BEST YEARS takes over used ‘lesson in morality (or not)’ and poory excuted ‘love triangles’ themes from previous television series on “THE N” (such as Degrassi and South of Nowhere without the Lesbian-drama) and has it revolving around the character, Samantha Best, who’s Orphan sob story is straight out of a Teen Novel of various carnations, who ends up in trouble half an hour into the first episode and its bailed out by the snooty dean of the Collage. The characters are carbon copies of ‘Degrassi’s past and current cast, none of them make an impact worth remembering.

There are various problems with the series, the main being that the actors — the ones portraying collage students at the ages of 17 and 18 — tend to look over the age of 30 (especially Samantha Best) and the acting is hardly convincing in any of the episodes. Another irksome problem is that for a girl who’s supposed to come from a unblessed life, everybody just “Loves” her (Samantha frequently kisses one man then another when things go sour between her boyfriend Devon, rejecting their love in the end), while her poor Asian friend, the stereotype nerd, ends up getting most of the baggage that should’ve been the main character’s. Asian-Nerd ends becoming the subplot to Samantha’s rough past, when Sam finds out the Asian-nerd and her little sister is a Rape-Victim of her father’s sicko desires. They try to play Samantha off as the character that will take the high-road, as opposted to the moraless idiot Blondes they try to portray as Intelligent (its laughable really), who ends up making mistakes and gets forgiven for them because “No one can stay mad at her forever”. I mean really, there is no substance to their series at all. No effort whatsoever was put into this seires and it shows (hell even the wardrobes are terrible). Its shallow-Teen melodrama at its best [failing at what the WB's FELICITY suceeded in] and it will please people despite this fact. The only person I can commend on this show is Brandon Jay Mclaren, who, like Amy Jo Johnson, has managed to break out of his POWER RANGERS[: SPD] role and find other jobs.