Mann as Emma Samantha McLeod as Marissa Becker Nick Lashaway as Christopher "Topher" Flynn Craig Ferguson as Oliver Davies, Deborah Tynan's dad Meghan Ory as Greta Amanda Crew as Polly Brewer Crystal Lowe as Julie Josh Meyers as Sam Connor Peter Dinklage as Dr. Belber Natasha Melnick as Sabrina Connie Britton as Dianne Samm Levine as Bernard Busy Philipps as Alex Production The series was created by Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs, who had previously worked on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. ABC greenlit a full series order for the fall season in June 2004. The show was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia and Seattle, Washington by Sachs-Judah Productions and (ca)bloom!, in association with Touchstone Television, a corporate sibling of ABC, both owned by The Walt Disney Company. The school used for exterior shots, possibly interior as well, is Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver. Broadcast The show premiered on October 7, 2004 in the Thursday 9 p.m. time slot, airing at the same time as NBC's The Apprentice and CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Episodes Reception On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a rating of 73% based on 22 reviews. The consensus states, “Life as We Know It might be too risqué for some viewers, but the teen drama tackles relationships in a nuanced manner.” Variety called it "a sly, sweet look at high school . . . so good that you immediately make room on your shelf for the cult-fave DVD because you know this is the kind of show that gets cancelled after five episodes." Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Gillian Flynn also gave a positive review and said the show "revels in off-putting frankness." John Doyle of The Globe and Mail wrote, "Most TV dramas about teenage life either paint everything in a romantic mist or present the teens as near-savages, existing in the sort of hormone-crazed universe depicted in the American Pie movies. Life as we know it falls somewhere in between. The kids are neither precocious nor too crude. They're self-infatuated, but the realities of the world are revealed to them. This is a coming-of-age drama but it's about formative experiences and not merely adolescent high jinks." Samantha Bornemann of PopMatters noted that while some of the plot lines verged on predictability, with the Miss Young storyline in particular bringing "the series perilously close to camp", the show "is best during...little moments