The Real Reason These Popular '90s Teen Shows Were Canceled

Every generation of American teenagers has its own movies, music, and TV shows — stuff that becomes cultural touchstones if not influential classics in the decades that follow. Teens in the '60s teens had the Beatles, '80s teens had John Hughes movies, and '90s teens could be entertained by or empathize with the many characters their age who dominated television of the era. It was a golden age for teen TV, with sitcoms, soaps, dramas, cartoons, and even sci-fi exploring what it felt like to be not quite a kid while also not quite an adult.

But alas, youth is fleeting and so is youth-oriented television. Most TV shows don't last forever, and teen shows tend to come and go as quickly as its audience ages out of their target demographic. Here are the stories of some of the most popular shows about cool teenagers that aired in the 1990s — and the reasons they had to grow up, move on, and leave the airwaves.

Beverly Hills, 90210 was arguably the starting point and inspiration for all '90s teen culture. Not long after its premiere on Fox in 1990, the soap became the hottest show on the air for millions of young Americans who needed to know what happened in the social lives of Brandon (Jason Priestley) and Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty), Minnesota transplants who moved to a certain ritzy Los Angeles suburb, along with their various friends and romantic partners. Brenda's relationship with Dylan (Luke Perry) became both iconic and "couples goals" for millions of teens, who bought magazines and posters featuring the show's photogenic cast.

Beverly Hills, 90210 proved so popular, and vital to the rise and continued success of Fox, that the network kept it on the air. It evolved from a high school show to a college show, then simply one about the lives of young adults. By the year 2000, ten years after its debut, 90210 was the longest-running drama on American nighttime TV, although much of the original cast had long since left and been replaced by new good-looking people. With the show long in the tooth and its characters nearing their 30s, Fox canceled the once-mighty teen soap after nearly 300 episodes.

Like many long-running series, Beverly Hills, 90210 spawned a series of spinoffs, the most popular of which, Melrose Place, became one of the defining shows of its era in its own right. That tradition continued in 2008 with 90210, a spinoff that focused on the lives of a different group of teens in the ritzy area code; after that show left the air in 2013, yet another series, BH90210, reunited members of the original cast in 2019 — this time with the actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves. It's an appealingly weird idea, but viewers weren't interested: BH90210 left the airwaves after only six episodes.

When Clarissa Explains It All hit Nickelodeon in 1991, it was like nothing else on TV at the time. Melissa Joan Hart starred as adolescent Clarissa Darling, who talked to the audience to explain her life, the actions of others, and any other number of quirks of the human existence. Clarissa became a role model for her creative flair (her outfits and bedroom were a triumph of funky design), abundant confidence, and wacky sense of humor, plus viewers could relate to the trials of having goofy parents and an annoying little brother.

During Clarissa Explains It All's fourth season, Nickelodeon decided that it wasn't going to order more episodes. Why? At 17, the character of Clarissa was too old to be starring in a Nickelodeon show... but not cool enough to star in a show on sibling network MTV. "In those days, Nickelodeon stopped at 14 and MTV started at 15 or 16, and there was no middle ground," creator Mitchell Kriegman told Mental Floss. "They didn't cross that line, 'cause that was MTV territory, and the attitude of MTV was way different than the attitude of Nickelodeon." Kriegman attempted to skip the demographic pigeonholing altogether, and in 1995 pitched to CBS a continuation called Clarissa, in which the college-age title character lands an internship at a New York newspaper. It never became a series.

Blossom was a simple family sitcom centered around a teenage girl. Mayim Bialik portrayed the title character, a smart and thoughtful young woman who marched to the beat of her own drummer (or, as in the case of the show's notorious sequence, in a series of outfits and hats) as she tried to navigate life. But there was also a darkness to Blossom — Blossom's mother was deceased, leaving her father (Ted Wass) to raise his kids alone, which also included dimwit Joey ("Whoa!"-spouting teen idol Joey Lawrence) and recovering alcoholic Tony (Michael Stoyanov). Not long after its 1991 debut, Blossom aggressively began to explore its serious side, producing a number of "very special episodes" in which Blossom and her best friend Six receive firsthand lessons about racism, eating disorders, motorcycle safety, and gun control, among others.

Blossom aired on NBC opposite Fox's sexy soap Melrose Place, with the latter overtaking it in popularity. "We're not going to beat them at their game, so we decided to go back to our roots as a family show," programming executive Bob Levy told the Los Angeles Times. In other words, Blossom producers were told to cut it out with the issues-oriented episodes. They even revamped the show, with Blossom's dad remarrying and adding a cute and plucky stepdaughter character to the cast. None of these moves worked. The show's ratings continued to sink, and NBC canceled Blossom in 1995.

Most movies and teen shows about teens are about the rich and popular kids. MTV's animated hit Daria had plenty of those characters, except that they were a source of derision for the heroes, brutally sarcastic and proud social pariah Daria Morgendorfer and her best friend, aspiring painter Jane. Daria brutally mocked high school and all its social conventions, with Daria delivering her vicious and pointed criticisms at the jocks, cheerleaders, and her popularity-obsessed sister Quinn.

Daria, which debuted in 1997, came about when MTV needed a show to attract female audiences, and left showrunner Glenn Eichler mostly to his own devices, offering him and his team full creative freedom to make the show they wanted. That also meant he got to end the show on his own terms when he was ready, wrapping up after five seasons with a TV movie about Daria's graduation. However, there's a good chance the show wouldn't have made it to another season even if Eichler had wanted to do that. "Not too long after the series ended, MTV animation imploded, so I don't know if we would have even made it to a sixth year," he told Variety.

The hit 1995 movie Clueless concerned a clothes-obsessed, Beverly Hills teen named Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) who just wants to get her driver's license, hang out with her friend Dionne (Stacey Dash), and give new student Taj (Brittany Murphy) a life-changing makeover. The cheery and casual dynamic, along with the film's popularity, made a TV version almost a foregone conclusion, and Clueless the show wound up on ABC's TGIF lineup in the fall of 1996. Several cast members of the film (Dash, Elisa Donovan as antagonist Amber, and Donald Faison as Dionne's boyfriend Murray) reprised their roles, while Rachel Blanchard took over for Silverstone. Despite moderately high ratings — it ranked #53 for the year — ABC canceled it, only for the teen-skewing UPN to seize it. The change in venue to the generally little-watched smaller network hurt the show: viewership fell precipitously, and the third season of Clueless saw another ratings drop. UPN canceled the show at that point.

Buffy, a vampire slayer played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, constantly faced danger, violence, and death in the line of duty — and Buffy the Vampire Slayer the show outlasted almost as many threats. It survived a rescinded cancellation (in which the title character died), a network switch from the WB to UPN, the exit of popular characters Angel and Cordelia to the spinoff Angel, and consistently poor ratings, never ranking higher than 120th place in the annual Nielsen tally. Nevertheless, Buffy's crew produced 144 episodes of what would become one of the biggest cult shows of all time, chock full of action, stunts, and serious acting. That amounted to a tremendous grind for Gellar, and by 2003, she'd had enough. "Buffy, in this incarnation, is over," she told Entertainment Weekly. "I'm 26. I'm married. I never see my husband," she added (via Us Weekly). "You want to pick up and go, try other things, live in different places. It feels right, and you have to listen to that." Without Buffy, there could be no Buffy, and so UPN wrapped up the series.