skills suggested it might be because she had feelings for him, so Mouth kissed her out of the blue. Then it turns out Skills was right and they started sleeping together. I'm not saying these things never happen, but there's just such an inherent power structure in the boss-employee relationship, and it makes these examples just gross. The idea that people are looking to their employees for sexual partners is disturbing.

Veronica and Betty's kiss on Riverdale was 100% unnecessary. It was literally just to give viewers something to GIF, and to tease them with a relationship that would never happen. And Teen Wolf played up Stiles and Derek's relationship so much because the viewers loved it, but never took the logical step of verbally acknowledging any sort of attraction between them because that could turn off some viewers. Either don't make the relationships sexually charged or just put them together!

Adam literally bullied Eric on Sex Education and later was ashamed to be with him. Paige tried to drown Emily for swim team–related reasons on Pretty Little Liars and then they DATED for most of the show. Kurt and Blaine became so toxic, but Glee presented them as their token gay couple. Queer representation is great, but it feels like there are very rarely any positive couples to root for, and that reinforces the idea that queer couples are wrong or don't work.

I really loved both Adrianna and Gia on 90210 and Marissa and Alex on The O.C., and both were cut too short. That's fine — not every relationship needs to last forever. But having these relationships never mentioned again made it feel like Adrianna and Marissa were just going through a "phase." The shows acted like they were finally going to give some great pansexual or bisexual representation, and then they completely backed away and pretended it never happened. Even though these were actual queer relationships, it still felt like a form of queer-baiting to me.

I've talked a lot about how teen dramas do queer couples dirty, but the #BuryYourGays trope is the absolute worst example of this. Queer couples (often ones viewers love — like Willow and Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer — or have just gotten started, like Clarke and Lexa on The 100) have their relationships ended by one or both parties dying suddenly and unnecessarily, in a way that often doesn't further the plot. It's almost as if queer characters are expendable or the show doesn't actually know how to write a queer couple.

Look, I get it. Creepy mental hospitals run by evil doctors (like Eichen House on Teen Wolf or Radley on Pretty Little Liars) make fun storylines! But only having these, and not good hospitals and doctors, perpetuates ugly stereotypes about mental hospitals that could prevent teenagers from seeking help. Effy's example was particularly bad because Skins was just a show about normal teenagers, and her psychiatrist ended up being evil and killing her boyfriend. We just...don't need that.

God, Clay really started to piss me off in later seasons of 13 Reasons Why. And in The Vampire Diaries, Stefan acted like he was the good brother, when in reality he’d killed hundreds of people, likely more than Damon. And don't even get me STARTED on Lucas Scott from One Tree Hill. Boy was a serial cheater and pretended he was so wise, when he was actually calling a different girl "the one" every week. These characters exist to be the moral compass of their shows and teach us lessons, which means that when they do bad things, the show seems to present them as "right" or "okay." Even when they're definitely not.

Does this actually happen? Of course it does! But does it happen as often as teen dramas depict? No!!! Teen dramas make you feel like if you didn't fall madly in love in high school, you're just never going to find love. Or that your toxic high school relationship was actually the most romantic pairing you'll ever experience. Let the characters branch out for once!

Look, love triangles are a staple of the genre, and sometimes I even enjoy them (shoutout to Damon, Stefan, and Elena from The Vampire Diaries). But most of the time they go on WAY too long. If a character is still deciding which of two people he or she wants to be with five seasons in, maybe he or she shouldn't be with either of them (cough cough, LUCAS SCOTT, cough cough). One Tree Hill really needed to give it a rest.

I already mentioned that car crashes are a staple. But for some reason, after those car crashes, teen dramas love to put characters in comas and have them hallucinate what their lives would’ve been like if the events of the pilot had been different. Like on The O.C. where Ryan imagined his life without the Cohens, or on One Tree Hill when Nathan imagined his life without Dan raising him. Has this ever actually happened to anyone???

HAS ANYONE EVER HAD A DREAM IN BLACK AND WHITE AND/OR SET IN THE 1940S?? NO?? THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT! Teen shows simply do not have the budget to pull these off well.

When a character comes back from the dead in a non-supernatural show (like Jim on 90210 or Bart on Gossip Girl), it's just way too unrealistic. It's definitely more acceptable on a supernatural show (like when Alaric came back to life on The Vampire Diaries), but still: If we think people can just come back from the dead, then deaths on the show lose any impact.