The Secret Life of the American Teenager

Secret Life feels a lot more authentic than many teen dramas.

As entertainment, the pilot is a most impressive work of economic and focused storytelling.

It's far more realistic in scope and situations than "Gossip Girl," but there's such an earnestness and one-dimensionality to the characters that they seem a lot less believable.

From the tramp to the Christians, everyone but Amy feels more like a type than a genuine character. Although a degree of shorthand is to be forgiven, these characters are caricatures at best as the series careens all over the place.

ABC Family means well but could not have done worse. Secret Life doesn’t take the fun out of teenage pregnancy, it takes the fun out of television.

Campily depicting high school as a den of sluts and predators, Secret achieves the noble goal of making sex thoroughly unsexy.

Nothing about it feels original or even especially timely, and it certainly doesn't reveal any great secrets about society.