thoroughly unscientific wondering.

[healingmirth]

So, no one on Teen Wolf has a living sibling, right? (Isaac had an older brother? And Chris had Kate, and Derek had everyone.)

Which got me thinking about whether anyone in teen shows ever has a sibling. The only other show I could think of at first was Saved By The Bell, which also no. The original 90210 had Brenda and Brandon, clearly. Were there siblings (actual legal and/or biological ones) on The O.C.? Buffy had Dawn? We can talk about grown-up shows, too, but there might reasonably be offscreen sibs (ETA - that got autocorrect to "sins", which also true) there.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some blindingly obvious examples. (I am not forgetting SPN, for the record, but I'm not sure how I'd characterize that, and they were both college-aged or older). Did, uh, One Tree Hill have siblings? Oh, Dawson's Creek! Pacey had his brother, and then Jack and Andie.

Am I right that it's mostly only children who get written in these things? (of which I am one, but I'm the only one of my close friends or coworkers who is, so I'm curious about the demographic mismatch, like "all" tv shows being set on the coast)

I can imagine it being a preference for narrative and/or casting convenience, so that you don't end up in a soap opera recasting situation. Or like the location thing, that writers don't know or can't or think noone cares about mirroring realistic distributions.

Yes, I needed to ask this at 2am.

Comments

[jebbypal]

Everwood had siblings for both sets of main characters.

Vampire diaries has sibling for main character, and off screen "step/half-siblings" for the witch character

[healingmirth]

I never watched Everwood, but my impression is that it was marketed equally as a show about family relationships and about peer ones.

Also, Wikipedia informs me that this was a plot point: "Amy befriends Ephram in an effort to convince Andy to revive his brain surgery skills to save Colin."

Thanks for the note about Vampire Diaries, which I've never watched, and it reminded me that I think there are siblings somewhere on Gossip Girl.

And then tl;dr about a show I don't think you actually watch!

In my head, there's a division between shows where family is central, and shows where peer relationships are central, but I am pretty sure that's a false division that I'm creating out of my lack of personal context for sibling relationships. I need to think more about whether I'm also taking parental presence for granted. That should maybe be on par with sibling representation? In Teen Wolf, Stiles and his father (and to a lesser extent, Scott and his mother) are pretty central to the narrative, and to Stiles's character development. Okay, and now I've officially lost my train of thought.

[bluemeridian]

I was going to say Buffy and then, well, not exactly. Heh.

[healingmirth]

For a given period of time, Buffy was believed to have a sister. Close enough ;)

[alchemise]

I've noticed the same thing, that it seems like there are more only children on teen shows than there are in real life. I'm going through Dawson's Creek right now and it seems like maybe half of the characters don't have siblings. Though I have no clue what the demographics are like in real life.

[healingmirth]

The average number of children, in families with children, is just under 2 in the US, but that must mean that the median and mode are 1, given the existence if 3+ child families. So I guess it's not as weird as I thought it should be to have so many onlies.