The children with the most interesting dilemma are the children of 90210. Teenagers who never had reliable parents or knew intimacy are having babies. In L.A. you can be very big, indeed. Fame is a billboard along Sunset Boulevard. Los Angeles is a horizontal city of separate freeway exits, separate malls, suburb fleeing suburb.
Parents keep moving their children away from what they suppose is the diseased inner city.
But there is no possibility of a healthy suburb radiant from a corrupt center. No man is an island entire of itself. The children of East L.A. live in the same city as Madonna and Harvard-educated screenwriters who use cocaine for inspiration, selling a believably tarnished vision of the world to children of the crack mothers in Compton. And it is always on. Suburbanites use TV to watch the mayhem of the inner city.