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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A 'Flash' of something tasty

After a Glee-ful entrée, 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.

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.

The first course: A giant helping of Glee

Hello, everyone! Well, it’s the last week of September, which means that many new TV shows have begun. My purpose in doing this blog is to inform people of what new shows are out there, what I think of them and how they can be relevant to the lives of college students. I’ll be reviewing a wide variety of shows, including Glee, FlashForward, Mercy and The Cleveland Show. Hopefully the reviews and opinions I give will be helpful to you as you find your new favorite shows, and you can chew them over as you eat some food for the eyes.

The first course that this blog will dish out is Glee. Glee originally premiered on May 19, 2009, which was a bold move as far as TV shows are concerned—if the show had flopped, then the entire season would have been a flop before it even started. However, this was not the case. Glee exploded, as can be seen here in a Los Angeles Times article. The second episode aired on September 9, and I have been hooked ever since.

Glee takes place at William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, where the football team and the elite cheer club, the Cheerios, rule the school. Spanish teacher Will Schuester (played by Matthew Morrison, who portrayed Link Larkin on the Broadway production of Hairspray) decides that he would like to take over the direction of Glee Club and restore it to its former glory (the school won a show choir championship in 1993).

However, the only students who try out are the social misfits, although they are amazingly talented. Mercedes Jones (Amber Riley), Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer), Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale), Tina Cohen-Chang (Jenna Ushkowitz) and Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) form the original five members of the club, with Rachel quickly becoming the obvious star and best singer of the group, although she is somewhat of a prima donna.

The first rehearsal is a disaster, and Will (known as “Mr. Shu” to his students) quickly becomes discouraged, wondering what he can possibly do to make students want to join the glee club. His colleague Emma (Jayma Mays) inspires him, telling him that if he can get a few of the more popular kids to join, others will follow. Unfortunately, he has no luck—until he blackmails star quarterback Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) into joining the club. Finn is talented, a star who can keep up as a male lead with Rachel.

Things start to look up for the club, until Will’s wife reveals that she is pregnant, forcing him to make the difficult decision to leave his passion—teaching—to become an accountant. The club appears to be finished, but then Finn brings some new music to the group, and the first episode ends with a fantastic (at least in my opinion) rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

Glee has quickly become one of my favorite TV shows. The actors sing all of their own songs, and the acting is cheesy, but great. For example, the Cheerios coach, Sue Sylvester is played by Jane Lynch, and she is hilarious. She yells at her cheerleaders, telling them that the pain they feel in their workouts is similar to the pain she feels by living with hepatitis and has one-liners that sent me to the floor laughing, because she is so mean yet so funny. In an interview, Lynch describes her character as one who is “pure evil and doesn’t hide it.”

The rest of the characters all develop their own unique personalities throughout the later episodes as well. I know it sounds clichéd, but Glee is a sweet treat after a long day. Chew it over.

Preview of the pilot episode: