This summer’s debate over young adult literature has raised questions ranging from whether adults should read YA to what even counts as thee genre in the first place. The New Yorker’s television critic Emily Nussbaum extends these questions to the world of television, where adolescent dramas have had a different impact on the development and survival of the medium:
This debate has focused on books. The funny thing is that, in television, the situation is nearly reversed: seeming “teen shows” were the ones that, in the nineties, smartened up the medium, becoming a bellwether of psychological complexity.
