BOB GARFIELD: Were you a latchkey kid in the '70s or the '80s? And do you feel that, with a little moral guidance, things usually work out for the best? If you answered yes to both questions, then you've probably logged a few after school hours watching ABC's After School Specials. The one-hour dramas aired in the after-school hours from 1972 to 1988, and now you can re-live the whole thing. They've just been released on DVD. In case you aren't of the Kristy McNichol generation, the After School Specials covered real teen issues like bullying, drinking and sex. They were melodramatic, hysterical and hokey, but for all of that, they ran for nearly 20 years, won Emmys, film festivals and even a Peabody Award. We sent Sarah Lemanczyk to see how they play in 2005. [SCHOOL BELL SOUND EFFECT] [KIDS TALKING, SHOUTING] [JAUNTY SILENT MOVIE STYLE MUSIC]

SARAH LEMANCZYK: Everybody who grew up in the '70s and '80s remembers them. Or at least remembers that electric mix of young stars, campy tragedy, and good, solid moral lessons. [MAN ON THE STREET INTERVIEW CLIPS]

MAN: There was one I remember that I think was about a basketball player. He was in high school...

MAN: I remember we were forced to watch 'em in health class, and I remember Scott Baio freaking out on drugs and getting hit over the head in the water...

WOMAN: There was a good one about gonorrhea, I remember [LAUGHS]...

MAN: ...and somehow, I think it was his little brother burnt his eyes with some bleach and this basketball player couldn't read [LAUGHS] the back of the bottle to get him some help to flush his eyes with water, and I think Kareem Abdul Jabar was somehow a guest star on it.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: But, aside from titillating details about sex or illuminating the inevitable tragedy of mixing illiteracy with bleach, there was a real effort behind these stories to look into the lives of teenagers and to address them --not as children or adults, but as something in between - which was pretty startling. Media writer for the Chicago Tribune, Maureen Ryan.

MAUREEN RYAN: Well, I think it was something in the culture. I just remember, in, you know, in the '70s we had the book Free to Be You and Me. We had books like, you know, Our Bodies, Our Selves. I remember, you know, looking around my friends' houses for the Joy of Sex and finding it in, you know, some secret drawer. It just seemed like there was much more of an air of exploration in terms of topics that might now, today, be considered inappropriate for kids or young adults.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: If adults could have dirty, messy lives, then suddenly it seemed that perhaps teenagers did too -- at least the teens on the ABC After School Specials. Like Kristy McNichol as a foster kid, obsessed with her own isolation. [CLIP PLAYS]

WOMAN: Listen, Carlie--

KRISTY McNICHOL: No, you listen. Me and Harvey and Thomas J. -- we're like pinballs. Somebody came along with a dime, put it in, pushed a button and out we came, ready or not. You don't see pinballs helping each other, now, do you? Because they can't. They're just things.

MAUREEN RYAN: I think really what made them so compelling was that, you know, if you think about probably the most popular series starring, you know, teenagers or alleged teenagers in the '70s was Happy Days, and, you know, while series like Maude and All in the Family were exploring social issues in a really compelling way, I don't think there was as much that was aimed at or dealt with young people on prime time television. It was just like oh, my gosh - they're talk - they're really talking about this on TV? And you know, it's for young people? It just seemed out of step, almost, with what was happening in prime time as far as younger people were concerned.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: Happy Days premiered in 1974 -- around the same time the ABC After School Specials were picking up momentum. So, if you were 12, you had two models of real life on TV. One where the central plot was: Who will take Joanie to the fall social? (and, in a pinch, you knew it'd be Fonzie) or a high school girl staging a fire drill by climbing out her bedroom window in case her alcoholic mother burnt the house down. [CLIP PLAYS]

MOTHER: Francesca, how could you? What are you trying to do?

FRANCESCA: We're having a fire drill.

MOTHER: A what?

FRANCESCA: A fire drill. You start drinking and then smoke in bed, so what else could we do? We have to protect ourselves.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: Alateen-inspired fire drills might not be typical. In fact, a hallmark of the ABC After School Special became the extreme nature of the lives portrayed on the screen. But they did acknowledge that there was more to adolescence than sock hops.

MAUREEN RYAN: The After School Special just depicted more or less average kids doing average things and having average or above average or maybe a little bit [LAUGHS] slightly unrealistic problems, but there was a completely wonderful earnestness about them. They just took these young adult novels that are still well respected and turned them into these little tales that kids could kind of identify with and relate to. [MUSIC - THEME TV SHOW BEVERLY HILLS 90210]

SARAH LEMANCZYK: Fast forward a few years. The ABC Specials ended in 1988. Two years later, the Fox network came out with Beverly Hills 90210, a serial drama revolving around a group of teenagers, fashion and money. Through this gaggle of rich, over-privileged kids, fox explored teen complexities like alcoholism, divorce, drug use, sex, rape, eating disorders and what it's like to get a Porsche for your 16th birthday. And a new trope was formed.

JOSH SCHWARTZ: Yeah, I think the legacy for us was a second generation one. I mean, you know -- it went After School Special to 90210 -- and I suppose we're picking up the baton for 90210.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: Josh Schwartz is the 28 year old executive producer for "The OC" -- the latest and hottest incarnation of teen TV -- which somehow doesn't feel that different from "Pinballs." Sure, you'd have to make some sort of PS2 reference, and everyone would look a lot flashier than Kristy McNichol ever did, but despite that, Josh at least seems earnest in his desire to, to help.

JOSH SCHWARTZ: We take it very seriously that we have younger viewers, and we believe the best way to reach that audience is to create an honest conversation with them in which you're just showing behavior -- but not necessarily glamorizing it -- and when the consequences are shown for that behavior, it has a lot more of an impact. So we don't necessarily say Marissa drinking is a bad thing. However, her life and the consequences of her drinking certainly won't inspire anyone to go pick up the bottle.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: You can almost see the ABC After School Special peeking out behind all those Prada bags -- melodrama, extreme situations, and yes, morality. Like when the character Ryan finds out his girlfriend is pregnant.

JOSH SCHWARTZ: She got pregnant, and he did the right thing, and as far as you knew went to stand by her and help her through that and be a supportive and loving, you know, father, even if it wasn't his child. No one took a position with Ryan and sort of reprimanded him, but he definitely had to endure the consequences of his actions.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: And we learned all about those consequences in the 1980 "Schoolboy Father" with Rob Lowe and Dana Plato, only Rob Lowe's consequences lasted for about an hour, whereas in "The OC," a teen pregnancy can hang out in the subplot for entire season, lurking behind countless party scenes, fast cars and endless days of teen ennui. But whether it's an hour or a season, kids still identify with a foundering teen or 25 year old adult, even if they're driving an SUV instead of their mom's station wagon.

JOSH SCHWARTZ: What's amazing to me is how much they relate to the characters. Because you would think that their situations are totally unrelatable, but -- I mean the show is tru-- is at its core about what it's like to be an outsider, and so many kids go to school every day feeling that way. But there's also elements of, you know, the music the kids listen to, the references they make, the clothes they wear. There's that connection as well. But I think the emotional lives of the characters ring true.

MAUREEN RYAN: There's much more of an emphasis on how to make this cool, how to make it hip.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: But critic Maureen Ryan is still holding a candle for the ABC After School Specials.

MAUREEN RYAN: That's what was great about these shows --they didn't really pretend that kids had all the answers or knew how to dress or knew how to act or had the right kind of friends. They sort of just assumed that kids were flailing around and didn't necessarily know what to do in their lives, and now I find that kids who are supposedly 16 year old characters on TV have lives far more complex and sort of racy than [LAUGHS] I think my life is right now.

SARAH LEMANCZYK: The lives of teens on TV were never about reality. Whether it's Joanie Cunningham or "The OC-'s" Marissa Cooper. And really, Helen Hunt throwing herself out the window the first time she tried angel dust isn't totally realistic either. But, behind the morals and the hyperbolic plots, the ABC Specials devoted one hour of programming to one kid and one problem, and then they did something revolutionary -- they said it mattered. For On the Media, I'm Sarah Lemanczyk.