Telling It Like It Isn't

The TV teen-ager used to be that nice adolescent next door, witness Sheila James in the Stu Erwin Show, Billy Gray in Father Knows Best, and Tony Dow in Leave It to Beaver. The neo-Penrod type was stereotyped by Ricky Nelson, who grew into and out of adolescence before the entire nation on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.-

Now, despite a few holdouts (My Three Sons, Family Affair), kids on TV are pretty rotten. To Officer Pete Malloy of Adam-12, for example, a youth is the bearded hippie who shot Methedrine with his teen-age girl and accidentally gave her hepatitis with a dirty needle. The Hawaii Five-O vice squad chased down a sinister guru who was freaking out vacuous young blondes on LSD. The Name of the Game recently had Gene Barry playing a magazine publisher kidnaped by a group of young radicals who planned to kill themselves at an Army chemical-warfare test site. It soon became clear that the pacifists were actually dupes of a young hippie-style Svengali, who had talked the others into a mass suicide because of his own hatred of society. Even Judd for the Defense, which has sympathized with alcoholics and black militants, doesn't always dig kids. A show last month presented high school lads who were so hopelessly hung up on pot that they were framing fellow students and perjuring themselves to get even with police informers.

Hip Argot. One of the few series that consistently take the attitude that contemporary kids can be heroes is ABC's The Mod Squad (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.). The hour-long show features-three youngsters: a miniskirted blonde (Peggy Lipton), a disenchanted rich white boy (Michael Cole), and an angry young black (Clarence Williams III). All three are credible individuals despite the hip argot, heavily littered with "solids" and "uprights," and frequently incredible plots. The show has been successful enough to be carried over into next season, even though the three are not likely to win universal favor among their peers: they work as undercover agents for the local police.

Mod Squad Executive Producer Aaron Spelling is 46 and a veteran of such old standards as Playhouse 90 and The Zane Grey Theater. Now his language is so hip it hurts. "We're telling it like it is," he says. "Somebody has to help adults understand young people. They've got so many hang-ups, and nobody seems to care. Love is the answer. Those hippies are right. The kids are so totally involved with life they've involved me."

The members of the Mod Squad are not so sanguine. "Three kids working for the cops like that, it's not what you'd call realistic," says Williams, 28, who was among the first actors to adopt Afro-style hair and dress. "It's just entertainment. Every time you set out to say something significant on TV, it gets chopped down. I don't say 'Hey, man, this is what's happening, baby; you gotta write it this way.' I'm just a lowly actor doing his job." Cole, whose first leading role was on the show, agrees: "If we can have a little soul scene among ourselves that can generate a little understanding, that's fine. But we're not trying to point up social problems, because that would be phony."

Man Tan Line. Though they do not lug revolvers and they frequently debate quitting the force, the Mod Squadders are in fact good TV cops. When they catch a criminal, usually after a long chase, they beat him up as thoroughly as do the toughest TV heroes. Nor is the series always soft on hippies. In one episode, the Modders go to the aid of an underground paper only to discover that the scheming hippie editor had bombed and wrecked the paper himself to attract publicity and expose "police indifference." Still, the actors try for a modicum of realism. When one script called for Williams to crack "Don't worry about me; they can't see me in the dark," he barked back at the director: "You don't really want me to say that ol' Man Tan line, do you?" He didn't.

TV's rage for relevance often seems to induce the opposite effect: the more programs strive to be with it, the farther they veer from recognizable life. The view of youth as a vast criminal conspiracy relieved only by Mod Squad's undercover trio is hardly building bridges over the generation gap. Yet TV seems content to maintain the myth--until a new one comes along.

-Rick, now almost 29, was married six years ago and has three children. He is currently making singing appearances on the nightclub circuit.

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