Playing favorites

Everyone’s got a favorite TV show. Even if they don’t watch it on a regular basis, everyone’s got that one show that they’ll turn to first when they can’t think of anything else to watch.


Favorites

“I really like to watch crime shows like Law & Order or NCIS,” said Hannah Skrobot, a sophomore studying exercise physiology. “They really get me thinking and it just kind of gives me a different world to slip into when I don’t want to do my homework anymore.”

Others prefer to watch shows that are a little bit more on the fun side. Hanna Hafner, a sophomore studying journalism, said that her favorite shows include The Office, Community and Hannah Montana.

“But I don’t keep up with Hannah Montana, I just watch (Hannah Montana) for fun with my family,” Hafner was quick to point out.

Above all shows, however, she does prefer The Office.

“The Office is the most awkward show to watch because Michael Scott does things,” she said. “You know he’s going to do them, but you don’t want him to. But then it’s hilarious when he does it.”

As I’ve stated many times before in this blog, I prefer Glee in favor of most other shows. But just this past week, I discovered V, which I will continue to watch on a regular basis. I suppose it helps a show’s standing with any given viewer when you take into account the fact that the lead role is played by Elizabeth Mitchell, who is featured in Lost, which is another one of my favorite shows.

But then there are those people who don’t necessarily watch certain shows.

Allan Daugherty, a sophomore studying accounting, said that he just likes to watch ESPN.

“It doesn’t matter what’s showing, it’s sports,” he said. “To me, that’s more interesting than any show.”

A time for everything

It’s all well and good to know that everyone’s got his or her favorite show. But does anyone have time to watch it when it actually airs?

“I just watch reruns, mostly,” Skrobot said. “I’ve got so much to do and I don’t have time, so usually when I’m getting ready to go out on a weekend, I’ll just have the TV on in the background.”

This trend among college students seems to be contradictory to a February 2009 study conducted by the Nielsen Company.

The study found that during the last three months of 2008, the average American TV viewer watches more than 151 hours of television each month, up from more than 145 hours during the same period the previous year.

Nielsen attributed this rise to the growing popularity of devices like DVR and TiVo, which allow viewers to watch essentially any show they want, whenever they want.

Also, the 2008 presidential election probably played a large role in the increase during the last part of that year. It remains to be seen if the numbers will increase again in 2009.


The college lifestyle and a change of pace

The college lifestyle is definitely one reason why students can’t necessarily watch very much television. Between classes, homework and various other commitments, loyalty to TV shows takes a backseat. But with the onset of winter break there also comes an opportunity to catch up shows that students would otherwise have missed.

“I’ll probably watch shows on Hulu or something,” Daugherty said. “I do like to watch House sometimes.”

I, for one, will be catching up on V, FlashForward and Mercy during my time off from school. It will definitely be a nice change of pace!

A "V"ery good performance

My reaction to V: “Omigosh, best new show ever!!!”

V focuses on FBI agent Erica Evans (played by Elizabeth Mitchell of Lost) as she investigates the reason why 29 alien spaceships have appeared over 29 major world cities (sort of similar to District 9). Anna (Morena Baccarin) is the leader of the Visitors, or the Vs, who claim to come in peace, but in actuality have been infiltrating human government offices, businesses and religious institutions. They are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the world.

Most people on Earth do not doubt the Vs, including Erica’s son Tyler (Logan Huffman), who has been recruited to serve as a V Peace Ambassador. In addition, the Vs have cured many diseases, and so have won favor with much of Earth’s population.

The climax of the first episode comes when Erica finds that her FBI partner is in fact a V sleeper agent. V’s have reptilian skin underneath their human shells, and when her partner attacks her, Erica hits him over the head with a crowbar, slicing the skin on his head and revealing the skin underneath. She subsequently stabs him in the chest with the crowbar, killing him.

The small number of people who know the truth about the Vs are at a loss for what to do, until it is revealed that Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut), a man who at first seems just like everyone else, is actually a sleeper agent. However, he claims that he is a traitor to them and wants to help save humanity.

V is a surprisingly good show, helped along by Mitchell’s strong performance. My one complaint is that the plot of the pilot episode moves along kind of rapidly, but that could just be to introduce the premise of the show in order to hook people. It worked for me, though! And as this is the last show I'll be reviewing, I'm really glad that I could end on a good note!

Always moving

I deviate from my usual reviewing of TV shows to touch on another topic: why we as college students don’t have enough time to relax—ever.

Any TV show that I would like to sit down and watch airs in the evening during the week, when I (and probably most other students) have other commitments.

For example, Glee airs on Wednesday nights (though it hasn’t been on for two weeks due to the World Series), but I’m busy every Wednesday night. So, my friend Rachel and I have taken to watching it online on Sunday evening as a homework break.

But next quarter I’ll be working at The Post on Sunday nights.

The real question to be asked here is not “How will I watch my shows?” but “Why am I so overworked and left with no time to relax?”

I wish there was a simple, clear-cut answer.

Is it the amount of classes that people are taking? Are they classes that require a large amount of outside work?

Or is it other outside commitments, such as being involved in campus organizations or having a job?

Balancing everything that students have to do while still maintaining a social life (for the purpose of maintaining sanity, of course) is tough. I know for a fact that I’m not the only one who’s suffered a few breakdowns along the way.

Sometimes all I want to do is sit down, do nothing and watch TV.

What about you? Are you overworked as well? Do you ever just want to sit down, watch TV or read a book and escape into a different world?

Comment and let me know!

Sitcom central

The Middle enters sitcom central. It’s the kind of thing you’ll want playing in the background when you’re just sort of hanging out when no one’s actually paying attention to it.

The Middle stars Patricia Heaton as Frankie Heck, a mother of three who works as a used car saleswoman in Orson, Ind. Her husband doesn’t pay attention to what goes on, and so Frankie is constantly having to leave her job (where she is the least successful salesperson) to tend to her kids at their schools.

Each of her children has their own quirks—Axl is a rebellious 15-year-old, Sue doesn’t ever make anything she tries out for and Brick (who is played by Atticus Shaffer, who also played the creepy little kid in The Unborn) doesn’t have any friends—except for his backpack and his imagination.

I enjoyed watching the show, but honestly, I feel like my time could have been better spent doing something else. I legitimately felt that I could just let it play on in the background and no one would care.

I could also go for the rest of my life never seeing this show again and be perfectly happy.

I feel like each person who watches it needs to form their own opinion about it. Some sitcoms are absolutely great (such as The Office), and others are just mediocre (like this one). Here’s a preview for you. I encourage you to watch it and then maybe watch the premiere episode. Chew it over for yourself.

Mapping out Glee

I always want to refer back to Glee. After all, it is my favorite show. Not my favorite show ever, though. That honor goes to American Dreams, which unfortunately ended in 2005. But Glee has definitely been more than satisfactory as a replacement.

The amount of talent that is in Glee astounds me. How can so many actors and actresses be so talented? Every time someone new has a solo on the show, the “wow factor” is huge. Really huge. So, I started to wonder, where do all of these people come from? They can’t all be in California.

And they’re not.

The actors and actresses from Glee come from all parts of the country, and even Canada. When one considers how spread out they are, it becomes even more impressive when it is seen on a map.


View A Gleeful Collection, Spread Across the Country in a larger map

I feel that in the future it would also be interesting to see how they all came to be on the show. Did they audition? Were they invited to audition? Several of the cast members were in Broadway productions. Could they have been selected because of their stage performances? Unfortunately, that information would make for one very complicated map.

As I continue to watch and enjoy Glee, I hope to continue to learn more and more about the actors and actresses who play the characters I have come to know and love. Glee is one show I will follow all the way through. I highly recommend you watch it for yourself. Chew it over.

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!

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.