Or witness pretty Courtney (Jessica Pare) on "Jack & Bobby" (Sundays at 9 p.m. on the WB), whose dad spews commands and ultimatums that are utterly misguided and beneath her, while she wisely dodges idiot boys and does the hard work of cooking for the family and raising her little sister.

But beyond their brazen disregard for the rules of authority figures, today's TV teens have an ultramodern way of digesting the world around them. Their banter is laced with bits of popular culture, the same little phenomena you've been chatting aimlessly about with your friends for the past 10 years. Take this somber conversation between hot teen Jack (Matt Long) and his hip mom (Christine Lahti) on "Jack & Bobby," about little brother Bobby's crush on an older girl, which moves seamlessly into an ironic/earnest discussion of mac and cheese:

Jack: I think he's better off. He has to be, right?

Grace: He'll be OK. He's stronger than we give him credit for ... I think. Oh, God (picks up Mac & Cheese box). What ever happened to real cheese?

Jack: Went the way of the tape deck.

Grace: Yeah. There was even that cheese in a can, remember? Even that seemed like cheese.

Jack: If you think of it as cheese, it'll freak you out. It's just cheese flavor.

Grace: Yeah. I'm comforted already.

Of course, such talk is supposed to make these characters lovably arch, but all it really does is fill most of us with self-loathing; we've had the conversation about the bright orange cheese powder at least 15 times before, and it started to seem mundane around the third time. This isn't charming, quirky dialogue; this is today's version of small talk, the modern equivalent of "Hey, can you believe this weather?"

The WB's "Gilmore Girls" is the worst offender in its use of this kind of banter, with every one of its characters partaking of it in the same exact tone, at the same impossibly swift speed, in the same awkward, irregular, unrealistic way. Take Rory and her friend Lane discussing Lane's crush on the lead singer of her band:

Lane: There's a danger here. The band thing. Need I mention the rock 'n' roll casualties from intraband dating? Not that there's not success stories. You've got your Crafts, your Yo La Tengos, your Kim and Thurstons.

Rory: Sonny and Cher, the early years.

Lane: Plus, you've got your bands that survived breakups, no doubt.

Rory: Wish they hadn't.

Lane: X, Superchunk, the White Stripes. But in the negative you have ...

Rory: Sonny and Cher, the later years.

Lane: Jefferson Airplane, Fleetwood Mac. I know of two country music stars whose backup singers shot him in the groin.

Such dialogue amounts to a list, an extended résumé of references meant to telegraph cool. The worst is the referential shortcut, whereby, instead of saying something original or offering some fresh, specific way of presenting him or herself, a character merely draws on some known quantity to make his or her point. Here's a scene from "life as we know it," where the lead character, Dino, meets a sexy stranger.

Adam: This is Zoe. She goes to Lincoln.

Dino: Hey.

Zoe: Did you know the first full-on sex dream I ever had was with me and Tom Cruise? We were doing it in a car, but then it turned into this boat with wheels.

Dino: Yeah?

Zoe: You know, Dino, you look just like Tom Cruise.

Of course he looks just like Tom Cruise -- he's the studly star of a high school drama! They all look a little bit like Tom Cruise.

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