Saturday, October 31, 2009

Mercy is like home-cooked food

After spending nearly an entire quarter with very little home-cooked food, I can’t wait to go home and have some food that hasn’t been overly processed for the dining hall. I know that though it may not be the best food I’ve ever had, it’ll be the best thing I’ve had in awhile.

Such is the case with Mercy. After watching several mediocre-at-best TV shows, I found mercy with … Mercy (pun intended).

Mercy centers around Veronica Callahan (Taylor Schilling), her best friend Sonia Jimenez (Jaime Lee Kirchner) and Chloe Payne (Michelle Trachtenberg), all of whom are nurses at Mercy Hospital in Jersey City.

The show takes on a Grey’s Anatomy-esque feeling when it begins to focus more on the character of the show rather than the traumas that enter the hospital. For instance, Veronica has recently returned from a tour in Iraq. However, her husband Mike (Diego Klattenhoff) cheated on her while she was gone, and so she cheated on him with Chris Sands (James Tupper), who just so happened to be hired as a doctor at Veronica’s hospital—just when Veronica and Mike decide to try and make their marriage work again.

Although the show is very character-focused, the hospital aspect is also very intense. The ending of the first episode nearly brought me to tears—it was extremely powerful.

Out of all the TV shows I have reviewed so far, Mercy is only show besides Glee that I plan on watching on a regular basis—I have fallen in love with it. Check out the preview for yourself, and chew it over. I hope you like it just as much as I do!

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Chew this one over

Cougar Town is purely guilty pleasure. The show teaches no lessons and teaches no morals. In fact, it’s the opposite of moral—it advocates having meaningless sex with anyone (especially those who are younger than you) in order to make you feel better about yourself.

The show not only has a weak message, it has a weak plot and weak acting. In the pilot episode, the plot is essentially that Jules Cobb is unhappy about her recent divorce, and so she becomes a cougar. And outside of Courtney Cox, the acting in the show is not strong at all, and seems to exist only to support Cox’s character, rather than their own.

But the acting is nothing compared to the message the show sends to viewers.

What happened to having a relationship before the sex? The show is obviously based off of a recurring issue in the American lifestyle—pretty much everyone knows the Urban Dictionary definition of a cougar—but why has this behavior become so acceptable?

One might say that since relationships in which the man is significantly older than the woman have long been socially acceptable, why shouldn’t the converse (older woman with a younger man) be acceptable as well?

Others might say that it offers an adventure for both people who are involved—the woman can live vicariously through a younger person, and the man gets a “good time” by being with a more experienced partner.

Whatever the reasoning, I still feel that cougar-type relationships are a little strange. For this reason, Cougar Town just doesn’t appeal that much to me, except for something to laugh at. Think about it yourself, and chew it over.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Reminds me of bananas...

There is one scene in Cougar Town that reminds me of bananas. That’s all I’ll say on the subject.

Aside from that, Cougar Town is the kind of show that can easily become a guilty pleasure. Starring Courtney Cox as Jules Cobb, a recently divorced 40-year-old, the show focuses on the fact that she feels that she can’t have any fun anymore because she is too old. This is exactly what her friend and (much younger) colleague Laurie (Busy Philipps) tries to disprove when she takes Jules out to a nightclub.

At first, the night doesn’t bode well for Jules. She gets flustered and spills her drink all over Matt (David Clayton Rogers), a younger guy who she ends up flirting with for the entire night. However, her drunken mind suddenly sobers up and she realizes what she’s doing. She takes a taxi home and prepares to spend the rest of the night in … until her doorbell rings, and Matt is standing on her doorstep.

It turns out that Laurie had put him there, as she did not want Jules to let “his body” go to waste. After a few awkward minutes, Jules and Matt end up having sex three times. Jules is impressed by his youth, vitality and endurance, and though she is rather appalled at herself for becoming a “cougar,” she eventually invites him back over for more.

Cougar Town is definitely something that I would call a “guilty pleasure” show. It’s not bad, but it’s not a show that will leave the viewer hanging off the edge of their seats wanting more.

Check out the preview, and decide for yourself what you think of it. Chew it over.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

How do we watch TV?

I’ve noticed something about the college lifestyle. No matter how much students get hooked on a particular TV show, it becomes a chore to figure out when to watch it. For example, occasionally I’ll be able to watch a show I want to watch when it actually airs on TV. But this is a very rare occurrence. More often than not, I (and many of my friends) am stuck watching shows online.

But where are the best places to watch these shows online? Hulu.com has most shows, although if you’re looking for Arrested Development, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find it—seasons two and three are no longer available online. If Hulu.com doesn’t have it, then your best bet is probably the network’s Web site. That’s where I saw the first episode of Glee, although now Glee, FlashForward and The Cleveland Show are all on Hulu.com. If they ever take Glee offline, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Students also have wide varieties of what their favorite shows are. For instance, my favorite TV show, by far, is definitely Glee, and I know several of my friends feel the same way. However, another one of my friends is a fan of The Wire, which he describes as “almost like pornography,” even though this is a show that I had never even heard of until he brought it up. Because I was curious about this sort of thing (how students watch TV shows and what TV shows they are watching), I made a short video that partially answers these questions. Chew it over.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Strawberries

The Cleveland Show is just like strawberries—it’s just not very good. To me, strawberries are kind of gross in that they look good, they smell good but once they’re in my mouth, the texture is absolutely awful. Such is the case with The Cleveland Show. After all. I’ve always been a fan of Family Guy, and I got sort of excited when I learned that there was going to be a Family Guy spin-off, called The Cleveland Show. But even though it looked like it would be really good, the texture of the show just wasn’t right.

The show started out funny enough, because it was typical Family Guy. However, it quickly degenerated when Cleveland decided that he was moving with his son, Cleveland Jr., to California. They start their journey normally enough, but they get sidetracked in Cleveland’s (fictional) hometown of Stoolbend, VA.

Cleveland runs into his high school crush, Donna, and they develop a relationship at a pace that I feel is unhealthily fast. Within two days, Cleveland forms a relationship with Donna’s two children and realizes that he wants to completely throw away his plans to go to California and stay in Stoolbend with Donna and help raise her children with her, and Donna decides that she wants the same thing.

I find it hard to believe that two people, even though this is a cartoon TV show, can fall in love that quickly, leading me to become extremely critical of this show from the get-go. Also, even though the typical Family Guy crude humor can be funny at times, I feel like I’m outgrowing the stage where I find it funny. To me, The Cleveland Show just isn’t very good. Watch this preview for yourself, and chew it over.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Unconventional taste

I'm about to do something uncoventional with this entry: Discuss TV in general rather than a specific show. It's mostly my opinion on TV in general, but it's still something to chew over as you think about it yourself.

I generally don't have time to watch TV. But I did want to see what's out there in terms of TV shows, and so I decided to blog about them as a both a way to keep myself engaged in pop culture and also to keep me accountable in discussing the shows I watch. I feel that it makes it more interesting for everybody in that regard. It also takes me awhile to find a show that I like, so the ultimate goal for me in keeping this blog is to find a show that I’ll make a commitment to watching and discussing with others. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I found my favorite show after the first entry—Glee. Even so, I’m still watching and reviewing. A part of me hoping that I’ll find something absolutely horrible, just so I know it’s one less show I’ll have to worry about.

In thinking about TV, however, I got to thinking about the different ways that students at Ohio University can watch TV. Although there is the traditional, actual television, most students watch shows and movies on their computers, either through sites like Hulu.com or by watching shows on DVDs. OU also has its own television and radio network, WOUB, even though that mostly airs public programming and is not necessarily geared toward college students.

I put together a slideshow of pictures relating to television-viewing at OU. Enjoy, and chew it over.

Chewing over chicken...and TV

I feel like the premier episode of FlashForward is similar to the General Tso's chicken at Ohio University's Jefferson Dining Hall. It looks really great at first, and if you only pay attention to it at a surface level, it seems like it truly is that good. However, under further scrutiny, it’s not that great compared to restaurant-quality chicken. In the case of the chicken, the first few bites are excellent, but then it’s easy to just toss aside. But even though it’s only satisfactory at best, I still get the chicken every time it’s served. Why? I don’t know. It’s just much more appealing than it should be. Such is the case with FlashForward. But we’re discussing food for the eyes right now and not food for the stomach, so it’s time to move on to the critique!

When I first saw the trailer for FlashForward, I thought that the show was going to be very similar to the book. Every thing in the commercials related to the book, and everything made sense. But once the show started, I saw that this was not the case. The initial plotline is the same—the entire world blacks out at the same time and has “visions.” But the differences between the book and the show are many.

For one thing, none of the characters from the book, except for Lloyd Simcoe (whose main role is yet to be revealed), even have the same name in the show. Also, the book revolves around a physicist, rather than an FBI agent.

However, those differences are trivial and negligible when compared to the one thing about the show that irks me the most. In the book, they figure out what causes the blackouts rather quickly, and the book then goes on to focus on other things, such as what the main characters saw when they blacked out. The show has not revealed what caused the blackouts, and appears to be taking on a very different storyline from the book.

Though I am not happy about the direction the show is taking in relation to the book, I do like the show on its own when I don’t compare it to anything. It’s like the chicken. On its own it’s fine. I just can’t compare it to anything, or else I won’t like it.

I also feel like anyone, college student or not, can relate to this show, albeit in an unconventional way. In FlashFoward, everyone on Earth blacks out for two minutes and 17 seconds, and sees a glimpse of the future. This causes many people to completely change their outlook on life. And now to you, reader, I pose a question: If you had a glimpse of your future for two minutes and 17 seconds, and the outlook was not what you wanted, would you let it happen, claiming that it’s destiny and can’t be changed? Or would you seize any opportunity you had to make yourself a better future, and completely change it? Chew it over.

Friday, October 9, 2009

A 'Flash' of something tasty

After a Glee-ful entrĂ©e, let’s move on to the main course—a suspenseful science-fiction show. I read the book Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer over the summer, and was very excited to see that a TV show was going to be made based on the book. The pilot of FlashForward lived up to most of my expectations, although there are several things that are quite different from the book, including a major plotline that was not in the book at all, which makes the two storylines vary greatly.

The show opens with one of the show’s protagonists, Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), regaining consciousness in his car, which has apparently flipped over in an accident. He pulls himself from the wreckage and sees a huge scene of destruction in Los Angeles—people are injured or dead everywhere he looks.



The scene jumps to four hours earlier. It’s a normal, peaceful day, and everyone is going through with his or her daily routines. Everything throughout the day runs smoothly—until everyone in the entire world loses consciousness for two minutes and 17 seconds. However, consciousness isn’t lost. The consciousness of the entire world’s population jumped forward six months.

Of course, this discovery (which has been proved because many people had the same “visions” because they were together six months in the future) changes everyone’s worldview. Some are worried—they saw themselves with someone who was not their significant other. Some are hopeful—one man saw himself with his daughter, who was presumably killed overseas in the military two years ago. And others are frightened—Demetri Noh (John Cho) didn’t have any vision at all, because six months in the future he is dead.

FBI investigators—Benford included—are put in charge of the situation to try and figure out why it happened. They reach a lead when they see a video of a stadium in Detroit. Everyone is unconscious except for one man, who is walking around. It becomes their goal to find this man and find out why these visions happened.

As for myself, now I am going to let my own consciousness go forward into sleep. Critique (and college student connection!) coming soon!

I leave you with a promo video for the pilot episode. Chew it over.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

A recipe for stress relief

Glee seems to have completely taken over the college student's television airwaves on Wednesday evenings. Facebook statuses are Glee-related, it becomes a trending topic on Twitter and the songs from the show (sung by the cast, of course) quickly rise to the top of the iTunes best-selling songs list. Why does Glee have the effect it does?

Television shows in general can provide an escape. A March 2007 USA Today article told a story of how some Iraqi citizens use box DVD sets of American TV shows to "escape the violence and stress of the streets outside."

That could be the reason American college students escape into TV shows, although not to escape violence, but stress.

Even though most studies seem to point to TV being detrimental to one's life in general (it takes away from quality time with family and friends, etc.), it seems that to the college student, it may be beneficial.

As any busy student will attest, there is not enough time in the day to get everything done. Well, there is, but if there is even a hint of procrastination involved, then the work will not get finished. And what happens when it's crunch time? People panic. They panic, freak out and frantically work to finish. Eventually, the work is finished, but the student is still wound up from all the effort they exerted, and they need a way to wind down. TV is sometimes the perfect solution.

In my opinion, Glee is a great stress-reliever (for me, at least) because the music just makes me feel good. In the show's pilot, their cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" sent chills down my spine, and even now, whenever I need a quick break, I take a few minutes to listen to it, and I instantly feel better.



So, my recipe for stress relief for all students (high school, college, graduate...any student): Glee. Try it out. Chew it over.