Get Real!

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

There have been several different shows (across the world, too!) with the title, Get Real. The one I'm mentioning today was an American show that ran just one season, 1999-2000. It starred one of my favorite actresses (who was quite the up-and-commer at the time), Anne Hathaway. It was an hour in length, and not even all 22 episodes aired on FOX before the show was brought to an untimely demise.

It was a family drama, depicting mom and dad with three teenagers, and mom's recently-widowed mother. Dad was always working, and mom freaked out about way too many things. Grandma (Christina Pickles... aka Monica & Ross's mom on Friends) was pretty carefree, but had her share of serious moments. Anne Hathaway played Meghan, the valedictorian who can't decide if she wants to go straight to college. Cameron is the dangerous rebel in the family, who has a girl spending the night in the pilot episode. Kenny is a freshman dealing with crushes and the like.

Nothing was too crazy, but the lack of closeness between the parents was an ongoing problem. Then they become more intimate, and mom gets pregnant and miscarries (and dad has a brain tumor). Every Kenny storyline dealt with finding a niche at school or learning about girls (except when he wrecked a car or had bacterial meningitis). Cameron jumped back and forth between "bad boy" (fights, suspension, threat of expulsion, etc.) and trying to be a good kid. In the twenty episodes that aired, she gets a belly button ring, goes to a rave, dates a 23-year-old, has sex, considers going to Spain, gets tested for HIV, and deals with random friends' issues as well.

It had great potential, and although it was an hour, it didn't have a big problem filling that time with action. I know the nights it aired moved around a couple times, but I'm not sure if the time did. Either way, it didn't succeed, and although it's possible to argue that it was doomed from the start (15, 16, and 17-year old kids? it's hard enough to pull more than 3 years from that anyway...), I think it should have been given more of a chance. Seriously, there are still 2 unaired episodes in the US!

You can catch one of them, as well as most of the other episodes, here.