Red Band Society Wednesdays, 9 p.m., Fox.

Teen drama Red Band Society treats serious illness as if it’s just another trendy affectation, like joining the glee club or becoming a vampire. The main characters suffer from afflictions including cystic fibrosis, an enlarged heart, bone cancer and anorexia, but they’re never anything less than telegenic and spunky, and that includes the one who’s in a coma. The coma patient also happens to be the one reciting the show’s cutesy, heavy-handed narration. (“This is me, talking to you, from a coma. Deal with it.”) The dialogue is just as self-consciously quirky, except when it’s manipulatively sentimental.

The characters, patients in the adolescent wing of a large hospital, are familiar teen-drama archetypes, including the snobby cheerleader who hides secret insecurity and the posturing bad boy who, er, hides secret insecurity. Even worse is Oscar winner Octavia Spencer as the clichéd sassy, trash-talking nurse who knows everyone’s secrets. The show tries as hard as possible to be uplifting and life-affirming, even offering up a sort of inspirational version of the afterlife. By the end of the pilot, the teens have all bonded (and developed at least one love triangle), but their illnesses seem no more life-threatening than a bad day at high school.