BREAKING OUT ALL OVER; CREATORS OF NEW TEEN SHOWS MAKE THEIR BID FOR CREDIBILITY.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

Meghan Green (Anne Hathaway), a typically clever and cute TV teen, introduces herself in ``Get Real'' by proclaiming, directly to the camera, ``I know what you're thinking - this is another one of those smart-ass shows where the kids talk to the audience.'' She adds, practically redundantly, ``There is nothing more obnoxious than self-aware teens who know more about life's great mysteries than their parents.''

It's not just a canny piece of self-criticism or a pre-emptive strike against viewers who would likely voice the same complaint. It's a tacit admission that TV's teen genre has gotten huge, ungainly and familiar - and series creators will do anything to try to distinguish their product from the competition.

Which will get increasingly difficult this season. No fewer than eight new series focusing on teen and high school life will premiere this fall on the five major networks, with at least two more in the wings as midseason replacements. In addition, five new series join the 20-something genre, in which characters sit around and grouse about their disaffection (other shows feature characters in their 20s, but in those series they actually do things, not just bemoan their lot in life).

This onslaught comes to us courtesy of the success of a spate of prior series, particularly ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' ``Dawson's Creek,'' ``Felicity'' and ``Seventh Heaven,'' but also sitcoms like ``That '70s Show,'' ``Sabrina the Teenage Witch'' and ``Moesha,'' a relative success story on the lowly UPN network. Add the endless stream of teen-friendly movies - from the horror franchises like ``Scream'' to the teen steam of ``Cruel Intentions,'' the rebel-jock incongruities of ``Varsity Blues'' and the crass (yet sensitive) gags of ``American Pie'' - and it was only a matter of time before youth culture swallowed the country whole.

Hence, this season finds teen-agers exploring high school's unforgiving caste system in shows as diverse as the gracefully comic ``Freaks and Geeks'' and the brazen ``Popular,'' which is sort of the broadcast equivalent of the girl in high school who'd do anything to get boys to like her. There are teens surviving family turmoil (``Safe Harbor,'' ``Get Real,'' ``Odd Man Out''). There are evil teens (``Manchester Prep,'' a spinoff of the film ``Cruel Intentions'') and teen cops (``The Badland''). There are even teens making close encounters with aliens (``Roswell'').

``It's kind of depressing,'' laments Paul Feig, creator and supervising producer of ``Freaks and Geeks.'' ``People told me, `Boy, you really planned this well, doing this high school show,' but I was looking for something different to do, a realistic high school set in the Midwest. Now, there's a million high school shows.''

Judd Apatow, former writer on ``The Larry Sanders Show'' and executive producer on ``Freaks and Geeks,'' says he knew there were a lot of teen shows but was surprised at the number that were picked up. ``There were eight or nine pilots, and usually, two or three would get on.

``It's a weird phenomenon in Hollywood - no matter what your idea may be, by the time you're in production there are eight others in the pipeline,'' he adds. ``The inspiration for this show was that these types of students were not represented on TV. We felt it was a topic that had not been done to death. I still feel that way, despite the fact that there's a lot of high school shows.''

Jason Katims, former writer on ``My So-Called Life'' and executive producer of ``Roswell'' says he was anticipating it, but was surprised at the level of the expansion. ``When I was on `My So-Called Life,' the teen market was one no one at the networks cared about at all. They didn't value it. Part of the reason `My So-Called Life' had a short, difficult life was that it played to a not-as-valued market. It's ironic to watch that market being chased so much today.''

All this comes at a time when Hollywood is under scrutiny for pandering to and corrupting young viewers. Says Joss Whedon, creator of ``Buffy,'' which had the airing of its season finale controversially delayed after the mass killings in a high school in Littleton, Colo., ``The (WB) was very concerned about (an episode titled) `Earshot,' which had to do with a kid bringing a gun to school. I don't think what happened is going to change the way we tell stories or the kind of stories we tell. We're not a show about issues - it's about emotions, it's about the way people deal with the issues in their lives. And we're not out to push the hot button or be controversial.

``We got burned by a very unfortunate coincidence with `Earshot,' but it was kind of unusual for us to do an episode like that. `Buffy' has become the show you dredge up when you're talking about Columbine, which is kind of unfortunate. I think it's a responsible show. We're always concerned about the kind of message we're sending out, and it didn't take a tragedy to make us concerned - we always have been.''

Indeed, there are some series that rise above the miasma of mindless youthful cavorting. Shows that offer sage looks at the high school years, that explore issues facing young viewers without overtly preaching, that adults can enjoy alongside the shows' target demographic.

Those responsible for the best of these series both old and new - ``Buffy,'' ``That '70s Show,'' ``Freaks and Geeks'' and ``Roswell'' - offered a series of guidelines delineating how their approaches differ from the norm.

Lesson 1: There's nothing normal about high school.

While most people spend the majority of their adulthoods fitting into society, in high school that quest isn't so clean-cut or simple. Acceptance comes at a premium - and a cost - and teen-agers are still trying to feel comfortable within their own skins, let alone within social circles. ``There are only five popular kids in any high school in America,'' declares Mark Brazill, creator and executive producer of ``That '70s Show,'' a sitcom about a group of Wisconsin kids coming of age in the post-Watergate era. ``That's why the majority of humans relate to characters who are not popular, because most of us weren't. All these kids (on the show), for the most part, are left of popular.

``There's a huge amount of pain inherent to that age - your feelings are so big,'' he adds. ``You never have feelings like that again. That's why it's so relatable - it's such a unique period in your life. I'm glad it's over, I gotta tell you. Even recently, I've had nightmares about not having my homework done. Wow - what an impression it leaves!''

Apatow, whose ``Freaks and Geeks'' takes place a mere half-decade later, adds, ``Our era is pre-tech, before cell phones, most computers, answering machines; it was the beginning of VCRs and cable. But there were the same cliques then as now; you were defined early by peers. If peers decided you were a wimp, you remained a wimp for a very long time. There were big kids who were bad at sports, but no one seemed to notice - they just knew you weren't very good. You'd say, `I went 1 for 3 today, and so did Bruno,' but no one else made that connection.''

Series on the WB have taken the evergreen theme of teen-age alienation to an otherworldly level. ``Shows like `Roswell' and `Buffy' - they're more metaphorical,'' observes Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of ``Buffy.'' ``The monsters (on `Buffy') were just the horrors of high school personified, and there are ways to teach lessons that aren't necessarily as obvious.

``What's wonderful about Buffy is that she is universal - everybody knows what it's like at some point not to fit in,'' Gellar continues. ``Part of the episode that was (delayed for broadcast) had a lot to do with that, about how people misunderstand other people. Everyone thinks that it's only their pain and that only they feel it. But everyone feels it on different levels.''

So it goes with ``Roswell,'' which is based on a series of juvenile novels about young alien survivors of the Roswell UFO crash befriending high school students (Gale Berman, an executive producer on ``Buffy,'' first brought the material to Katims' attention). Says Katims, ``It's a wonderful age to write about. The metaphor for the entire series is when teens feel like aliens. It's a show about outsiders coming together. They come into this world, they try to blend in but don't feel they belong. Those issues are at the core of what the series is about.''

He admits, ``Frankly, when we first told people the idea, before anyone saw the pilot, there was always a little bit of a chuckle - aliens in high school. We had to do the pilot with a certain amount of integrity, so they couldn't dismiss us as a joke. If we are to succeed, you have to not believe this is true but believe it within the context of rules we set. I'm proud the show comes off - you feel for these alien characters.''

There's a scene in the pilot of which Katims is especially proud - the aliens attend an ornate street party that reproduces, in lavishly tacky fashion, a UFO crash. While everyone else dances and laughs and screams, the three watch on with bittersweet expressions. ``More than anything, that's a way of encapsulating the entire series,'' Katims says. ``We see that it's not very funny to them, and we're with them at that moment. We're with them, we relate to the aliens. To me the goal as we move through the series is to live through them as much as we do the human characters.''

Lesson 2: Don't talk down to kids.

David Nutter, director and executive producer of ``Roswell'' and former ``X-Files'' director, can attest to the importance of refusing to pander to the teen audience after suffering through severe studio indifference toward the theatrical release of ``Disturbing Behavior,'' which received an executive-mandated hatchet job just before hitting theaters.

``They said, `This is just for teen-agers. It's good enough; they're just high school kids,' '' recalls Nutter, the pain still in his voice. ``If that's your attitude, then you've lost. You have to respect your audience, and teens can be the toughest audience of all - if they smell a rat, they'll turn you off in a second. ``I worked on that picture for a year, being told, `It's just for kids, Mikey will eat anything, don't push your luck toward broadening your audience.' Then they came to me with `Roswell' and said, `Make this smart, we don't want to make it juvenile,' and I was so ready to do it. I had had my hands slapped for the past year for trying to do that.'' Gellar, whose own series was based on a tepidly received movie, says of ``Buffy's'' cinematic incarnation, ``A lot of people learn in feature films (that) you lose a lot of control (when the movie goes into production), and I don't know if the movie was the initial concept. I always felt that the pilot we did was really what the movie was supposed to be about. The Buffy in the movie, you couldn't have a series about her - there wasn't that much interesting about her.''

Feig says he originally conceived ``Freaks and Geeks'' as an HBO series. ``From the first day I put pen to paper, I saw it as an adult show,'' he says. ``The only way to do it, if you do these characters speaking honestly, is to throw out anything that doesn't sound like something a kid would say. We've had to do it, even at the expense of the funniest joke, because we don't want the kids to be too clever - we've seen too many precocious kids. If we do it right, kids will believe it, and adults will be nostalgic - `Oh my god, that's what I used to do.' ''

``After `X-Files' hit, everyone was saying, `Let's do more, let's make it more out there and weird,' but that's not the secret,'' Nutter says. ``The secret is creating an atmosphere that's real and characters you believe in. You believe in their passion in what they're doing and they're real people. Once the audience begins to care, then you can show them all sorts of strange things, and it will affect them.''

Lesson 3: High school kids can behave in a way that 20-somethings can't.

These shows boast tremendous crossover appeal for viewers well beyond their teens, which is difficult to imagine saying about, say, ``Wasteland'' or ``Cold Feet'' or ``Jack & Jill,'' shows in which the protagonists founder in their ennui and lack of commitment to anything. Apatow puts it most bluntly: ``There's something inherently unsympathetic about white professionals trying to get their life together. They have all the tools for happiness - and nothing but their neuroses to hold them back. It's easy to relate to but hard to like. Whereas with high school, that was pretty hard for most of us, so you can't help but root for the kids to survive. You can feel good about rooting for yuppies to fail.''

``That '70s Shows's'' Brazill adds, ``The angst in the 20-something shows - you're expected to get over it. It's interesting and admirable to struggle with it in your teens, but in your 20s, you're expected to grow up. You need to move on. That's why there's no resonance (in those shows) - people don't relate to whiners. If you say the things you said in high school in your 20s, you're a whiner. In high school, people just think, `Oh, that's a tough time.' ''

Feig, at least, understands where the grousing comes from: ``When you're in high school, the world is still your oyster. You can say, `Maybe I'll be an astronaut,' and not have it be insane. You don't have to choose until college. Nothing brings you down to earth faster than saying, `OK, I have to be a CPA.' Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you're not dancing among the stars anymore.

``In your teens, you are filled with possibility, whereas when you get older, you say, `I guess my life is gonna be this,' and sometimes it's something great and sometimes not. In high school and college, you can still choose to be a doctor or a potato farmer, and it's fun to watch those decisions.''

Lesson 4: Don't portray adults as idiots.

These series offer adult characters who may seem goofy and dim-witted as seen through the kids' eyes, but there's a certain truth to whatever they're trying to impart to them.

``When you see teen-age pictures, adults are portrayed as these two-dimensional stick figures,'' says ``Roswell's'' Nutter. ``That was the last thing I wanted to do. In (the Charlie Brown animated shows), when you hear the parents, they go, `Wah wah wah.' But that's a cartoon - you do something like that in real life, you're gonna get killed.'' Hence, veteran character actor William Sadler was cast as the town's sheriff, a man with a vested personal interest in divining the secrets of the aliens.

``The adults represented the element that makes bad behavior fun,'' Brazill recalls of his own teen years. ``When you're living at home and not supposed to do this, and living under that thumb, naughtiness is so much fun.''

Still, he points out that the character of Red, the father of the show's main character, Eric, has his eccentricities but is pretty much on the ball as a parent. ``Red's very bright when it comes to knowing what the kids are doing,'' Brazill says. ``Over the summer, I heard two different opinions come up. One said that Red was a good example of parent and one said he was irresponsible and a hard-ass. I thought, he must be perfect.''

``It's very hard to be a parent - the nature of being a kid is to test all the boundaries, to experiment,'' observes Apatow. ``And it's painful as a parent to watch that or try to control it. Parents make an enormous amount of mistakes. We're going to show how difficult it is to deal with a child who's trying to figure out who she is. Part of that is that the kids will do bad things, illegal things, stupid things. Parents will think, they're doing a terrible job, but it has nothing to do with their job.

``Kids can like their parents, but that has nothing to do with the conflicts that have to occur,'' he continues. ``No matter how good you are as a parent, your kid might try pot or drink, and that doesn't mean you did a bad job. But your kid does need to be taught enough to think about whether he or she should continue doing it. We're not going to shy away from that struggle; it will not be a two-dimensional aspect of the show.''

Lesson 5: Acknowledge that we live in a post-Columbine society - but don't try to change it.

Just one of the sad legacies of the series of recent mass shootings is the persisting perception that TV and movies could change everything by exclusively presenting blandly beatific portrayals of suburban life.

``I do believe that we have responsibilities in entertainment, but I do believe that it's our job, also, to entertain,'' says Gellar. ``And it is not necessarily our responsibility to teach children their lessons.''

``I hate preaching,'' Brazill says flatly. ``People don't give a s---. It stops being funny. `All in the Family' did so many things you can't do today. `All in the Family' and `Soap' and `Maude' - none of those shows preached to people, and none did a `very special episode,' which came out of the '80s and ruined comedy with the idea that the content was so heavy you couldn't be funny. I hate that.''

Which is not to say that ``That '70s Show'' has remained resolutely wacky and issue-free. In the show's first season, its characters dealt with sexism, birth control and a gay character outing himself.

Other writers have done some soul-searching since Columbine.

``Everybody who's a writer for TV has to think about how to address that,'' says ``Freaks' '' Feig. ``I wrote the pilot before that happened. In dealing with the pilot, it was not on my consciousness at all. I'd like to think the show is in some way hopeful, something optimistic, and I'm proud it's not a violent show. To a certain degree, we all have to put our best foot forward. In no way are we planning to do any direct allusion or response to that event, but we are dealing with the universal issues of adolescence including alienation, which was one of the core themes in Littleton.''

``Freaks and Geeks,'' Feig says, will explore topics such as pot smoking. ``The teen years are a bad time to take a drug which removes your motivations. When you're 15 and need good grades, it's a bad time to slow down the machine. And I don't think it's moralizing to say that on a TV show. I don't want to say it's bad for every kid. I think you should lay it out there as honestly as you can.''

Feig recalls an anti-drug organization approaching him with advice on how to deliver anti-drug messages on his show by presenting as an example a scene from ``Dawson's Creek.'' ``It was so preachy - it said exactly the right thing. I'm not putting it down - it was perfect for that style of show. But if they think that's going to make kids not do it, that's not really gonna happen. I'm not facing this as a kids' show, and we won't pander as far as moralizing,'' Feig says.

``It's our responsibility to do stories that are strong,'' Nutter says. ``The show will have a lot of humor, and when people are laughing, they're listening. That will be able to give people something to think about other than their isolation. If they see this show about kids who want to blend in but can't, maybe outsiders will be able to see themselves in these kids. It's important that kids acquire wisdom that's necessary to have, and they've got to do it some way.''

The new, young TV season

If you're young, then boy, is this upcoming TV season for you. If you're older than, say, 32, then perhaps there's a good book you've been meaning to read or a softball league you could join.

New shows centering on teen casts include:

``Freaks and Geeks,'' a one-hour comedy-drama focusing on the travails of a group of outcasts at a suburban high school in the early '80s (8 p.m. Saturdays on NBC).

``Safe Harbor,'' a family-oriented series from the creator of ``Seventh Heaven'' about a widowed father bringing up his kids in a seaside resort town (9 p.m. Mondays on the WB).

``Roswell,'' a drama about teens whose befriending of survivors of the Roswell, N.M., UFO crash imperils their lives (9 p.m. Wednesdays on the WB).

``Get Real,'' examining a typical (by TV standards, at least) family from the teens' points of view (9 p.m. Wednesdays on Fox).

``Manchester Prep,'' a spinoff from the film ``Cruel Intentions,'' itself a retooling of ``Dangerous Liaisons.'' Here, conniving kids at a private school plot all sorts of capriciously malicious mischief for those who annoy them (8 p.m. Thursdays on Fox).

``Popular,'' a high-school drama that wears its aspirations in its title (8 p.m. Thursdays on the WB).

``Odd Man Out,'' a smirkcom about a teen-age boy growing up in a familiy of women and girls (9:30 p.m. Fridays on ABC).

``The Badland,'' focusing on a 19-year-old who becomes a Philadelphia cop upon graduating from high school (8 p.m. Fridays on Fox).

A couple of WB midseason replacements continue the trend:

``Brutally Normal,'' about more kids and more popularity woes and a (presumably) retooled ``Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane,'' about teens in New York who have somehow mistaken themselves for the cast of ``Seinfeld.''

If you've just left the educational system, never fear - there are plenty of shows catering to you, as well, including:

``Wasteland,'' the story of a group of hipster buddies who sit around and discuss how they lack direction and fumble in matters of the heart (9 p.m. Thursdays on ABC).

``Cold Feet,'' the story of a group of uptight buddies who sit around and discuss how they lack in direction and fumble in matters of the heart (10 p.m. Fridays on NBC).

``Mission Hill,'' an animated series from former ``Simpsons'' writers about a group of slacker buddies who lack in direction and fumble in matters of the heart (9:30 p.m. Fridays on the WB).

``The Time of Your Life,'' a spinoff of ``Party of Five,'' starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as Sarah, who leaves boyfriend Bailey for New York in search of her mother. Instead, she hunkers down with a group of eccentric buddies seeking direction and success in love. Like ``Wasteland,'' one of the characters is a luckless aspiring musician (8 p.m. Mondays on Fox).

``Jack & Jill,'' the story of a group of freshly scrubbed buddies - well, you get the idea (9 p.m. Sundays on the WB).

- David Kronke

CAPTION(S):

10 Photos, box

PHOTO (1--cover--color) ``Buffy the Vampire Slayer''

(2--cover--color) ``Freaks and Geeks''

(3--cover--color) ``Popular''

(4--cover--color) ``Roswell''

(5) ``Roswell'' The WB

(6) ``Get Real'' Fox

(7) ``Freaks and Geeks'' NBC

(8) ``That '70s Show'' Fox

(9) ``Jack and Jill'' The WB

(10) ``Dawson's Creek'' The WB

Box: The new, young TV season (see text)