| Generation X-ers retain fond memories of coming home from school, casting aside their Trapper Keepers, and cozying up to moralistic tales of teen pregnancy, suicide, and drug abuse on ABC`s Emmy Award-winning AFTER SCHOOL SPECIALS. Airing on weekday afternoons from 1974-1989, the series` issue-oriented storylines were adapted from young-adult novels and starred some of the most popular teen actors of its day: Rob Lowe, Dana Plato, Nancy McKeon, Melissa Sue Anderson, and the queen of 1970s television melodrama, Kristy McNichol. This collection offers a quartet of early specials dating from 1974-1976: The 18th Emergency, about a 12-year-old boy who tangles with the school bully; The Skating Rink in which a farmboy`s hard life is changed by the construction of a skating rink in his town; Dear Lovey Heart: I Am Desperate, which details the mishaps of a high school sophomore who becomes her student newspaper`s advice columnist; and Summer of The Swans, co-starring THE BRADY BUNCH`s Eve Plumb and Chris Knight in the story of 14-year-old girl who spends a warm summer day searching for her missing mentally-retarded brother. |
