A lot of people hate graduations.

High school maintenance workers (senior pranks aren’t funny).

Anyone with a dumpster (“I do not remember throwing out a desk, eighty cans of chili and the notes for Mayan Gender Dynamics.  Huh.”)

Most of the people graduating (“I put all these chemicals in my body thinking it would make wearing a nylon shroud better but it did nottttttttt.”)

But one group hates graduation the most, because it threatens their livelihood.
They dread the coming day when all of a sudden, in a rain of black caps and teary-smiles, their jobs will be threatened and their children may have to be yanked out of tennis lessons.

Those people are television show writers.  Specifically, the writers of teen sitcoms and melodramas.

The reason is obvious.  We’ve all watched in bemused horror as the graduation episode airs, knowing that because there is little creativity in Hollywood, and a whole lot of money, all our favorite characters will be sticking together.

Somehow.
Some way.  The band is sticking together.

And so we get “The College Years”.  We get Dawson and JoJo and Bradley or whatever all living together in Boston.  We get Fez and Hyde working at a camera shop, which, if you’d pitched that to an exec, would probably not have ever made it to the pilot stage.

The show collapses under its own grotesque, improbable weight.  A new crop of fresh skinned teens embarks on the voyage that is high school.  A bunch of TV writers get laid off and have to keep the same Lexus for a few years.

I think I’m going to pitch a show with 15 year olds that all drop out their sophomore year and start doing meth.  I’m going to call it “Montana”.

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