By JOHN ROGERS(AP) - One of TV's favorite schoolgirls is starting to grapple with some growing pains, and so is her real-life counterpart, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, sister of that other Spears.
"Zoey 101" wraps up its third season as one of the Nickelodeon's top-rated shows with a Jan. 4 cliffhanger worthy of the recent "Desperate Housewives" show, in which a tornado struck Wisteria Lane.
Nobody's life is on the line in a kid's show, of course. But tweens will have to fret along with Zoey over whether she should remain at her sun-dappled California boarding school, Pacific Coast Academy, or move to London with her parents....
If Zoey stays, she may finally learn that best friend Chase (Sean Flynn) has had a serious case of puppy love for her since that day three years ago when she arrived on campus and he was so smitten he rode his bicycle straight into a pole.
So what will she do as the show's third season ends and her school chums ponder a fourth season without Zoey?
"I don't know. I don't know," Spears says teasingly during a phone interview from her home in Kentwood, La.
"Something definitely happens," she finally concedes. "But I guess you'll just have to wait and see what comes of it all."
Zoey's dilemma is not altogether unlike Spears' own, as the actress, now a high school junior, ponders her future.
"I'm going to try to graduate before I do anything else," she says of taking on another TV series or future film roles after "Zoey 101" ends.
Rumors are rampant among "Zoey" fans that her character and Flynn's will finally hook up in season four. There will be a lot of getting together of various characters on the show, Spears says, but she won't reveal Zoey and Chase's situation.
She's more open about her own situation, saying she has no serious boyfriend.
"I kind of just keep my options open," she says. "I have a bunch of friends that I always hang out with, a bunch of guy friends."
She declines to discuss her famous sister, Britney, although she says she has no plans to follow her to California.
"No! Never will," Spears says, laughing at the idea of living in Los Angeles. But her reluctance, she quickly adds, doesn't have as much to do with avoiding the paparazzi as it does with leaving Louisiana.
"It's, you know, it's my friends," she says. "It's where I grew up. I want to stay here."
For years she has turned over the idea of attending Louisiana State University.
"I haven't thought anything about what I might study," she says, chuckling. "I'll have to look more into that. But if I went anywhere, I think it would be fun to go to LSU."
Not that California hasn't been a nice place to fly in and out of, particularly during the show's first two seasons, when it was filmed at Malibu's Pepperdine University.
The seaside campus is famous for its stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. And even after filming moved inland to allow "Zoey 101" to stay in production while classes were in session, the show's producers managed to work stock shots of the campus into every episode.
Spears credits that with fueling at least part of the show's appeal.
"It's a fun place to be. Every kid would want to go to that school," she says.
"Zoey 101" creator Dan Schneider is just as quick to give credit to the show's likable and attractive cast of teenagers led by Spears and Flynn (grandson of Errol Flynn). They started out good, he says, and got better with every episode.
"I think Jamie Lynn really grew as an actress," says Schneider, who has produced such hit kid shows as "Drake & Josh" and "iCarly." "When she started, she was 13 and that's an awkward age. She got more confident in everything. But it really came through in her acting."
As the actors have grown, the show's plots have occasionally gotten less light and fluffy.
In one of the show's most-watched episodes, Chase has to deal with his grandmother's death.
After watching it with his wife, Schneider considered reshooting the ending in which a disconsolate Chase sits in the rain, his head on Zoey's shoulder. Schneider worried about traumatizing his young audience. But as it turned out, numerous parents contacted him to say their children have watched the show again and again in reruns.
Then there's this season's cliffhanger, in which generally smarmy rich kid Logan (Matthew Underwood) steps up as a loyal friend of both Chase and Zoey's.
"The show let me do a bunch of different things and they were really cool about always making it fun," says Spears. "We got to always dress different ways, and growing as an actress they gave me different situations. ... It helped a lot to do a lot of different things on camera."
Now she only has to figure out what to do with her life.
When she was 11 she talked about following her sister into music, but she's not so sure now.
"I don't know. You know?" she says of her future. "It's all kind of open to whatever I feel like doing, I guess. Or whatever comes my way. I guess it will all fall into place."
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