American Dreams
American Dreams is an American drama television series that ran on NBC for three seasons and 61 episodes, from September 29, 2002, to March 30, 2005. The show tells the story of the Pryor family of Philadelphia during the mid-1960s, with many plotlines around teenager Meg Pryor (Brittany Snow), who dances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The show often featured contemporary musicians performing as popular musicians of the 1960s. Season one takes place in 1963–64, season two in 1964–65 and season three in 1965–66.
This article is about the television series. For other uses, see American Dream (disambiguation).American Dreams
United States
English
3
61
- Jonathan Prince
- Dick Clark
- Mark Grossan (Season 1)
60 minutes
- Once a Frog Productions
- Dick Clark Productions
- Universal Network Television and NBC Studios
(seasons 1–2) - NBC Universal Television Studio
(season 3)
September 29, 2002 –
March 30, 2005
The series was created by Jonathan Prince and developed by Josh Goldstein and Prince; the latter was also one of the executive producers with Dick Clark. It debuted on September 29, 2002, and initially aired on Sundays at 8:00 pm Eastern Time but moved to the same time on Wednesdays from March 9, 2005, to the third-season finale (March 30, 2005). The show was known as Our Generation when it debuted in Australia but was changed back to American Dreams when it returned for the second season.
The theme song "Generation" was written and performed by Emerson Hart, lead singer of the band Tonic. The song earned Hart an ASCAP award for Best Theme Song of Television in 2003. The show was the 2003 TV Land Awards "Future Classic" winner.
Synopsis[edit]
Season 1 (2002–03)[edit]
In the pilot episode, set in November 1963, Meg and Roxanne win the opportunity to join the dancers on the TV show American Bandstand, filmed in Philadelphia. Passing note is made of the John F. Kennedy assassination and funeral. Bandstand immediately becomes the principal creative pillar of American Dreams, with each episode featuring recreated versions of several musical acts that originally appeared on the real Bandstand, often rendered by modern singers.
JJ Pryor, a running back for the East Catholic Fighting Crusaders football team, tries and fails to earn a full athletic scholarship to play at the University of Notre Dame, so he later applies for and is accepted to Lehigh University. A nagging ankle injury curtails his football career, so he enlists in the United States Marine Corps to pay for school. Meanwhile, JJ's on-again, off-again girlfriend Beth chooses to attend the University of Pennsylvania in order to be near JJ.
In the early part of the season, Meg develops a crush on a Bandstand dancer, and they go on a couple of public appearance dates. While never becoming romantic, they remained good friends. Meg later developed a romance with Luke Foley, a record store clerk and fellow East Catholic student.
Sam Walker wins a track athletic scholarship to East Catholic. Sam's father Henry states that there are only three other black male students at East Catholic; some in the majority-white student body resent Sam's presence, especially Tommy DeFelice, who is later expelled after falsely confessing to JJ's crime of breaking Beth's current boyfriend's windshield. Sam and Meg develop a friendship, even creating a record-swapping club while meeting at the Vinyl Crocodile record store.
In the season finale on May 18, 2003, Meg and Sam are caught in the summer 1964 race riot in Philadelphia.
Season 2 (2003–04)[edit]
Meg and Sam survive the riots unharmed, but the branch of Jack's store under Henry's management is destroyed. Gwen dies from cancer. JJ excels at boot camp and arrives in Vietnam. While on leave, he and Beth are reunited in Hawaii; they break up, but Beth soon learns she is pregnant with JJ's child, and she moves in with the Pryors.
Helen discovers that there might be a possible surgical treatment for Will's paralysis, and the early part of the season deals with Will's medical treatment. By the end of the season, Will's leg braces have been removed and he is able to walk normally.
Roxanne exchanges promise rings with boyfriend Lenny, and goes on tour with him before returning home. Later on, she dates Meg's ex-boyfriend, Luke. Meg dates a college boy, Drew, despite JJ and her father's strong dislike for him, but breaks it off when he ends up cheating on her.
Sam wins a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. Jack decides to run for the City Council. In the season finale on April 4, 2004, Sam's cousin Nathan is drafted and opts to go to jail rather than serve in Vietnam. Also in that episode, JJ is caught in a fierce firefight, while Meg and Sam are arrested at a campus rally protesting the Vietnam war.
Season 3 (2004–05)[edit]
The arrests widen the communications gap between parents and children, and inspire Meg to lead additional protests. A strict new headmaster also fires Meg up. An injured JJ wakes up in an American military hospital, and learns of his forthcoming child; Beth refuses to accept JJ's offer of marriage. Roxanne, estranged from her mother, moves in with the Pryors. JJ gets recruited for special, somewhat mysterious duty for the US government. Jack wins an upset victory for the City Council.
As Thanksgiving nears closer, JJ is captured by the Viet Cong. He and his sergeant escape, but are presumed missing in action (the sergeant is later found buried in a shallow grave). The Pryors learn of JJ's "Missing In Action" status just before Thanksgiving.
Luke Foley returns to Philadelphia, and Roxanne, who moves out on her remarrying mother, moves in with him in a loft above the Vinyl Crocodile record store.
On a commercial-free special episode that aired November 21, 2004, JJ returns home. At episode's end he glares harshly at his mother. In the next original episode, JJ becomes a Marine recruiter and suffers from post-traumatic flashbacks. He proposes to Beth. Helen becomes involved with a Catholic peace group.
As the show enters 1966, JJ marries Beth in a ceremony held at the Pryors' catholic church. Jack Pryor, newly elected to the Philadelphia City Council, is forced to take a bribe, with the money going to help JJ repay some gambling debts. Eventually Jack votes to elect a local activist in his district, Reverend Davis, to the Police Review Board essentially voting against the council. For this act of disloyalty, several members of the police force beat up JJ after a traffic stop. Pete soon finds the culprits who attacked JJ and roughs them up, but Jack decides to resign from the council.
Chris and Meg's relationship becomes more intimate, but Meg is troubled by reports that Chris helped set fire to a recruitment center. Despite this, Meg and Chris eventually have sex—with Chris revealing afterward that he did indeed lie to Meg about the recruitment center. Meg and Chris eventually break up, and Chris leaves Philadelphia.
Meg and Sam consider the possibility of a romantic relationship, but JJ and Nathan discourage the idea. Meanwhile, Jack and Pete's older brother Ted gets into a serious car accident, putting him on a respirator. After much soul searching, the Pryors decide to disconnect the machine. After returning home from a Rolling Stones concert, Meg finds her ex-boyfriend Chris standing in front of her home. He's just been drafted.
In the season/series finale, Meg and Chris both leave Philadelphia on Chris' motorcycle, with plans for them to live in Berkeley, California and campaign against the war. JJ Pryor applies for and receives a job in aeronautics, assisting in space suit design for future NASA missions to the Moon.
Cancellation[edit]
On May 16, 2005, NBC announced their fall schedule for the 2005–06 season.[64] Confirming months of speculation (and an unofficial confirmation article on May 1 by Reuters), American Dreams was formally canceled, due to low ratings.
Never a strong performer in its Sunday 8pm timeslot, the show's third-season ratings dropped 33% from its first season and 13% from its second season. In the third season, the show was regularly beaten in the Sunday night ratings by ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and CBS's Cold Case. On February 2, 2005, NBC reduced the number of third-season episodes of American Dreams from 19 to 17. The network also moved the program away from its original Sunday night timeslot to Wednesday nights, airing before The West Wing. This put the show up against CBS's Survivor: Palau and ABC's Lost, and American Dreams could not compete against these popular programs.
As the third season wound down, actors on the show filmed pilots for new shows to possibly air in the 2005–06 television season. Fans of American Dreams organized a campaign to save the show, sending over 5000 supportive e-mails to NBC after the season finale and several thousand postcards to the network as well. On May 4, 2005, fans flew an aerial banner over NBC's Burbank studios in support of the show, even as the show's sets were being dismantled at Sunset-Gower Studios, where it was filmed.
It had been reported that American Dreams may have been canceled as early as December 2004. Jonathan Prince mentioned in a Miami Herald article that he was able to get four additional episodes made by having companies such as Kraft and Nabisco pay for additional episodes in exchange for product placement (Campbell's Soups and Ford also participated in product placement episodes).
Series epilogue[edit]
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on April 12, 2005, that in late February, NBC ordered two endings filmed for the season finale.[65] The un-aired ending was reported to be a 12-minute segment set on July 20, 1969 (the day Apollo 11 landed on the Moon), with Meg returning home to face her family after a three-year absence.
NBC opted not to air the 12-minute epilogue when the third-season finale aired on March 30, 2005, a month and a half before the official cancellation of the series. TV Guide reported on July 26, 2005, that this epilogue was likely to air in a rerun of the third-season finale in August or September, but the airing never materialized. NBC was unable to attract sponsorship for the segment, which reportedly contained many rock-and-roll oldies, resulting in expensive music licensing fees for the network.[66]
During the second annual ATX Television Festival on June 9, 2013, the cast and crew of the show were reunited, and creator Jonathan Prince unveiled for the first time to both the cast and audience, a rough cut of the never-before-seen epilogue.[67][68]
In the epilogue, a long-haired Meg is seen on a bus (with a caption reading "Three Years Later"). After a couple of fellow hippie travelers inquire about the purpose of her trip, Meg reveals that she's planning to attend Woodstock with Sam (who had just graduated from college), and has traveled upstate early in order to meet up with him. Meg also reveals that she still lives in Berkeley, and hasn't been back home since she left with Chris three years prior. Meg is also planning on staying in New York with Roxanne, who is now married to Luke and has a baby boy named Dustin. Meg later reveals that Patty has graduated from high school and is now attending college at Harvard's sister school, Radcliffe. Throughout her time on the bus (and her conversation with the hippies), Meg reflects on her experiences with her family and friends.
After the hippies leave, Meg is seen pensively staring out of the bus window. The next moment, Meg is standing outside of her former home in Philadelphia, having taken a detour from heading to New York. She runs into her nephew Trip (who is now much older), who tells her that he knows who she is (based on family photos). When asked, she tells him that she came because she wanted to see her family. Trip tells her that everyone is inside, watching the first crewed Moon landing (placing the epilogue on July 20, 1969, the day Apollo 11 landed on the Moon). Tripp reveals that JJ now has a job building space suits for astronauts. Suddenly, Jack (Meg's father) comes out and calls for Trip to come in, when he sees Meg. Trip goes inside, and Helen (Meg's mother) comes outside calling for Jack, but stops when she sees Meg.
An awkward silence passes among the three, until Jack invites Meg inside for leftovers. Jack enters the house as Meg walks up and grabs Helen in a hug, while Jack looks on from inside. Once everyone goes inside, the scene pans out, with Neil Armstrong's famous moon landing address providing a voiceover until the screen goes black.
Despite its popularity as a family drama, American Dreams was heavily criticized for its various levels of historical inaccuracy. Several historic events were restaged earlier or later in the show's timeline to fit a plotline, and some of the music and pop culture references do not match up with either historic fact or the show's current timeline. Several arguments between the show's loyal fanbase can be traced to whether the show should be viewed as a chronologically accurate representation of life in 1960s Philadelphia, or is instead an idealized combination of mnemonic images and pop culture references from points throughout the 1960s, much as the film The Wedding Singer was for the 1980s.
Some examples of these disputes include:
Broadcasts[edit]
American Dreams was shown for three years on NBC from 2002 to 2005. The first two seasons were shown in the United Kingdom (on the Hallmark Channel and Trouble), in Denmark (TV2), in Brazil (Sony Entertainment Television) and in Poland (TV Puls).