Wasteland is an American television drama on ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 network created by Kevin Williamson. The show debuted in 1999, a Miramax Films

Miramax Films

Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...

 production.

Several of the themes explored were college

College

A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...

, friendships, romance and homosexuality

Homosexuality

Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

. It aired only three episodes in October 1999 before ABC canceled it. However Showtime's ShowNext channel aired the 10 remaining episodes in 2001.

Plot summary

Wasteland tells the story of six friends after college. Dawnie is a graduate student writing a thesis on the "lost generation", and at 27, she is standing strong as a virgin. Alongside are her two best female friends: Sam, a sassy social worker, and Jesse, a publicist obsessed with the downtown dating scene. Other characters include Vandy, a musician by day, bartender by night who still carries a torch for Sam, Ty, who reappears after dumping Dawnie for not "putting out", and Russell, gay soap opera star terrified of being out and Ty's college roommate.

Cast

• Sasha Alexander
  Sasha Alexander
  Sasha Alexander is an American actress. She is best known for several roles, including Gretchen Witter, the sister of Pacey Witter on Dawson's Creek; NCIS Special Agent Kate Todd in the first two seasons of NCIS; as Lucy in Yes Man ; and as Catherine in He's Just Not That Into You .She currently...
  
   as Jesse Presser
• Marisa Coughlan as Dawnie Parker
• Rebecca Gayheart
  Rebecca Gayheart
  -Early life:Gayheart was born in Hazard, Kentucky and raised in Pine Top, Kentucky, the daughter of Floneva , who worked as a Mary Kay independent beauty consultant, and Curtis Gayheart, a miner and coal truck driver. She is of Irish, Italian, and German descent...
  
   as Samantha 'Sam' Price
• Eddie Mills
  Eddie Mills
  Eddie Mills is an American actor, probably most notable for playing Vandy in the TV drama Wasteland.- Career :Eddie did a number of movies including Heartwood and Sabrina Goes to Rome , probably most notable for playing Vandy in the TV drama WastelandAppeared on an episode of Flip That House,...
  
   as Vandy
• Dan Montgomery Jr. as Russell Baskind
• Brad Rowe
  Brad Rowe (actor)
  Brad Rowe is an American film and television actor who began his career in movies such as Invisible Temptation and Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss ....
  
   as Tyler 'Ty' Swindell
• Jeffrey D. Sams
  Jeffrey D. Sams
  Jeffrey D. Sams is an American actor known primarily for his television work.A native of Ohio, Sams has been a main cast member of several television series, few of which have made it past their first season...
  
   as Vincent 'Vince' Lewis

Notable guest appearances

• Adam Scott
  Adam Scott (actor)
  Adam Scott is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Henry Pollard in the Starz comedy series Party Down and as Ben Wyatt in the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation....
  
   as Phillip The Coffee Boy
• Benjamin Markham as Gothic Bill

Trivia

• The mortuary where the dead roommate's ashes were taken was called "Steadlawn Mortuary" an anagram of "Wasteland" - gallows humor since that was the last filmed episode and everyone on the team knew the show was about to be axed.

• The working title of the show was "wasteLAnd", which was supposed to take place in Los Angeles (hence the capital letters) but when it was rewritten, the story setting was changed to New York instead.

• The show is referenced in the introductions of two episodes of Clerks: The Animated Series
  Clerks: The Animated Series
  Clerks is an American animated sitcom based on Kevin Smith's 1994 comedy of the same name. It was developed for television by Smith, Smith's producing partner Scott Mosier and former Seinfeld writer David Mandel with character designs by Stephen Silver.-Cast:- Broadcast history :Only two episodes...
  
  .

• Sam Price was originally written as an NYPD detective; after negative test-audience feedback was centered around her character's profession and accent, her scenes in the pilot were re-shot to make the character a social worker and the second episode dealt with Sam learning how to speak without a Southern accent.