15 Things You See in the Pilot of Every Teen Drama

Whether you grew up on Dawson’s Creek, The O.C., or, more recently, Awkward, teen dramas were an important part of your childhood. As you took your first underage drinks, doubted your parents, and tried desperately not to leave high school a virgin, so did your favorite TV characters. It seems that show creators are sensitive to this relationship. As a result, the experience of watching a teen drama is closely tied to the act of growing up itself. This might might also explain why every teen drama pilot is pretty much the same.

Sure, the show in question might follow popular kids, nerds, or even vampires, but the basic beats are essentially identical, regardless of whom the plot follows. There's going to be an awkward outsider in the middle of things. He or she will be going through some heart-rending unrequited love. You’d better believe at one point or another they will end up at party, whether it’s a backwoods kickback, a suburban rager, or citified formal.

Though the setting changes from small town simplicity to big city glamour to neo-gothic vampire-scape, the backbones of these shows look strikingly similar. Here are 15 Things You See in Every Teen Drama Pilot.

RELATED: The 25 Best Teen TV Dramas of All Time

To be fair, a stranger in a strange land is an essential component for most television pilots. There has to be a reason that the series started today of all days. In every teen drama, this tends to look exactly the same, give or take one plot point: our protagonist is the new kid in school.

The O.C. and Gilmore Girls accomplish this by sending the protagonist from their home on the wrong side of the tracks to a school on the right side of them. In Freaks and Geeks and Dawson's Creek, the new kid has always lived in the respective school district but is finally diving into world of high school and puberty. Sometimes this new kid is a man in his 40s (Friday Night Lights) or a debutante returning from rehab (Gossip Girl).

Regardless of the hero's identity, though, he or she is, in one way or another, the new kid in town.

This character is always a figurative "girl next door" type, and sometimes, as with the ladies of Dawson's Creek and The O.C.'s Marissa (Mischa Barton), they literally live next door.

The young actress who plays this stock character has quite a burden on her shoulders. She has to give hope to young men across the country who feel they've been "friend-zoned," while saying the right things to always embody that paragon of perfection who grew up one lawn over.

If the main character is a girl, then, yes, expect the "guy next door." Regardless of their gender, this archetype always exemplifies adolescent wish fulfillment. It'll take a season or two before they seem like actual flesh-and-blood characters.

Gossip Girl was brilliant for putting their version of this character in a pilot catfight with the hot girl next door. That's what every male audience member secretly wants and scribbles furiously about in their fan fiction, anyway, so why not give it to them?

Though they may not always be front and center, it's important to have a bad girl, easily identified by her leather jacket, fierce red make-up, and/or tendency to show a little more skin than her fellow classmates. This is a hard part to get right, as the character can't simply be bitchy. That would work just fine in a movie, but there's a march towards syndication to get through here. With that in mind, she must have a tough home life or some other justification for using her looks and queen bee status as a coping mechanism.

If you're going to do a teen drama properly, you're going to need a smoldering hottie. If you're lucky, you've made this guy a protagonist. (What up, Ryan from The O.C.?) And if your main character is a nerd or a female, you'd better make them friends and/or lovers with a misunderstood bad boy.

The G.O.A.T. in this category is obviously Friday Night Lights' "Texas Forever" Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch), but if you prefer James Franco's Daniel Desario (Freaks and Geeks), we won't hold it against you. These days, this character is often also a vampire, but you have to believe that's a trend that will end sometime soon. Fingers crossed.

These characters do the heavy lifting of inserting literary references into the show and guiding us towards the theme.

It's great if, like Dawson (James Van Der Beek), Sam Weir (John Francis Daley), and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel), they are the main character, but it isn't vital. Seth (Adam Brody) from The O.C. is second fiddle (well, at first), while Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) and Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) from Friday Night Lights are far from the spotlight in the pilot.

As long as they drop references to Moby Dick and wax poetic about their favorite filmmakers while the cool kids are busy partying, they'll fit in anywhere within the story.

Luckily, the dorky nice kid doesn't have to do all the thematic elucidation on his or her own. There will also be a quirky teacher or guidance counselor who forces our young audience to contemplate the show's themes in the most heavy-handed ways possible.

In the episode where someone does a bad thing and gets exiled from the group, they will teach The Scarlet Letter. If ever there's pressure to conform, they will trot out 1984 or Animal Farm. And don't be surprised if they teach Metamorphosis at some point, because, damn it, these characters are going through puberty and it's just too easy.

Sometimes, as seen on Pretty Little Liars and Dawson's Creek, this teacher tries to have sex with a student. It would be cool to see a little less of that.

Of course, the quirky teacher can play double duty as the concerned mentor. But this character can come from any walk of life, as long as he or she wakes up everyday and asks themselves, Cartman style, "How can I reach these kids?"

Whether this character is a football coach (Friday Night Lights), a mechanic/concerned uncle (One Tree Hill), or public defender/surrogate father (The O.C.), you'd better believe that they've got a few motivational speeches ready to go at a moment's notice. They just want what's best for you. If you don't believe us, then watch this.

Teen drama shows aren't just here to tell stories. They're also here to sell stuff to teenagers, and what better thing to sell than music. Not only are shows like these crammed wall to wall with today's hottest iTunes hits, the characters will often drop musical references as elegantly as cartoon characters drop grand pianos on each other.

Peyton's (Hilarie Burton) love of NOFX and the Ramones on One Tree Hill probably wasn't the result of an endorsement, but it allowed her to pump pop punk and emo of the day from her headphones and straight into the ears of a generation.

There are two notable exceptions to this trend, as the classic rock of Freaks and Geeks and the Explosions-in-the-Sky-dominated soundtrack of Friday Night Lights were less marketable than the shows themselves.

This guy is the unsung hero of the teen drama. More likely than not, he won't be a central character. He may not even come back after the pilot. But, you'd better believe that he is good at sports and is a total douchebag.

In One Tree Hill, this character is a major focus. This is quite rare; usually you get a version of the character like the one in The O.C., a flatly drawn, unrepentant douche. The briefest use of this character in teen drama pilot history is in the Dawson's Creek pilot. Dawson catches Jen talking to a football player, and she says something like, "Oh, don't worry about him, he's just a symbol of your inferior social class."

Also, this guy is often very rapey; in fact, in Gossip Girl, this character literally attempts rape in the first episode, which is one way to set the tone.

Major characters are given all sorts of fathers in teen dramas. They range from the completely absentee to the overly involved in every aspect of their lives. With a couple notable exceptions (respect to Awkward for switching gender roles on this one), mom is going to be constantly overwhelmed while somehow being effortlessly charming.

Of course, Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) and Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) top this list, but you can't forget Moira Kelly's turn as Karen on One Tree Hill or Joey's sister (Nina Repeta) on Dawson's Creek. These independent women are doing their best to have it all and here we are paying attention to the kids? Shame on us.

It doesn't matter if the father is absentee or living his dreams vicariously through his children. Similarly, it doesn't matter if the mother is a shrewish gossip or a charming, plucky gal doing her best to get by. No matter what, there will be an awkward family dinner.

Freaks and Geeks mastered this kind of scene, so you'd think that other shows would bow down, but no, awkward meals remain a staple of teen television. The lesser cousin of the awkward dinner scene is the rushed breakfast as the family gets ready to start their day and dumps much needed exposition—also an essential teen drama staple.

Breakfasts and dinners introduce viewers to the home lives of these characters; lunch, however, is all about their social lives. The cafeteria is the easiest place to establish the pecking order that'll be vital to the series moving forward.

How do we know just how nerdy that hot guy or girl is if they aren't sitting alone? This scene can play out at a favorite local diner (Friday Night Lights) or at a swank bar/club (Gossip Girls), but if you want to be true to the essence of teen drama, you'll have to send those characters through the cafeteria line.

Many teen dramas follow the exploits of sports teams, so these scenes are baked into the shows' DNA. If we aren't following the jock's journey, then it's imperative to see our non-jocks being awful at sports.

Again, Freaks and Geeks set the standard for this approach with their dodgeball scene. If you just can't shoehorn in a gym class moment, then settle for watching the characters run through a park (Gossip Girl) or sailing (The O.C.). But without a gym scene, there's no awkward locker room interaction, and without an awkward locker room scene, then it all just feels meaningless.

Teen dramas would be a lot shorter if the characters just came out and shared their feelings.

Every teen drama involves numerous crushes that don't leave journal pages for several seasons. Often, the characters have never even spoken to the person they've loved "since middle school" at the beginning of the pilot. Middle school was several years ago, and, as of the pilot, they still haven't found the strength to ask the object of their affection to the dance or even to the round-the-clock diner that's the only place anyone ever eats on the show? Unbelievable.

If any current high schoolers are reading this, take our advice: just talk to your crush. If you're going to be rejected, you might as well get it over with so that you can start obsessing over someone else. If he or she actually likes you, then you should start making the terrible decisions that will lead to the end of the relationship as soon as possible.

It's really nice of fictional parents to go out of town the first weekend after school starts back up. If they didn't have these pressing business trips or impromptu getaways, there would be nowhere for their poor kids to drink and experiment sexually.

There are worlds like Freaks and Geeks where parents don't go out of town and the main characters aren't cool enough to experiment sexually. In these instances, you have to move the homecoming dance way up in the calendar as a placeholder for the party. At these parties, underage drinking is both condemned and glorified. Yes, girls are in their underwear and the drinking games look really fun, but a guy will puke or a girl will pass out so that the Christian right can look on with approval.

And with that, you're ready to go write your own teen drama pilot. Before you get started "Come Sail Away" to the greatest/most awkward school dance scene in TV pilot history, courtesy of, that's right, Freaks and Geeks.