Slowly, surely, but not quietly, NBC's two-year-old Dreams has become one of the most provoactice family dramas on the air. Its original gimmick - 17-year-old Meg Pryor (played by 18-year-old Brittany Snow) and her friends in '60s Philadelphia dance, make romance, and observe societal advance through the prism of Dick Clark's American Bandstand - stopped being a gimmick long ago. Instead, the drama has become a showcase for both high-profile music stars (Bandstand performances have featured guests like Usher as Marvin Gaye and Michelle Branch as Lesley Gore) and culturally conscious subplots, which included shipping off Meg's brother (Will Estes) to Vietnam last season.

This season will explore the reverberations of big brother JJ's tour of duty. "Meg wants her brother to come home from Vietnam," says Snow. "And in her mind that means protesting the war. Her dad [Tom Verica] is a World War II veteran who says you should be supporting the troops, and her mom tells Meg to quiet down, that girls shouldn't be [politically active]. We're going into the hippie era, peace and love and sequeing into that whole vibe."

Producer-creator Jonathan Prince is psyched about how timely his time-capsule show has become: "Let me lay out the parallels," says the effusive exec. "There's a Texan president in the White House. He's promising us that he'll get our boys home soon, that we've just gotta get those bad guys, that we're gonna make the world safe for democracy. How about this one? There is a Catholic man from New England running for office - Bobby Kennedy, John Kerry. And in '66 and '67 it even began to emerge that we were violating the Geneva Convention - look at the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib. The country is brutally divided."

Of course, American Dreams is not all riots 'n' tear gas. This season, Meg gets a new boyfriend: Milo Ventimiglia from Gilmore Girls plays, says Snow, "a free-spirit Californian who moves in next door and teaches her more radical ways." Even Gail O'Grady, as mom Helen, will be affected by the times. "You'll see her own version of how she uses the feminism that's in the air to change her beliefs," says Prince, "making her question her role in marriage, as a mother, in the workplace. [This isn't] always going to please her husband."

Another American Dreams oddity: NBC and the Campbell Soup Company have cooked up a novel plot device: Meg's sister Patty will enter a Campbell-sponsored competition. The subject: "How does your American dream differ from that of your parents?" Soup cans will appear in the series, but the cast feels the product placement is justified because young viewers at home will also be invited to write a paper, with Campbell giving a $100,000 college scholarship to the winner. And oh, yeah, there's the Bandstand music. Look for Brandy as Gladys Knight, Nicole Richie fronting the Exciters (singers of the immortal "Tell Him"), and the tantalizing prospect of American Idol Fantasia as Aretha Franklin. Also, Ben Taylor, son of James and Carly, will strum in the Lair, the show's college underground club.

Though Dreams' ratings have yet to be as groovy as its music, Prince says, "I think this is the season where we have the opportunity to break through. We're bringing a war into your living room, but representing arguments on all sides, in the context of family lives everyone can relate to." Good stories, and you can dance to it. - Ken Tucker