American Dreams

This article is about the television series. For other uses, see American Dream (disambiguation).
American Dreams
Created by Jonathan Prince
Starring see below
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
No. of seasons 3
No. of episodes 61
Production
Running time 60 minutes
Production company(s) Once a Frog
Dick Clark Productions
NBC Studios (Seasons 1-2)
Universal Network Television (Seasons 1-2)
NBC Universal Television Studio (Season 3)
Distributor MGM International Television Distribution
Release
Original network NBC
Original release September 29, 2002 (2002-09-29) – March 30, 2005 (2005-03-30)

American Dreams is an American television drama program broadcast on the NBC television network, produced by Once A Frog and Dick Clark Productions in association with Universal Network Television and NBC Studios. The show tells the story of the Pryor family of Philadelphia during the mid-1960s. Season one takes place in 1963–64, season two in 1964–65, and season three in 1965–66.

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; however, it 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.

Characters

Major characters

Minor characters

Pryor Family

Walker Family

Meg and Roxanne's friends

JJ's friends

Bandstand characters

Other minor characters

Ratings

Seasonal rankings (based on average total viewers per episode) of American Dreams on NBC.

Season Timeslot Number of Episodes Season premiere Season finale TV season Rank Viewers
(in millions)
1 Sunday 8/7c 25 September 29, 2002 May 18, 2003 2002–2003 #56 9.98[1]
2 Sunday 8/7c 19 September 28, 2003 April 4, 2004 2003–2004 #67 8.75[1]
3 Sunday 8/7c (September 26, 2004 – January 30, 2005)
Wednesday 8/7c (March 9, 2005 – March 30, 2005)		 17 September 26, 2004 March 30, 2005 2004–2005 #79 7.20[2]

Episode list

Season 1 (2002–2003)

  1. Pilot
  2. The End of the Innocence
  3. New Frontier
  4. Pryor Knowledge
  5. The Fighting Irish
  6. Soldier Boy
  7. Cold Snap
  8. Black and White
  9. The Home Front
  10. Silent Night
  11. I Wanna Hold Your Hand
  12. Great Expectations
  13. The Pursuit of Happiness
  14. Heartache
  15. False Start
  16. Act of Contrition
  17. Past Imperfect
  18. The One
  19. Where the Boys Are
  20. The Carpetbaggers
  21. Fear Itself
  22. Secrets and Lies
  23. Down the Shore
  24. High Hopes
  25. City on Fire

Season 2 (2003–2004)

  1. And Promises to Keep
  2. R-E-S-P-E-C-T
  3. Another Saturday Night
  4. Crossing the Line
  5. Life's Illusions
  6. Rescue Me
  7. Ticket to Ride
  8. Change a-Comin'
  9. The Long Goodbye
  10. The 7-10 Split
  11. Beyond the Wire
  12. Real-to-Reel
  13. To Tell the Truth
  14. Old Enough to Fight
  15. Shoot the Moon
  16. Can't Hold On
  17. Chasing the Past
  18. Stewart's Charge
  19. No Way Out

Season 3 (2004–2005)

  1. Long Shots and Short Skirts
  2. Charade
  3. Leaders of the Pack
  4. Surround Me
  5. So Long, Farewell
  6. Clear and Present Danger
  7. What Dreams May Come
  8. One in a Million
  9. Tidings of Comfort and Joy
  10. Home Again
  11. Truth Be Told
  12. For Richer, For Poorer
  13. Starting Over
  14. The Commencement
  15. California Dreamin'
  16. No Satisfaction
  17. It's My Life

Synopsis

Season 1 (2002–2003)

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 JFK 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 to earn a full athletic scholarship to play at the University of Notre Dame, but can only earn a partial scholarship. He later applies for and is accepted to Lehigh University, but a nagging ankle injury curtails his football career—and thus 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, the bespectacled record store clerk and fellow East Catholic student.

Sam Walker wins a track scholarship to East Catholic. Some in the majority-white student body (Sam's father Henry states that there are only three other black male students at East Catholic) 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 riots that shook Philadelphia in the summer of 1964.

Season 2 (2003–2004)

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 (2004–2005)

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. Beth and JJ are married on the January 23, 2005 episode. 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.

Timeline of events in the series

"Past" events

Events depicted on screen

"Future" events

Cancellation

On May 16, 2005, NBC announced their fall schedule for the 2005–06 season.[3] 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

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on April 12, 2005 that in late February, NBC ordered two endings filmed for the season finale.[4] 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.[5]

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.[6][7]

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 conversion 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 ever moon landing (placing the epilogue in 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.

Fourth season plotlines

In interviews, Jonathan Prince revealed that if American Dreams had been renewed for a fourth season, the following plotlines would have been included.[8][9][10]

Accuracy

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:

Special guests

During the show's run, several contact artists recreated performances of artists from the 1960s. These recreations were often performed on the American Bandstand stage, although several performances took place at a performing area adjacent to the Vinyl Crocodile record store. In the second and third seasons, several of the recreations took place at The Lair, a coffee house/student union facility on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

The contemporary artists, along with the songs they performed and the artist they "interpreted", are listed below.

Season one

Season two

Season three

Performances at the Vinyl Crocodile

Performances at the Lair

Other guest star appearances

DVD releases

The first season of American Dreams was released on DVD in September 2004. As of January no formal release dates have been announced for the remaining two seasons. Prince has promised that the series epilogue will appear in the third-season DVD release. However, it is widely believed that the huge number of licensed songs on the series make future DVD releases cost prohibitive, although Prince said that was not the case.[11][12]

On January 26, 2009, it was reported that Prince and other producers from the show were negotiating to get the final two seasons released on DVD, along with including the unaired epilogue. [13] No recent news was made until June 21, 2010, where it was reported that the producers "are closer than ever to debuting a boxed set of all three seasons of American Dreams on DVD".[14] However, negotiations seem to have stalled, with negotiations continuing as of early 2013.

At the second annual ATX Television Festival on June 9, 2013, Prince spoke out on the hold-up on the home media release of seasons 2 and 3, admitting that because of costly music licensing issues, it was unlikely that NBC would find it cost-effective to make those licensing deals unless fans campaigned to prove that the DVDs would sell, suggesting a Kickstarter campaign to gauge interest.[7]

American Dreams — Season One (Extended Music Edition)
Set details Special features
  • 25 Episodes
  • 7-Disc Set
  • 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio
  • English (Dolby 5.1 Surround)
  • Audio Commentaries
  • 250 Rock 'n' Roll Hits
  • Promo Spots
  • Music Video with Stacie Orrico and the Cast
Release date
 United States September 7, 2004

It should be noted that there are music alterations in the Season 1 DVD release in order to keep music licensing costs down.[15] Prince has noted that the first season retains about "80% of the original music", keeping music he deemed critical to particular scenes, as well as performances of guest stars and music for the Bandstand dancers while replacing some background songs with "cheaper needle-drops" from the 1960s. Prince said he doubted even hard-core fans would notice the difference.[16]

Soundtrack

On May 6, 2003, Hip-O Records released American Dreams — Original Soundtrack 1963–1964, with original and new recordings featured in the show's first season.

No. TitleArtist Length
1. "Generation"  Emerson Hart 2:20
2. "(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave"  Martha and the Vandellas 2:47
3. "My Girl"  B2K featuring Marques Houston 2:53
4. "She's Not There"  The Zombies 2:24
5. "Wishin' and Hopin'"  Vanessa Carlton 2:54
6. "Don't Worry Baby"  The Beach Boys 2:52
7. "People Get Ready"  The Impressions 2:39
8. "Come Ye"  India.Arie 3:11
9. "Gone, Gone, Gone"  The Everly Brothers 2:04
10. "My Boyfriend's Back"  Stacie Orrico with Brittany Snow and Vanessa Lengies 2:53
11. "Beyond the Sea"  Duncan Sheik 2:58
12. "That's How Strong My Love Is"  Otis Redding 2:25
13. "You Really Got Me"  The Kinks 2:15
14. "Every Little Bit Hurts"  Vivian Green 3:01
15. "The Sounds of Silence"  Simon and Garfunkel 3:07
16. "Generation (Theme from American Dreams)" (Video)Emerson Hart 2:35

Broadcasts

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).

References

  1. 1 2 "2003-04 Ratings". Nielsen Medianet. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
  2. ↑ "Hollywood Reporter: 2004-05 primetime wrap". Hollywood Reporter. 2005-05-27. Archived from the original on July 8, 2006.
  3. ↑ 2005–2006 NBC Lineup
  4. ↑ At Philly.com (Broken Link)
  5. ↑ "The Final Update on the Finale:"officially DOA" (10/5) - Sitcoms Online Message Boards - Forums". sitcomsonline.com. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  6. ↑ Megan Masters. "‘American Dreams’ Reunion — Alternate Ending Spoilers - TVLine". TVLine. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  7. 1 2 Prudom, Laura (June 10, 2013). "How 'American Dreams' Was Supposed To End". Huffington Post.
  8. ↑ At Miami Herald (Broken Link)
  9. ↑ "Television News & Reviews - al.com". al.com. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  10. ↑ "Q & A from Jonathan Prince - Sitcoms Online Message Boards - Forums". sitcomsonline.com. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  11. ↑ http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?t=154774 Ask Ausiello: Seasons 2 and 3 DVDs in '06
  12. ↑ http://www.americandreamsfanclub.com/FAQ.htm
  13. ↑ "Hoping to see Seasons 2 and 3 on DVD". americandreamsfanclub.com. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  14. ↑ http://www.americandreamsfanclub.com/DVDrelease.htm
  15. ↑ "American Dreams - Season 1 - Extended Music Edition". tvshowsondvd.com. Retrieved 29 August 2015.
  16. ↑ "Copyrights Keep TV Shows off DVD". Wired. March 1, 2005. Archived from the original on October 30, 2010.

External links

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