Twenty-somethings may count themselves among the millions who tune in to Modern Family, or American Horror Story, or Revenge; I certainly do. But these shows are not for us; they speak a language and serve a meaning-making machine that excludes our generation. I want to look at a few popular TV shows that make a point to skim, if not skip altogether, the millennial question, and consequently ask what it might mean that mainstream TV, which for half a century has served as the hearth of American culture, finds it so difficult to write us into its scripts.

This generational tension — and, at times, millennial absence — is no doubt a reflection of one generation’s anxiety over the inevitability of letting another generation slowly take power. This is a transition as old as civilization itself and, right now, is one defined by the current election cycle (for the first time, millennial voters make up the same amount of the electorate as baby boomers — both at 31 percent).

This relative dearth of millennial interests in media is what made the appearance of Girls on the scene such a big deal. With the rare example of a millennial (Lena Dunham) as its showrunner and a focus on a 20-something friend-group, Girls was hailed as the voice of its generation, as if there could be just one voice or that it would undoubtedly be white, affluent, and part of the urban elite. Though the HBO drama makes some salient points about young people, it is very much defined by the very specific socio-economic demographic it represents. Sure, its characters are millennials, but much of their personality and perspective is representative not of their age, but of their privileged status when it comes to race and class background.

The 100 as a tale of millennial grit.

The 100hasn’t been presented as a solely millennial story, but its airing on The CW certainly suggests the targetting of a younger-skewing audience. It is based on a young adult book series, and has young people as its main (though not sole) protagonists. Unlike shows like Girlsor Broad City, The 100doesn’t have its young characters living in relative wealth with oodles of leisure time to spend angsting about identity. Instead, its protagonists are fighting for survival in a world that seems increasingly predisposed to their failure.

I’m not saying that the life-or-death stakes of The 100‘s protagonists are ones that its millennial viewers can all directly relate to, but science fiction has always hyperbolized real-life anxieties. Here, it isn’t hard to interpret the Sky Teens’ fight for survival as tapping into a real-life anxiety millennials have about trying to find a sustainable, stable, and moral way of living in a world that doesn’t seem to have a place for them — especially if, like the Grounders, you are deemed as a “them” instead of an “us.”

Combatting the narrative of an apathetic generation.

Or perhaps you read The 100‘s war for survival as an allegory for the very real violence that young people in American are politically (if not personally) exposed to on a daily basis. The millennial generation has largely grown up in a post-9/11 world in which war has been carried out on our behalves (or, in the case of millennial soldiers, straight-up carried out) since we first started coming-of-age as a generation.