October Road

Yesterday a new show called October Road, premiered after Grey’s Anatomy on ABC. I initially started watching it because it starred Bryan Greenberg, who used to be one of my favorite characters on the show One Tree Hill. The show is about Nick Garret, played by Bryan Greenberg, and his return to his hometown after ten long years. He left right after high school for a backpacking trip through Europe, and he promised his friends and his girlfriend that he would be back after six weeks. But after those six weeks, he decided he didn’t want to go home and he wanted to take some time for himself. Within those ten years, Nick wrote a book about his hometown and all the people in it. The booking ended up becoming really popular and it made him famous. He was then asked to return to his hometown to lead a seminar at his local college. When he returned home, he was not welcomed by some of his old friends because he trashed them in his book. At the end of the episode Nick decides to stay longer and maybe get inspiration for his next book. I thought the show was pretty good and it kept me interested. I think it will do pretty well because it’s in the time slot after Grey’s, which a lot of people watch. However, a lot of people also watch Ugly Betty before Grey’s, so I don’t know how many people will stay tuned for three hours of TV. I guess we will just have to wait and see how it does.

Spring Break

My spring break has been going pretty good, even though I’m stuck here in Michigan. My days have consisted of sleeping in, working, hanging out with my friends, and avoiding my homework. I also went bowling, and I can’t even remember the last time I went. My score was 80 and I’m sad to say that my eight-year-old cousin beat me, but it was still lots of fun. The weather was unusually gorgeous on Tuesday with sunny skies, and 70 degrees. I was so excited to go outside in flip-flops and no jacket! But of course on Wednesday night, it snows and we’re back to our normal cold, gross weather. But what do you expect? It’s Michigan, the weather changes every five minutes! Although, the beautiful weather left as quickly as it came, I enjoyed it while it lasted. Now it’s Friday, and I’m wondering where the days have gone! I can’t believe break is almost over and I have to spend my last weekend catching up on homework. I have to study for a chemistry test that’s on Monday. Who puts a test on the day after break? I really think that my professor wants all of us to fail. Overall, my spring break was very relaxing and I’m sad it’s coming to an end. Now I have to get back to reality and start studying if I don’t want to fail!

Reality TV paper

I thought that this paper was a lot harder to write than the last one. I think I mainly had trouble because I do not watch a lot of reality television in the first place. At first, I was going to write about how reality television was unrealistic, but I had a very hard time getting five pages out with the shows that I had chosen. I finally decided to write about how reality television is realistic in the cases of American Idol and Amazing Race. At first, I still had a lot of trouble writing five to six pages on this subject. Finally, I just started describing the shows in detail, and it slowly took off from there. I actually think that most reality television shows are unrealistic, but with American Idol and Amazing Race I found more reasons why they did show reality. With American Idol, I think the show is real because the audition process is similar to regular open casting calls in the real entertainment business. Also, the contestants have be a good singer to make if far in the competition. In Amazing Race, the contestants have to have strength, speed and intelligence to win the race. So I believe that both these shows represent many aspects of reality compared to a lot of other reality shows on television right now. Overall, I thought this paper was kind of difficult, and I definitely had to work a harder lot on this one than the last paper to make good. However, once I started getting my ideas out, it was much easier to bring everything together.

House

This week I'm going to write about the show House because Grey's Anatomy was a rerun, yet again. Dave Mathews guest starred on the show, and I was surprised at how good of an actor he was. He played a person that had gotten into an accident at a very young age, and had suffered sever brain damage. The brain damage caused him to forever be in the state of mind of a five year old, and his father has always taken care of him. He can't speak that well or even button his shirt, but somehow he is amazing at playing the piano. So him and his father created these charity events where he plays the piano to raise money for people that have the same disease as him. During one the charity events, his fingers stop functioning and that's when he is taken to Dr. House. House wants remove the right half of his brain because he thinks it will completely cure him, and the father is left with the decision of letting them perfom the surgery. I don't know what I would do if I had to make that decision. On one hand, the son could be cured, but on the other hand he could die. The father ends up consenting the surgery and of course the son turns out fine. Another big thing that happened on the show is that we learned that Dr. House had brain cancer, or so we thought. The whole episode all the people in his life were hurting at the thought that he was going to die and taking time to be extra nice to House. A few of the doctors decided to test him again to make sure he wasn't misdiagnosed with the cancer. When the results turned up negative for brain cancer, they were so excited to tell him. When they told House the good news, he became furious at them. It turns out that House had faked cancer so he could get the pain drugs injected into his brain. House had a previous addiction to Vikodin and it turns out he isn't over it. I thought it was crazy the lengths he went to, to get the drugs. He tricked everyone that actually cared about him, and in the end pushed them farther away but creating such a lie.

grey's Episode 7

Sadly, this week’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was a rerun, but luckily I haven’t written about this episode yet. In this episode all the guys of the show decide to take a camping trip to get some fresh air and space from all the women in their lives. Back at the hospital, Dr. Slone has a completed surgery of turning a man into a woman. The man having the surgery, Daniel, has his wife with him, and Meredith asks her how she is dealing with all this. The women tells Meredith that at first, when her husband told her he wanted to become a women, she couldn’t handled it. She left him and tried to get her mind off of him by dating other men. After dating other men, she realized that she just wanted her best friend, Daniel back regardless if he was a man or a woman. This kind of ties into our discussion this week about homosexuals and how they are not accepted by some people in our society. Like the homosexuals, people like Daniel may not always be accepted in our society, but I believe the people that truly care about them will always be there. I think that people should be able to express themselves in whatever way they want, we shouldn’t hold their sexuality, race, or gender against them. I know that in our society these stereotypes and prejudices will always exist, but hopefully by different shows bringing up these topics, people will slowly begin to accept them.

Society’s Need For a Queer Solution

This reading dealt with issues of homosexuals and the different ways they are being portrayed on television. It talked about how television portrays homosexuals only through comedies like Friends and Will and Grace. I think that Will and Grace has a good example of how being gay doesn’t have to fit into one type of person. With Jack we see the “typical” flamboyant, gay guy that flaunts the fact that he’s gay and is proud of it. With Will we see a completely different guy who is career oriented and not only identified by his sexuality. I like that it shows both guys and that you don’t have to fit into one type of person just because of your sexuality. I think that people should be able to have any sort of identity they want and leave their sexuality out of it. From the clip of Dawson’s Creek, we see that Jack is struggling to find his place. He feels that he can’t be the jock and gay at the same time. Dawson’s Creek is not a comedy and it addressed the fact that he was gay and trying to fit in with the other kids in high school. I think that kids can watch shows like this and be able to feel more comfortable with their sexuality and know that they are not the only one going through it. I think many television shows now are less afraid to have homosexuals as main characters on their shows. One show that I just recently started watching called Brothers and Sisters, has a gay guy on it. He is one of the main characters and from the outside and the way he acts you could never tell he was gay. Like Will’s character from Will and Grace, he is a well accomplished lawyer and he doesn’t flaunt the fact that he’s gay, but he’s definitely not hiding it either. I think as the years go on many more shows will start addressing homosexuality and hopefully it will be less of an issue.

Twentysomethings

This reading talks about how people in their twenties now are kind of a lost generation. He says that their generation is getting dumber and they will do worse than their parents. He talks about television shows such as Melrose Place that showed a group of people in their twenties messing around and not taking life seriously. I have never watched the show before but I’m guessing it’s like a soap opera with younger people. In a way I kind of agree with the author when he says that this generation is lost. If we look on TV, most of the dramas and comedies have people that are older than 30 or in high school and younger. All the people in their twenties are mainly found on reality television shows. This shows they have no real goals other than to make money by competing on TV, and have their fifteen minutes of fame. On the other hand, I don’t think that we can group that whole generation into reality TV slackers. Many people in their twenties go to college, find a job and ultimately do better than their parents.