Young Americans

2000

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1
  • 0

EP1 Pilot (a.k.a. The Beginning) Jul 12, 2000

Rawley Academy, a prestigious New England boarding school, begins its summer session. Will Krudski arrives on his first day at Rawley Academy; a dream that he has been anticipating to fulfill. He meets his new rommmate, Scout Calhoun, and later they meet the dean's son, Hamilton Fleming. The camaraderie between Will and Scout is later jeopardized when Will confides in Scout that he cheated on his entrance exam by purchasing it on the Internet. After meeting the unconventional crew coach and literature professor, Finn, Will seems to be adjusting to his new surroundings just fine.

EP2 Our Town (a.k.a. Some Good Times) Jul 19, 2000

Achieving his life-long goal of escaping the wrong side of the tracks, Will thought his life would be perfect once he began at Rawley Academy, but trying to reconcile his new life with his old ties tests his growing friendship with Scout. Scout and Bella test the waters of their own newly platonic relationship and the end of their love affair, but Scout's jealousy over an admirer leads to a bloody brawl. Meanwhile, Hamilton and Jake work though their own weird moments and find a common ground of friendship.

EP3 Kiss and Tell Jul 26, 2000

The feminine balance is thrown off with the arrival of Paige Bennett, a beautiful, sophisticated new student at Rawley Girls Academy who Bella likes in spite of herself. Paige is unabashedly in romantic pursuit of Scout, whom she's known since they were kids, and may be successful at turning his head away from his forbidden love. Meanwhile, Will has a run-in with a trouble-making upperclassman, Ryder Forrest that lands him in deep trouble with Finn, and Hamilton and Jake find themselves in a confusing competition over a girl.

EP4 Cinderbella Aug 02, 2000

The approaching Rawley Summer Cotillion inspires Will to approach the girl of his dreams, Caroline Busse, but when she already has a date for the dance, he invites Bella to go with him, although both their eyes are distracted by others. Meanwhile, Scout tries to make the most of his evening with Paige, and Hamilton and Jake reveal secrets in an intimate moment.

EP5 Winning Isn't Everything Aug 09, 2000

It's the weekend of the annual Rawley Regatta, the biggest race of the year for the crew team, but everyone's minds are distracted by the approaching Parent's Weekend. Scout is excited about introducing Bella to his dad, her real father, but she is more savvy to what the Senator's reaction may actually be. Meanwhile, Will reaches out to his own father, and Jake has to hide her new identity from her self-absorbed mother.

EP6 Gone Aug 16, 2000

Bella, Will and Scout find themselves in the crazy position of having to outsmart an evil upperclassman, Ryder, sweet-talk a cop while driving a stolen car, and retrieve a confessional letter before it destroys their lives. Meanwhile, Hamilton and Jake secretly go on their first official date, but with Jake in a dress, the sexual roles are confused as Hamilton tries to wear the pants in the couple.

EP7 Free Will Aug 21, 2000

Will finds himself in the enviable position of poetry tutor to the girl of his dreams, Caroline Busse, but his nightmare begins when he learns that an obnoxious upperclassman, Ryder, also has his eyes on the prize. Meanwhile, the surprise of a lifetime comes for Bella on her 16th birthday, and rumors fly about Hamilton and Jake's clandestine love affair.

EP8 Will Bella Scout Her Mom? Aug 30, 2000

With the last day of Rawley Summer Session comes bad news for Will, who learns that the funds for his scholarship have been withdrawn, and Bella, who must fight against the sale of her family's gas station and home. The gang hits the road with Bella, determined to find her mother, who after ten years of silence is the one person who can save the station. On the journey, after running into car trouble, Bella, Will, Hamilton, Jake, Scout and Sean find themselves stuck in a cabin overnight, where tempers collide between all. Bella's eventual meeting with her mother opens up possible truths to the past, while Jake's true identity finally comes to light.
7.6| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 12 July 2000 Ended
Producted By:
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/youngamericans/home.html
Synopsis

Young Americans is an American television drama. The show explores themes of forbidden love, morality, social classes and gender roles.

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Reviews

Ichabod Grubb Astonishingly, "Young Americans" (hereafter "YA"), a failed summer teen TV series, rewards critical attention by yielding up an artfully masked burden for adults on such themes as the relationships between passion and compassion, between youth and maturity, between descriptive and normative truth, between what we want and what we need, and between realism and idealism in art.Like many traditional "children's stories," YA has both a naive meaning for children – in this case, teenagers -- and a distinct albeit complementary meaning for grown-ups. However, YA is structured so that its "grown-up" meaning is impossible to understand fully on first viewing; the key that unlocks that meaning, while hinted at from the first scenes of its first episode, it is not clearly revealed until the end of its last episode. This has its reason: appreciation of YA's grown-up meaning is greatly enhanced by having first appreciated only its meaning for children, just as an adult's appreciation of fairy tales is enhanced by having first heard them as a child.So, until you have watched YA at least once, do not read this review past this paragraph. Instead, go watch YA. Regrettably, no "authorized" recording of YA has ever been released, either in tape or in DVD form; all versions of YA now online or on DVD originate from viewer recordings. However, all eight episodes, in the original English-language version, are now accessible online at YouTube, either in whole-episode clips on the channel of "Alienious" or in shorter clips on the channel of "Granadaville." Neither of those channels comments on YA's meaning for grown-ups. Avoid, until subsequent viewings, my "IckyGrub" channel on YouTube, where the whole series is made available with better visual quality and in a more complete form, but where both the video clips and the commentaries on them are intended to facilitate "grown-up" understanding of "Young Americans."The key that unlocks YA's grown-up meaning is an understanding of its narrator's perspective. Will Krudski, the narrator, is a grown-up reliving his youth in the present (2000). Krudski, in YA, is both character and narrator, both young and old at once, and consequently, YA's time-setting is ambiguous; it seems set both in the summer of 2000, its ostensible setting, and at some earlier time no later than 1973, when YA's creator, Steve Antin, was fifteen years old, the age of YA's protagonists.This temporal ambiguity is disturbingly evident from the very start of YA. Why is a drama ostensibly set in New England in the year 2000 set at two institutions, a gender-segregated prep school and a full-service gas station, that largely vanished from New England in the 1970s? Why is that gas station full of equipment and vehicles dating from the middle of the 20th century? Why does the ubiquitous Coca-Cola (YA's sponsor) come in glass bottles rare in the USA for decades before 2000, and why is it dispensed from a 1930s-model Coke refrigerator? How can a drama ostensibly narrated in the present include events of which the narrator has no contemporary awareness? These questions are answered only by a seemingly casual shift in the tense of Krudski's narration, at the end of YA's last episode, from present to past: "I knew I'd never forget … that summer." As Antin said in a press interview in July 2000, YA is both "about young people at that time of life when the possibilities seem endless ... and about the moments of life when you look back on your youth." However, Krudski is not reliving his youth as he first lived it; rather, he is reliving it as youth should be, in the hope of recovering youth's passion for "exceeding expectations," of overcoming the complacency of maturity. Rawley Academy, YA's main setting, is Kruski's dream of an ideal youth, "the perfect people, the perfect life … something that wasn't meant for me." Although the protagonists generally seem too good to be true, Rawley's motto redefines "truth" as "virtue" rather than descriptive accuracy, underscoring YA's commitment to idealism rather than realism.The core of the moral rejuvenation that Krudski seeks, and that YA seeks to inspire in viewers, is ability to love more "truly." The nature of "true love" is the central theme of YA, which develops it by retelling in young ways what Antin called "classic stories" of true love, by rejuvenating myths of true love, which, in turn, rejuvenate us morally. YA's "true love" story-line, in which an emotionally desperate cross-dressing straight girl, 'Jake' Pratt, finds an emotional savior, Hamilton Fleming, the son of Rawley's dean, retells in a young way two such myths: "Orpheus and Eurydice" and "The Frog Prince." In Antin's version of "The Frog Prince," cross-dressing replaces a magical enchantment as the "test of true love" that renders the beloved physically repugnant. Antin's Orpheus, Fleming, personifies compassion rather than passion, exemplifying first compassion's ability to give birth to passion, and then its need to mask itself as passion in order to be effective. Against the bulk of Western tradition since St. Paul, e.g., against Andres Nygren, Denis de Rougement, and Dostoyevsky in "The Idiot," but with Martin D'Arcy, Antin suggests that passion and compassion are complements, and that we might love more truly if we understood this. Interestingly, the current Pope, in his 2005 encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est," takes the same side as Antin in this ancient debate.Rawley being a bit of heaven on earth, Providence works more clearly and quickly in YA than in our world; evil reliably brings forth good, and the protagonists invariably get what they need, whether it be what they want or not. But perhaps if we loved more truly, Providence might operate more clearly and quickly in our world, too.The great mystery of YA is why Steve Antin labored so artfully to infuse so much grown-up meaning into a teen TV series, of which few viewers were likely even to perceive it. Perhaps one day he'll tell us.
lenettepigen I loved this series it is so sad that they didn't make another season of it. It had something else than other series it was great to see something else. I would love to have this series on DVD, does anybody now where to get it. and the soundtrack to. I love the drama about Jake and Hamilton, the idea is great and different to anything else i have seen. it makes also some fun when they are trying to hide their affair so that the others don't find out that their having one. I would love if they made one more season and i think there are others who would love it to i haven't found a series since that i loved so much, i don't even loved Beverly Hills that much anymore since i saw Young Americans!!
Jezebell This was such a great show on the WB. The intricate and fun story script and the excellent acting made the show worth keeping. I watched this show from beginning to end. 10 times better than any Dawson's Creek drama. Too bad they didn't continue...I would have definitely watched.
zeldazoe Well in general I can only say that the most overlooked show has to be WB´s Young Americans.It seems they had no idea what they were doing when they created this *monster*. They intended it to be a summer show and didnt at all realize the potential of neither Steven Antin as a script writer nor the outrageous fan response following the premier.Finally we got a well written, intelligent teen drama with fantastic storyline and dialogue and they cancel it. I dont know if I should laugh or cry?Ratings are great worldwide, fan response outrageous, sponsors ready to go... what are the networks waiting for?They have here an already marketed show with viewers ranging between 13-35. The networks should fight to pick up this brilliant show. Isnt there anyone out there that is aware of the vast number of European, Canadian and Australian fans that since watching the show in jan-feb 2001 have joined the huge number of American fans in appreciation of this show?I am very disappointed in the WB. When networks stop listening to their viewers they lose them.Sincerely yoursZoe