Revised Blogs

Community's letdown of a season finale





I love, love, love Community. The characters are ridiculous, the situations unbelievable, and it’s jam-packed full of witty one-liners and quips. A satirical show, Community makes a mockery of other shows and movies while subtly reinforcing the stereotypes associated with community colleges (they’re “not real schools”, “theyre easier”, “the students are lazy”.) Don’t worry, I can say this having attended community college for a year prior to transferring to CU!
As with previous episodes, the show mimicked that of the traditional, open-ended, unexpected-twist finales that so many other shows rely on. Which makes sense, they want you itching to know what is going to happen next! They’re not going to deliver a clear cut, black and white finale, where’s the fun in that? However, the season finale did leave the viewer with something to be desired, the half-hour I spent watching it! No, but, really, the final episode of Community seemed so random, unexpected and a bit cliched. Instead of making a mockery how contrived other show’s finales can be, they essentially delivered a show just like the ones they make fun of.

Season finales, in general, adhere to the cliffhanger ending to be resolved in the next season or bring open-ended plot lines to a conclusion. Community went the cliffhanger option.

What was with the out-of-the-blue love triangle between Jeff, Britta and Professor.Slater? The sudden emergence of a love triangle leaves Jeff with a tough decision and the viewer completely blind-sided and confused. Of course, Professor.Slater would show up again (after being M.I.A for so many episodes) to give Jeff another chance, who else would be the third party in Jeff’s love triangle? Just as guarded Britta finally lets her guard down, professes her love to Jeff in front of the entire school at the “Tranny Dance”, and he, of course, in his typical nonchalant manner, sidesteps the sticky situation. Instead, Jeff excuses himself from the room, runs into Annie( who decides not to leave Greendale with Vaughn), and unexpectedly, they kiss. Quite an age difference between the naïve, flighty freshman and the pessimistic, smooth-talker! That will never work. All things considered, I expected more from Community, not the usual cliffhanger-ending finale. It seemed as though the writers didn’t have anything original and novel for the finale, as with previous episodes, and merely fell back on the clichéd open-ended ending.





Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret”—My favorable take on the new show Pretty Little Liars




ABC Family’s new show Pretty Little Liars premiered last night; actually it aired a surprising three times back-to-back. The new drama features a posse of popular, affluent, pretty high school students dealing with the mysterious disappearance of one of their own. After the unsettling event, the girls grow apart, but reunite after they each start receiving foreboding messages from a mysterious author, “A”, which they believe to be their missing friend Allison. Each eerie text, instant message, note received by the girls contains information that only Allison was privileged to. Each girl receives a message specific to a secret they harbor, threatening revelation of said secret. The episode closes with the funeral of their possibly belated friend. I say ‘possibly belated’ because there is much suspicion that the body in the casket is not Allison’s.…how else would one explain receiving messages from a dead girl?







Each character is a walking cliché.
The typical line-up as seen in the new series:
Spencer is the uptight, studious girl, who inevitably ends up falling for every single one of her older sister’s boyfriends.

Emily is the quintessential jock. She has a secret that hasn’t yet been disclosed. Based on a few alluding statements made by Allie and her sort-of-kiss with the new girl in town, it appears she may currently be struggling with her sexual orientation.

Allison is the missing girl who assumed the role of the bitchy, instigating “queen bee” prior to her disappearance. Think Regina from Mean Girls. It’s strange how Jenna looks like a dark-haired version of Allison. It’s hard to get a good look at Jenna’s face though as she is always wearing enormous sunglasses.

Hanna (former doormat of the estranged group) rises up in the ranks and reintroduces herself as Allison’s replacement as most popular girl in school. Hanna transforms from an awkward pushover into a defiant rebel. She’s resorted to recreational shop-lifting as a way to cope with her family issues.

Aria is the level-headed, observant, skeptical friend of the bunch. She becomes very uneasy about these mystery texts, rounds up her old friends, only to discover that they, too, have been receiving ominous messages from an unknown author. Aria is being pursued by her (recent college grad) English teacher; she is on the fence about the matter. They met under false pretenses, she lead him to believe she was attending college as an english major. Very weird (and illegal) how her teacher pursues her after discovering he’s her student. He must have been so enamored with the two cutesy, witty comments she made about books.

Jenna, what is there to say about Jenna? Well, not much so far, there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this girl. Any mention of this character’s name was in the phrase “the secret about Jenna”. Also, she is blind. Her handicap is made evident when a man escorts her to her seat at the seemingly deceased friend’s funeral.

Despite this predictable set-up, there is something about this show that compels me to keep watching. Pretty Little Liars is entertaining and intriguing, I’m curious to know what will transpire next. What really happened to Allison? What is the “secret about Jenna”? Will a secret relationship between Ari and Ezra (her young teacher) come to fruition? What, if any, repercussions of her shoplifting habit will Hanna incur? So many unanswered questions that need to be addressed.

My take on Pretty Little Liars in a nutshell: dire secrets, complicated characters, forbidden affairs, mysterious murders and “the secret about Jenna”. I’m going to stay tuned and see what other secrets this show has in store!





I DOn't care for Four Weddings
I’m really not one of those girls whose had every detail of her wedding day planned out since she was 5, but I really enjoy watching wedding-related shows, ‘Say Yes to the Dress’, ‘Engaged and Underage’, ‘Battle of the Wedding designers’…However, I do have a few bones to pick with the a more recent show, Four Weddings on TLC (Fridays at 10/9 c).

The jest: Four women strive to impress each other with their weddings in order to win a free, lavish honeymoon. Each episode, four soon-to-be brides have their weddings critiqued, inviting three competitors (other brides) to judge their wedding and allot her a score based on four specific facets of the special day: venue, food, dress and overall presentation.

There appears to be a negative recurring theme in the show. The bride-to-be with the most money invested in her wedding nearly always receives the highest scores from the three other rival brides, and therefore wins the lavish honeymoon. Which poses the question, if this woman (or couple) had such an expensive wedding then can’t they probably afford dishing out for their own fancy honeymoon? I mean, it seems to me that the woman with the quaint, lower-budget wedding is more deserving of a complimentary honeymoon than the woman who spends $50,000+ on hers! Besides, it is these quaint, inexpensive weddings that focus more on the ceremony and nuptials, rather than on impressing their guests with over-the-top decorations and an extensive open bar. Some of the best weddings, in my opinion, were the more intimate, low-key ones.





Also, it’s slightly annoying how some of the rival bride’s took issue with weddings that didn’t incorporate drinking or offer an open bar, and subsequently issued lower scores to those women’s wedding.

Four Weddings, in general, perpetuates out society’s materialistic mindset. Gone are the days of simple wedding in the family’s backyard or in a small church. Now it’s commonplace for couples to invite hundreds of their “closest friends” to a ridiculously expensive venue…








They really will give anyone a reality show these days…TLC’s Mall Cops





So I was flipping through channels one night and stumbled upon Mall Cops, proof that they will literally give anyone a show. Hence, Mall Cops, a tv show highlighting the high jinx and staged incidents that transpire at the Mall of America and how the mall security deals with said incidents. The show makes everything look so intense, with the dramatic music, the use of schematics to pinpoint where a ‘suspect’ is located, and the security room packed with mall cops watching people on their monitors.

I find it pretty hilarious how the security people are given titles like “sergeant”, “lieutenant”, “captain”. Highly doubt they earned their way through military ranks. Some of the uniform shirts seem to have different types of badges that they may have earned…..doing what?!

Mall Cops really aims to make the security guards look like legitimate police officers, but they lack the credentials or the authority. They even do Roll Call, where the security guards are given their tasks and duties for the day, similar to what one would see in a police drama to police tv shows.
A few ridiculous/odd happenings featured on the show:
-A bike mall cop spends two hours looking for a man’s car that was presumed stolen, but actually parked on the opposite side of the mall.

-A man is escorted out of the mall for running to Victoria’s Secret’s makeup counter, quickly applying all the makeup and sprinting out of the store. Apparently, men are prohibited from wearing makeup in Mall of America. Weird, yes. Criminal, probably not?

-A female cop loses a toenail after breaking up a fight in the food court? How she lost a nail through her shoe, I have no idea…



-A young man is scolded by a mall cop for dancing without any music. The dancing fiend gets reprimanded, a second time, for dancing and doing handstands, still without music.

-A young man wearing a dress is kicked out of the mall. The young man insists that his uncle is a cross-dresser and that makes it ok. It’s so obvious that this kid is just being a smartass, wearing a slip dress and Nikes, but the mall cop takes the stunt so seriously.

-Sarah Palin arrives at Mall of America for a book signing, the mall cops find a suitcase (probably planted there for the show) and enlist the help of their bomb sniffing dog to discover if there truly is a threat. There was no threat. But it’s stupid how they didn’t call the police or bomb squad if the possibility of harm existed.








VH1's adds yet another classy reality tv show to the lineup--You're Cut Off





Nine privileged narcissists are knocked down a peg or two after their families enroll them in a reality check bootcamp.


Surprise...You're Cut Off!: "The girls have their first rehabilitation session with professional life coach Laura Baron. They open up about 'why is money is so important to them.' Watch the full season premiere!"


It’s one dilemma for the girls after another:
1. Nine women, under the guise of starring in VH1’s new reality show highlighting their lavish lifestyles, The Good Life, are in for a rude awakening. Each one aghast to find their credit cards declined during their daily shopping spree.

2. The women “coincidentally” meet each other at the customer service kiosk in the mall to complain about their decline credit cards.

3. The host, a lifestyle coach, reveals to the women they have been ambushed. Their families have turned the money hungry mooches over to the professional to set them straight. They have been sentenced to an 8 week lifestyle boot camp, a last effort to check their egocentric ways.

4. The girls cry and whine and swear revenge on their families for cutting them off from their trust funds. The princesses are brought back down to Earth a bit when faced with reality that parents and husbands are no longer willing to fund their shopping addictions or turn the other cheek to their selfish attitudes.

5. The drama begins after the girls find out they are not being escorted to their new home in a limo like other reality shows, but in a mini-van. The horrors! They consider their transportation to be far beneath them and vocalize their extreme dissatisfaction.

6. Transported in the abomination that is a mini-van, they are let down, yet again, when they see the “shack of a house” they’re forced to live in. What most people would consider a normal, middle-class home, these privileged women deem a shack. One woman insists that her house maid would not live in a house so decrepit. (there is a picture of house at the top of the blog, doesn’t really deserve dump status, huh?)

7. And get this! The girls to cook their own food! Most of the women don’t know how to cook or refuse to cook; so they are limited to cigarettes and boxed wine. And just to reiterate how they are going to start living more modestly, they are supplied with a box of wine. After all, it wouldn’t be a trashy reality show without excessive alcohol consumption.

8. Needless bickering and petty arguments soon ensue after “fake girls” and “bitchy girls” are outed. Alliances are drawn, setting the stage for the upcoming drama that will likely transpire throughout the season.

9. As the season progresses, the women are going to be taught a thing or two by taking on demanding jobs. But will they take what they learn to heart, merely go through the motions, or refuse to cooperate?...We shall see.

All in all, You’re Cut Off is another predictable reality featuring spoiled, childish people with no appreciable concept of real life.

Blog Reflection

Before this class, blogging seemed like a very foreign aspect of the entertainment culture. I felt that blogging was reserved for people wanting to rant their opinions, or a place to tear apart the smallest details of productions. Now, after spending five weeks reading and writing in this field, I have gained a strong respect for those bloggers with a strong developed voice, those that create compelling and engaging commentaries, and blogs that have an overall aesthetic appeal.

For me, the hardest part of the blogging process was keeping my writing focused in a certain direction. I feel like my original attempts were a little scattered, and seemed to be writing just to write. Over the course of the term though, I felt my style become more streamlined. I remember one moment when I was writing my second blog on Glee, and I likened the process to acting, and achieving an objective. Once I was able to create a specific goal for the blog, I was able to focus my writing and achieve that objective.

I found most of my revisions focused on making my blogs more visually appealing. I changed the lengths of some paragraphs, and added additional videos and images to keep the reader engaged. This was also the aspect of blogging that I began having the most fun with. I found that my searches for the right videos and links would take twice as long as the actual writing because I would become so engrossed in researching. I feel like this is where a lot of my strength as a blogger came from as well. For my blog on Breaking Bad I spent several hours during rehearsal one night searching for the right clips that would highlight the brilliant blend of humor and tragedy that the show mixes together. It is a show that I care deeply about, and I wanted to convert other readers into viewers for the program. By finding clips that I believed would be engaging to readers, such as the recap of episode 1 and the two main actors jokingly performing on The Soup, I think readers were able to get a clear picture about the caliber of show Breaking Bad is.

Also, I believe that it’s this use of multi-media that separates blogging from the usual styles of writing that I do. For scholastic papers, my writing is typically broken up into paragraphs that tend to be fairly long in length to prove an example. With blogging, I format my writing in a similar fashion, however they are much shorter in length and broken up by media objects. I found that the shorter and more direct a blogging paragraph is, the more effect it has. For any additional explanation that is needed, I can use an image or video to achieve that example more effectively.

I really appreciated the strong sense of voice that can be developed in blogging. For scholastic writing, I often feel constrained by editing myself to keep my writing formal. Over the course of the term, I believe I grew into my own voice as a writer for this style of writing. I was able to you terms like “clusterfuck” and references of the Flavor of Love girls in the same piece, which I would argue is a success for a paper.

Besides shaping my writing style, blogging has also altered the way that I view television entertainment. I already watched shows with an analytical eye, but I usually kept my evaluation focused on the actors’ performances. Now when I view programs, I watch for the overall arc of the show, whether it is culturally relevant, and if the show is engaging. Watching TV has become an interactive process. I now feel more compelled to search Internet forums, or read blogging reviews of programs. I even feel more compelled to begin writing blogs of my own.
I think this is an incredibly valuable skill to develop for the field I have chosen to enter in as a profession. Many actors use sites like Twitter to remain in the public eye and promote themselves. I believe that blogging can be a very excellent outlet for my own voice in this crazy industry.

Personal Reflection

At the beginning of this class I was a little nervous about having to post weekly blogs. I had never written a blog before this class and maybe read only one only once or twice, so to say the least I felt in over my head for the first few blogs I posted. I do enjoy watching TV and relaxing, but I was extremely unsure about how to go about writing a blog. Honestly, the most difficult aspect of writing the blogs for me was analyzing a specific show. I used to normally lie on the couch, turn on the TV, and then transform into a vegetable every time because I used the TV as an aid to help me relax and unwind. I dealt with my short comings as a TV analyst by constantly reminding myself to think critically about whatever show I happened to be watching, really trying to pick out a few key points the show was trying to make while relating these points back to modern American culture. Today, the last day of class, I feel confident knowing that I am no longer the same vegetable I once was and I have conquered my initial difficulty. Now as I watch TV I can easily pick out subtle nuances of the show and readily identify how and why these shows fit into today’s society.

As the month of June rolled on I felt like I was slowly becoming a better blogger, but going back and revising the blogs has reassured this belief for me. The revisions I made on my first blog post greatly outnumbered the revisions I had to make on my final posts. My first post Somebody…Please Lie to Me contained some pretty good analysis of the show, but I realized that in no way, shape, or form did I make the blog interesting or engaging to other fans of the show. Instead I just tried to tell the reader how the show relates to American society and what the premise of the show is, so I went back and really tried to engage the reader by stating strong opinions about the show and backing up my opinions with undeniable information from the show. After the first blog Somebody…Please Lie to Me my revisions diminished with each preceding post, yet the type of revisions I made were pretty much the same for each. I noticed that most of my blogs were half summery and half analysis with a few tiny opinions thrown in the mix, so I tried to really focus on the analysis aspect while developing and maintaining a sense of voice. I came to think of the blogs like I was debating the importance of the show with a friend while convincing them to either watch the show or not watch it. By my last blog Damn…That’s a HUGE Bitch! I felt like I had finally become comfortable blogging, which I proved to myself by only having to revise small grammatical errors in the last blog.

All my life my teachers have taught me to write in an academic fashion and it was hard to ignore this urge while blogging, especially in for the first few. I remember for my fourth blog Finally I Have My Entourage Back I really had to resist this urge. While writing this particular blog I found myself spending more time on arguing my point with fancy words and proper grammar than making sure my writing had fluidity to it. I’m sure most of the people who read this blog right after I posted it thought it sucked because my ideas where choppy and unconnected, which I hopefully have fixed. This class has taught me to be more confident in my writing as a blogger and an academic because I now attempt to not only use accurate and descriptive adjectives with proper grammar, but now I also make sure to transition smoothly from one idea to the next, making sure to keep the reader engaged and able to follow my thought process.

All in all I loved this class and have already recommended it to all of my friends who still need to take an upper division writing class. Now I can watch hours of TV, which I frequently do, and not feel like I’ve wasted my time away. I recognize the clever writing techniques, timely events relatable to life outside the world of television, and great acting that accompanies many of my favorite TV shows. I started this class as a TV watching vegetable who didn’t even read blogs and didn’t notice the plethora of new shows coming out, but now I feel like I am a somewhat decent TV critic who enjoys watching any and all kinds of TV programming. My thinking about TV has changed for the better, I enjoy the complex web TV spins and which viewers get trapped, and I have only this class and you as a teacher to thank for it!

Final Reflection

This class was not what I expected it to be but it was worth the crash review of how to write well. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to forget the basic rules of writing. This class helped me in both my formal and informal writing techniques. I shall try to utilize what I learned from all that we did within the class, such as the blogs, research, paper, and prospectus to enhance my writing.

Within formal writings such as the research paper, I now know I have to work on my organization and structure of my essays. I need to take the time to revise and flush out my arguments to their maximum. I also found a better way to come up with ideas and get myself out of writers block if I get stuck. Also, grammar is a big issue. As soon as I finish a paper, I need to read and re-read to find the grammatical errors such as the misuse of the semi-colon. This, I am hoping, will affect how my papers are scored in the future.

Informally, my writing may still need a bit of work. I know I have strong voice in whatever I write, which sometimes can overpower the intended assignment, but the same issues that I have within my formal writing can apply to informal writing as well. I think the most difficult part of creating the blogs was coming up with a subject to write about. Sometimes I had to look at other blogs to get an idea of what I wanted to write about. It was a little nerve-wracking knowing that a blog is meant for entertainment therefore it must be entertaining. Especially given the subject of the class was TV, it was hard to judge what other people may have found appealing. Though I did enjoy having the freedom to choose whatever show and write whatever you wanted to say. It was like I was my eight year old self, except with a broader vocabulary.

In the revision process, I looked for more of the grammatical errors than anything else. I also tried to adjust the flow of the sentences so they made more sense as a quick read. It was relatively different than what I normally write. I could allow more of my own judgments and opinions to come across. I normally just write more for educational purposes, such as essays, research papers, and various other school related papers. It was nice for change to be able to not have so much focus on supporting the claim and instead just stating what I thought.

It’s interesting to note that after writing these blogs I see a television program differently. When I watch a show I am now thinking if it would be a good candidate to blog about. I almost want to keep blogging and see how others react to what I have to say, especially people outside of our class. I also want to look up more blogs on TV shows I wouldn’t normally watch. I feel like I could get the best sense of what the show is really like from an avid fan or one not so keen about it. I am glad we got the opportunity to create our own blogs because otherwise I don’t believe I would have ever created one. Out of my friend base I know that a lot of them watch the shows I do, so it was nice knowing that people are actually interested what other people watch. For instance, I would have never known about some of the shows if the people in the class hadn’t blogged about them. It was also nice to get feedback from fellow bloggers. Though some comments were more like, “I watch that show too” or “that was hilarious” it was comforting to know I was being read.

As my first time blogging, I had a good experience. It was fun, relatively easy, and a bit cathartic. I am not the best blogger and I know that there is room for improvement but hopefully these first five are just the beginning to my blogging endeavors. It was a good class, a little fast passed, but my writing reaped the benefits and hopefully that shows.

Blog Reflection

Prior to taking TV and American Culture, I’d never written a blog before and really never read others’ blogs either. Writing the first blog was somewhat difficult because I tend to want to summarize and/or ramble, but the more I blogs I wrote, the easier they became. Portraying a good sense of voice in my blogs was a bit challenging in the beginning as well. So those aspects of blogging were a bit tough, but the more blogs I wrote and read the easier finding voice, avoiding summary, and incorporating much more commentary became. Also, reading other’s blogs got me interested in other shows I probably would not have tuned into. I think writing these blogs forced me to delve deeper into the shows I was watching. I had to really think about what I was watching and what the bigger meanings were and then apply that to my blogs. I enjoyed writing about shows I really liked but found that I was harder to criticize them. The shows I thought were terrible were a lot easier to write about though, because there was so much to pick apart and criticize.

Blog writing was different from the writing I’m used to doing, in that it’s not as formal and inherently incorporates the author’s opinion. In formal writing, it’s shunned to use “I” or state your opinion outright, but that is the whole idea with blogging; it’s entirely opinion. Also, cursing would probably not go over so well in academic writing, whereas there isn’t any censoring with blogging; one’s free to say whatever they please. It was nice to be able to write more informally and in a sarcastic and witty tone.

As far as revision of the blogs in general, I took out the irrelevant, omitted too much summary, combined really short paragraphs, and corrected spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. For my first blog, pertaining to the season finale of Community, I revised based on feedback given in class and corrected a few grammatical errors. I omitted the last paragraph as it was kind of irrelevant to the subject of the blog. I included a brief paragraph about how typical season finales play out and how Community mirrored that set-up. After re-reading my second blog about the season premiere of the new ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars, I realized it was actually a lot of summary and very little commentary. I added in my two-cents at the end of a few of the character descriptions. My third blog, critiquing the wedding show Four Weddings, was in need of a few changes in word choice and some editing in the opening paragraph, as two of the sentences were contradictory. For the fourth blog, Mall Cops, I combined smaller (two, three sentence) paragraphs and changed the order of certain paragraphs. I also added in bullet points to the list of events from the show for aesthetic purposes. My final blog was is need of some grammatical corrections. I think from the first blog to this one, I’ve improved from just summarizing to less summarizing and more commenting on and critiquing of the show. I think this last blog got to the jest of my point quickly, didn’t have any irrelevant sidenotes, and was fairly concise.

I think the prospectus project changed my view of tv in that I’m more aware of advertising and to what population commercial is trying to appeal to. The blogs made me more cognizant of stereotypical characters in tv shows. I’ve been paying attention to the different types of camerawork and camera shots while watching tv too. Now I know the purpose of all the different kinds of shots and how they are used.

Reflection

In blogging, the most difficult thing for me to do is write something that I think will be engaging. I read blogs occasionally, and I never want to read something that is too long unless it really grabs my attention. I know that people read blogs for amusement/recreation and no one is going to read something long and boring. So I found it challenging to try to create a post that was thoughtful and analytical as well as compelling and entertaining. Also, I found it difficult to create my personal voice. When I would sit down and write a blog post, I could hear the sarcasm or disappointment or any other tone in my head. While I though I was clearly conveying my attitude, I realized other people are not going to read my post exactly the way I heard it in my mind when I wrote it. I think the tone is an important part of a blog and a key element to the blogger’s voice. When writing my posts I felt I was very obviously not taking and show or opinion too seriously and I had sense of humor about it all. It is difficult to read your own post and know how another person is interpreting it; therefore, I found it to be difficult to strongly convey a voice.

I found it was easiest and most enjoyable to write about something that I was passionate about. For instance, I had more fun writing about Chelsea Lately than I did about Jillian Michaels. I think that the reader would notice that too, and see that I have more passion for one show than the other. When I wrote about Chelsea Lately, the words flowed right through me: I wanted the reader to feel the way I did about the show and I tried to convince who ever was reading that the show was funny and worthwhile. Jillian Michaels, on the other hand, I had more trouble with. I wasn’t really into the show and I struggled with developing a compelling post.

When I revised, I went through my posts and tried to read them from a different perspective – as if I hadn’t written them, and tried to take out that parts that were less interesting and add something a little more compelling. Also I tried to add a little bit more of my voice into the post.

Blogging is different from regular scholastic writing because of its casual nature and, as I mentioned, the struggle to keep the reader engaged. When writing for school I never thought so much about keeping the reader engaged, I think because I knew the only reader was my teacher. In this case, I knew the whole class, and anyone really, could be reading my post, and I wanted to have it be interesting so that other people would like it. Also it blogging the writing attempts to create a conversation. It is one thing to argue a thesis for a paper, but in a blog, you want to give your opinion and hopefully leave room for the reader to have an opinion while feeling comfortable to comment that opinion.

After I began writing the blogs, I watched TV a little more critically. I noticed social commentary a little more; I began to notice trends– in genre, plot, humor, etc. Themes in TV go in and out of style and it’s interesting to see what is popular and think about why. I also had never thought about the difference between shows on basic cable and premium cable networks. It was so interesting when I realized that the shows on cable channels cater their plotline to advertisements because they rely on a commercial break, while premium channels can focus on the show’s story line. This class and blogging definitely made me more aware of the strategies in television, themes, production, and commentary made by good TV shows.

Reflection

I really enjoyed getting to take part in a blog like this one and see how the blogs that I read actually come to happen. It was a different experience for me, since I don’t really write as often as I read. The most difficult part of this blog was trying to find something relevant to watch and write about. Since I have odd hours and I’m never able to sit down for prime time TV I usually just watch reruns that run after 11 PM of shows that are about 2 years old. But now with the watch instantly on many networks websites and the OnDemand feature on Comcast as well as the frequent use of my parents DVR (and free food) I was able to actually be active in watching the summer TV programming.

I enjoyed the ability to put my two cents in the comments of the blogs if I did or did not agree with what was being said in the blog, or if I thought the TV show being blogged about was completely crazy. This was also a little difficult because we all commented on such an unscheduled and random basis that no real discussion could happen in a timely manor. I revised a little. My revisions were mostly to add links, videos and make the discussion more timely and accurate with some research into the subject or show I was discussing.

Blogging is different than any other type of writing I have done because my subject was supposed to be as timely as it could be. The peers commenting on my final (ish) writing was different from my other academic writing. In other writing processes, my peers were involved in revisions, reviews, idea generating, and editing. But here, my peers were reading my final work and they were able to comment on my final product. That made me a little nervous at first, but it was unwarranted nervousness because me peers were really supportive, understood what I was trying to portray as well as were able to readily relate to what I was speaking about.

This experience has changed my engagement with television in many ways. I now come home and check out what’s playing right then, what’s new on OnDemand and make a decision on what to watch based off of that rather than just sit down and watch an old favorite show on DVD or a lame movie on AMC. This class has also changed my thinking about TV. I have become more critical in my thinking and watching of TV… when I want to. When I’m starting to look for a new show to follow, I have become more critical in my thinking about where this show can go and where the writers and networks will take the show. I look more into character development than I did before. I look more into the originality of the plot line of the show. I look more into really whom the target audience is. All of these aspects give a glimpse of where the show could go and if I really want to invest my time into following it.