Student Teacher

You've seen Austin play high school English teacher, Noah Barnett on Friday Night Lights.

But he played a student too. A high school student in the TV drama Pasadena.



Pasadena was one of the best canceled shows that no one ever caught. the show follows the Greeleys of Pasadena, a completely f'd up power-family in California who not only owns the biggest newspaper in town seems to own the police as well. The show as cynical and dark, too dark for the timing (two weeks after 9/11/) with implied incest, the drug abuse, the murders, the suicides, the conspicuous consumption, an over-sexed minister, a corrupt therapist, a body buried in the bushes and general insanity (hmmm...sounds like some similarities to a show on HBO about a another Southern California family)

Pasadena is about Lily McAllister, shelter pampered 15 year old who witnesses the suicide of a stranger in the dining room of her family's luxe Pasadena home. She was unprepared for the blasé, unconcerned reactions of the her family to the appalling spectacle. So she sets out to find out why the man killed himself and why no one in the family seemed to care that he did. Doing so she began to methodically unearth a number of family secrets -- and in the process, put herself in jeopardy.

Where does Austin come in?
Lily goes to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Darwell, to talk about her issues with what has been happening. Spotted at his dad's office, Dr. Darwell's teenage son, Charlie, (Austin) makes friends with Lily. Friends first date later is Charlie's agenda.

Soon Lily accepts a date with Charlie, and shares her problems with him. Later she convinces Charlie to let her look through his father's files for information about Philip Parker, the man who killed himself in her dining room. In the process they find a series of tapes of sessions Charlie's dad with her brother Robert, when he was a teenager, who confesses to a murder on tape. Lily wants to take the tapes to the police, but Charlie refuse knowing that his father could lose his practice or go to jail if his role in the cover-up is exposed. Lily goes to her other brother Henry, who assures Lily that they can go back and steal the tapes while Charlie is at school.



Charlie got played! Least he got a little taste of her Bonnie Bell lip smacker.



Pasadena really didn't get a chance to find its way. It debuted two weeks after 9/11 most of the US was not in a place for such a dark storyline. Only four episodes were originally aired in the U.S., although thirteen were filmed, before it was canceled. The last episode wraps the mystery of the suicide and how it fits in with the Greeleys. In 2003 and 2004, all thirteen episodes were aired in various countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Colombia, New Zealand, Denmark, South Africa and China. In 2005, SoapNet in the US aired the entire series.



Austin was in some good acting company on the show including Dana Delany, Martin Donovan, Nathan Filion, Mark Valley, Balthazar Getty, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Philip Baker Hall and Barbara Babcock.


And what's Pasadena's connection to Jake? Mike White conceived and wrote Pasadena who wrote Good Girl and has been seen hang out with Jake this past spring.



And the OTH connection? Sophia grew up in Pasadena.