I was sick today, and sick days always lead to a discovery of some new show that I will watch half the day. Last night I discovered "Hot in Cleveland," a sitcom on TV Land, and I've watched six episodes since last night.
The show is about three single middle aged women who moved to Cleveland from LA and still try to act like they're 30. (Sex and the City anyone?) The three of them are funny, but it's the 80 something-year-old quick-witted caretaker of the house played by Betty White. She was cast in the pilot of the show as a guest star and was not meant to be a regular, but her appearance received such enthusiastic reception that she was written in as a main character.
Betty White is adorable. She is 89 years old and still kicking. In the last couple years she's been on Saturday Night Live, the movie The Proposal, You Again ("I'm also on Facebook. And the Twitter!"), an episode of 30 Rock, and several other things including a major role on the show "Hot in Cleveland." She won a SAG Award last night for her role on the show.
She has been acting since 1945 and used to host the show Password in the 60s, but I know her from the show that kept her name alive in the last part of the 20th century, "The Golden Girls."
This show is about three old women who live together in Miami, and one's mother who hangs around their house and gets in the best sarcastic one-liners. Estelle Getty was to Golden Girls what Betty White is to Hot in Cleveland. They're all basically a family and have problems you would expect among a group of young women, made funny by the fact that they're in their 60s.
Betty is the last living Golden Girl, as of June last year. She played Rose, the dim-witted, clueless one of the group who would tell crazy stories like Kenneth from 30 Rock about living on a farm. Golden Girls is one of those shows that can put you in a better mood instantly. I love the theme song.
Love to these shows, Betty White, and you, Juliana
I've talked about this show before, and this post from a year ago makes my feelings abundantly clear. I feel guilty for watching it because I feel like I'm supporting baby beauty pageants, but it's like a train wreck. A creepy, sparkly, pedophillic Christmas kind of train wreck. The season premiere last night showcased the worst parents and children I have seen.
The format of the show visits the homes of three children and documents their preparations for whatever upcoming pageant is being featured on the episode. It interviews the children and the parents, then follows the three to the pageant, switching back and forth between them. It ends with crowning and final thoughts. Last night's three were dream teams of parent and children.
1) Mackenzie - Her mother is under her control
This 4-year-old knows what she wants and she does not hesitate to kick, scream, hide in closets, and whip out her sharp tongue to get it. Mackenzie dominates, and her mother seems to know this. She doesn't try to control her. In reviews I read, everyone seems to name this mother-daughter duo as the worst in the episode and Mackenzie as the most horrible child. I disagree. Mackenzie is out of control, but it's what's you would from a 4-year-old pageant child. She has a cute and funny personality, and I think she would be as sparkly as her completely inappropriate eye shadow if her mother knew how to discipline. And maybe if she wasn't thrown into baby beauty pageants. Whatever.
I like how she really exaggerates her southern accent when she's dressed up.
2) Scarlett and Isabella - When they learn to talk, I hope they yell at their mommy
The mother with her one year old twins was priceless. Oh, no, actually, there is a price. The mother with her twins was $250,000 because that's how much she spent to get her twins started in beauty pageants. She says she decided to enter them before they were even born and has a room full of dresses that cost between $1000-$2000 each. Remember that they are babies and outgrow their dresses before the dress maker is even finished adding the jewels. They take a private jet to pageants, and she name-drops designers many times during the episode.
I can't find a video or picture of these people yet, but that's okay. They're nothing special. The babies aren't anything special. They're cute like all chubby-cheeked babies are cute, but Gerber won't be calling them for a photo shoot. The mother said she's been married more times than she wants to say and looks like a heavy smoker with tattoo'd arms and a drawn face, which we notice as she talks about the importance of facial beauty.
What made me laugh out loud was how she actually gives pep talks to her daughters. They're barely a year old. They can't even stand yet. She tells them "You need to do your best in this pageant" blah blah blah and yells at one child to look at her. This lady is delusional if she thinks she can give a pep talk to a baby, but I guess when you spend a quarter of a million dollars to play dress up with infants, the reality ship has already left the dock.
3) Danielle - 8 years old and pure evil. Nothing else.
I think this is best described with a quote.
"If I don't win, I *will* trash the hotel room."
Watch her in action. I was actually hoping for her not to win. This brat needs to be backhanded. She whined about other girls stealing her spotlight. She says she doesn't believe in beauty sleep because she's naturally beautiful. She says she doesn't like to wear makeup because she knows she's beautiful enough without it. She says she would jump on the judges if she didn't win. She ran off the stage crying when she lost supreme title. I was satisfied. Such a little biotch.
Another observation: So many of the pageant moms who babble on about the importance of physical beauty look like Danielle's mom.
I'm going to go ahead and make the assumption that they are living through their daughters.
There are so many adorable kids' shows that just make you happy even if you aren't four years old anymore, but for every Arthur there is a Teletubbie, and for the Power Rangers there are The Wiggles. What makes a creepy kids show? Unsettling puppets, clowns, adults pretending to be children, hands with eyes...Creepiness is purest when it's unintentional, and nothing can give you the same feeling of unease you get from watching four grown men sing about fruit salad or fat colorful fluffballs with baby heads swirl around.
These are the ten children's shows I think belong on a list of creepy.
The Teletubbies - Personally, I don't think the Teletubbies are all that creepy, just weird. I think the whole adoption of Tinkie Winkie as a gay symbol is creepy, but that's just adults once again ruining children's shows with sex. People always ruin innocent things. Weird colorful alien things that make weird noises and have TVs in their stomachs are strange creatures, but the one thing that gives me a weird feeling in my stomach is that sun baby. What is that? The sun baby with it's strange laugh and gazing eyes...the first time I've ever been creeped out by a baby.
The Wiggles - I loved The Wiggles when I was little, but it's a little unsettling to watch four grown men wiggle. Although I promote their effort to encourage wiggling among the youth population, it's uncomfortable to watch them do the wiggling.
Angela Anaconda - I watched this when I was little because the animation interested me, but holy crap is this weird. They look like magazine cut-outs of faces pasted on cartoon bodies and they move like paper dolls.
Howdy Doody - This show was on way before I was born and I never saw it, but this puppet is going to haunt my dreams.
Oobi - Hands. With eyes. That talk. I wouldn't call this one creepy, but it's definitely weird. My question here: Why? Do preschool aged children really have such simplistic minds that they can be entertained watching hands on a TV screen? If they're going to watch Oobi, they might as well just make their own hand puppets.
Wonder Pets - I think this show is more annoying than creepy. This was my final choice, and it was between this and The Backyardigans, but I don't think The Backyardigans can be considered creepy. I just hate them. The Wonder Pets are cartoons made to look like real animals that sing, but the creepier thing is their attempted baby voices. They don't match, and the songs combined with the animation is just...unsettling. My sister used to watch this show, and I could never decide whether I thought it was cute or creepy. All I knew was I felt uncomfortable watching it, and I don't think that's what guinea pigs, baby ducks, and turtles are supposed to make you feel.
Boohbah - I have two theories for the creation of Boobah. The first is that the creator was tripping acid. The second is that this was an attempt to outdo The Teletubbies' weirdness. Someone saw Tinkie Winkie, Dipsy, Lala, and Po and thought "Nope, not creepy enough. We can do better." I would say they succeeded. This truly screws with your mind. Once I start this video, I can't look away.
The Doodlebops - I hate clowns. I don't know who decided clowns were funny. The only funny thing about them is the funny feeling I get when they come too close. The Doodlebops combine the weirdness of adults wiggling with the scariness of clowns. The pink one's hair looks like it's plastic. I'm sure if she decided to take her revenge, she could kill you with her head.
Lazy Town - This Circa 2006 Icelandic Nick Jr. show scares me more than any of the others, even Boobah. The pink haired girl who is more flexible than any normal little girl, a superhero with a pedo-fake mustache, and the villian with plastic chin extensions together with the weird-looking puppets all in an uncomfortable setting make for a weird show. The girl's name is Julianna actually, and she was 15 in this show. I know. She doesn't look 15. Because of the ridiculous gymnastics she does, when you search this show you get more icky results from perverted adults than you do about the actual show.
I could have put Mr. Rogers on this list, but I don't think he belongs on it. I don't think he's creepy. I always felt like watching that show was like spending some time with someone else's grandpa, and even though it was boring, it was comforting.
If this isn't the most obvious statement of the day or even if it is, I love Gossip Girl. There is something about the combination of pretty and evil that is totally alluring.
Don't they look like vampires here?
Basically, this show is about a group of pretty teenagers (well, they're in college now) who live on the upper east side of Manhattan and come from extremely wealthy families. Almost all have been step-siblings at one point, and almost all have slept together. Everyone does horrible things to each other, and the victim and the villain manage to change every episode, always unexpectedly. An anonymous person that goes by Gossip Girl sends mass texts and updates to a blog about the events in the lives of this group, so everyone always knows their business. I actually say "oh man" out loud to the TV while watching this show.
I saw these ads on billboards in LA a few years ago
The main attraction of this show, however, is the amazingly manipulative, brilliant, and invincible Chuck Bass.
Ed Westwick is a British dude whose voice makes any scene of this show instantly intriguing. His fake American accent is better than the real one. Despite his character's weird preppy outfits and the nerdy way he gels down his hair sometimes, this guy is still sexy as hell. His character is *the* OMFG character, the "hedonist everyone love to hate." The one guy that is never boring.
This is the kind of show that if you don't appreciate the humor and you don't see the point, you'll think it's really stupid. This is the best adult cartoon I have ever seen, and probably the only adult cartoon I actually like. The combination of exaggerated characters, dry humor, and social satire give this show an understated intelligence that you definitely don't see in normal adult cartoons.
The premise is about a smart but apathetic, sarcastic, and nihilist teenage girl who shows no emotion in any way. The intro explains her perfectly.
To contrast her character, all other characters in the show have dramatically exaggerated characteristics. Her parents are the kind of dumb and oblivious that mirrors the parents in "The Fairly Oddparents." Most characters are overwhelmingly vacuous, and most of her humor comes from her commentary on the stupidity of others.
This show aired on MTV from 1997 to 2002. I used to stay up until midnight to watch reruns in 5th grade, but sadly The-N replaced it and it doesn't show on TV anymore. Every episode is on You Tube and it was just released to DVD a few months ago.
These are someone's idea of the best Daria quotes. I don't think they're the best. It's hard to understand when they're out of context. If you want an idea of the show, watch the beginning of the first episode.
I am willing to look past the fact that this is a spinoff of "Beavis and Butthead." I think this show is uniquely interesting.
Daria: "Is there ever a time when the way you look doesn't affect the way you're judged?" Jane: "When you donate an organ, unless it's your eyes."
We are in the era of Hannah Montana. You already know this. You probably hate her and her show. I know I do. However, when I was the age of today's Hannah Montana fans, I was obsessed with the show Lizzie McGuire, who very similarly to Hannah, was a teenage girl with one female best friend and one male best friend who faced a life lesson in every episode. I like Lizzie McGuire better, but is that because it's a better show, or do I just like it because it was part of my childhood?
The major difference between the two is that Lizzie is normal, but tries to be cool. Miley is a rock star who tries to be normal. Besides this, the shows follow a similar pattern.
Both have the central dynamic of three best friends, one a girl and one a boy. Both have a main character obsessed with her own image, moving up the social ladder, following trends, and boys. The female best friend is annoying and even more myopic and conformist than the main character. Both have an eccentric father, although Lizzie has two eccentric parents. Both have an annoying brother. Both Miley and Lizzie face problems with boys, parents, friends, clothes, school, bullies, morals, and every other cliche you can think of.
Pretty similar, right? When you look at them side-by-side, it comes down to one critical element. The foil best friends.
In Lizzie McGuire, her female best friend is ditsy and myopic, concerned with conforming to be popular. Her male best friend, Gordo, is a foil to Miranda. He is a nerd and made fun of in school, and the voice of reason. He offers a practical perspective on anything Lizzie and Miranda are considering. He tells Lizzie she doesn't need to be popular to be happy. He is his own person, rare quality to find in a Disney Channel character. Lizzie never listens to him and makes mistakes in every episode, but in the end, she admits he was right all along. Oliver in Hannah Montana is just an extension of the female best friend Lily, who he has an obnoxiously, unnecessarily mushy relationship with. Also, have you seen his hair?
By the way, the Lizzie McGuire movie was really cute. For a movie based off a Disney Channel show, they did a good job with it. Miley doesn't make things cute.
Take a cast of attractive but ethnically different teenagers, assign them socially different roles, match them all up into boy-girl relationships, add a wholesome, unrealistic, yet socially relevant view of a high school, some corny dialogue, dorky 90's outfits, and top it all off with a moral or a life lesson at the end. The result is Saved by the Bell.
This show ran from 1989 to 1993. After that, it ran for another season under another name, Saved by the Bell: The College Years . To give you an idea of how wholesome this show was, it's rated Y7. This is Disney Channel before there was Disney Channel, but so much better.
On the top is Zach Morris, the star of the show who narrates to the audience. He's a troublemaker in the class clown kind of way. Next to him is his girlfriend and eventually his wife, the popular cheerleader Kelly Kapowski. Under them are AC Slater and Jessie Spano. Slater is a stereotypical jock on the wrestling team. Jessie is his girlfriend for most of the series, and she's the type-A, OCD overachiever. Next is Screech, the weird, annoying kid, socially awkward kid. He always had a crush on Lisa Turtle, the last in the picture. She was the princess of the group, the kind of character that complains when her nail breaks. She usually made fun of Screech who took her mocking as a sign of affection.
This show is dorky retro gold. All the characters are stand-up citizens, rejecting bullying, smoking, drinking, and pretty much any issue where teenagers should just say no. They have their disagreements, misunderstandings, and they make their mistakes, but in the end, friendship reigns over all else.
But of course, the cast of the show is not as wholesome as the characters they play. Dustin Diamond, the actor who played Screech, sold out his old friends and published their secrets in a book called Behind the Bell. It looks to me like an attempt to break free of the Screech image. I didn't read it, but in this article listing the main points of the book, he asserts that he "has a large penis and has used it to have sex with more than 2,000 women, most of whom he picked up at Disneyland."
A little farfetched? I think so.
After the end of "Saved by the Bell," all these stars dove into roles to counter their goody-two-shoes images. Sadly, none of them got very far. My favorite blog out there, Children of the Nineties, posted "The Stars of Saved by the Bell: Where are they Now?" From Tiffani-Amber Theissen's bad girl role in 90210 to Elizabeth Berkley's dive into the unecessarily graphic NC-17 Showgirls, these actors didn't waste time trying to reverse the effects of SBTB on their images. Mark-Paul Gosselaar did a made-for-TV movie called She Cried No where he date rapes Candace Cameron (Full House's DJ Tanner). The whole movie is on You Tube.
When you watch Zach Morris rape DJ Tanner, your illusions are shattered forever.
Speaking of date rape, check out number two on Dustin Diamond's tell-all. Shocking. I thought Mario, the one who ended up being an announcer on E!, was straighter than the rest of them. Looks like Lark Voorhies (Lisa) was the most normal of everyone.
Another revelation, number four on the list, was that the cast was actually smoking weed in their dressing rooms while filming the "No Hope with Dope" episode. The first part of that episode is posted below.
The guy who played Johnny Dakota, the actor in the episode booked to do the "No Hope with Dope" commercial, was caught by the gang at a party smoking weed. This resulted in them all losing their admiration for him and the crew getting to do the commercial instead. The funny thing is that in real life, according to Diamond, he was the most "steadfast dude you'd ever want to meet." I don't know how much of his accusations are true and how much is fabricated for the shock factor, but it's not too far off. Most is just normal teenagers with too much freedom doing stupid things.
The No Hope with Dope commercial straight from the show. At least you know these guys were really acting.
This show may be an illusion, but it's a very entertaining one. I think this show should go on Nick at Nite. It's like The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Pure 90s gold.
I am a huge fan of Ellen. If you don't know her, she's the comedian you probably know as Dory's voice in Finding Nemo. She's hilarious, has a really fun personality, and her talk show is the best on TV. I like to watch the Today Show with Hoda Kotb and Kathy Lee Gifford because they talk about some interesting things and Kathy Lee acts hilariously drunk all the time, but Ellen's show tops them in all areas.
Ellen always starts the show by dancing through the audience. Another thing she started doing this past year is scare the celebrities she's interviewing. Someone dresses up in a costume and while she's interviewing them, they sneak up behind and scare them. At about 1:15, Taylor Swift falls to the ground.
It's hilarious. I saw an episode where Steve Carrel actually hid in Ellen's dressing room and jumped out to get back at her for scaring him. He said something very interesting, that when someone reacts after they've been scared, it's "exactly who they are in that second." There is no planning or scripting or acting, it's just their natural response. I think that's pretty cool.
I found two of my favorite Ellen moments, the Snuggie and the Hula Chair. I picked the Hula Chair to post, but if you really care about this, watch the Snuggie clip. I love the end with the family at sporting events.
Oh my gosh I wasn't going to post any more videos, but I found a clip where they stick Rob Lowe in the Hawaii Chair. I can't decide if this one's better, so I bring you a second Hawaii Chair clip.
I was visiting the amazing Wikipedia for some information about Spongebob. That show has really gone downhill, and I wanted to know if and when there was a change in writers. I stumbled upon a section on the Wikipedia page called "criticism" with discussion of the problems certain groups have with Spongebob's implied homosexuality.
Hold on. We're talking about the same Spongebob, right? The cartoon yellow kitchen sponge from a children's show who lives in the ocean inside a pineapple in a town called Bikini Bottom down the street from a talking starfish, a squid who plays clarinet, a crab with a whale for a daughter, and a squirrel who wears a space suit to breathe underwater? This is the Spongebob we're talking about, right?
Okay, just checking. Spongebob is one of those things that's meant to be taken for face value. If they tell you he lives in a pineapple under the sea, you just go with it. You don't ask how, you don't try to figure it out. You just go with it. This is the same for Spongebob's sexuality. If there isn't one, there isn't one. Stop looking for it.
The writers, the directors, the producers all said that they had no sexual orientation in mind for Spongebob because, after all, he's a cartoon kitchen sponge, but that they consider Spongebob to be asexual. Spongebob said himself in an episode that he can reproduce by budding. The creators of the show did not even consider it.
Some group called the We are Family Foundation used Spongebob in a video to promote gay rights and tolerance. These religious groups freaked out and deemed Spongebob inappropriate for children. In my opinion, these people are morons.
Kitchen sponges do not have sexual orientations, so shut up, turn off Nickelodeon, and go take a literature class somewhere. Literary analysis is all about looking for hidden sexual implications. Spongebob is for laughing at the antics of impossible characters as they catch jellyfish and blow bubbles. Please don't put sex into Spongebob.
Every time I see these ads for Kotex U, I literally laugh out loud.
I watched this twice just when I was looking for it to post on here, and I laughed both times. Okay, then there's this one.
And I saw this one in a magazine:
It makes fun of how awkward people get about it. You can't see it at the bottom, but it says something like "Why are 40% of people uncomfortable with tampons? Break the cycle." I think this is hilarious. Also effective advertising. There's a New York Times article here about this (also where I got the picture).
Dear Kotex, Your commercials made me laugh, so to thank you, I might buy your stuff. You're funnier than Tampax.
I know I've been watching too much Third Rock from the Sun when 18 year old Joseph Gotdon Levitt starts showing up in my dreams. It is a hilarious show though and doesn't get as much credit as it deserves.
There are funnier scenes, this one was just short. These people are aliens sent to Earth to study human behavior, but the show's funny because they know nothing about how to act like normal humans. So in every episode, they're all doing something really strange. In the episode I was watching today, this guy confessed to one of them that he's gay, but he thought he was confessing that he was an alien too, so they're going to gay bars together and the guy thinks they're alien bars. That was hilarious
But I love Joseph Gordon Levitt. I think he was my first celebrity crush when I was little. No, second...Jonathon Taylor Thomas (the middle son on Home Improvement) was the first. But I liked Joseph Gordon Levitt before I even saw 10 Things I Hate about You.
This new show on USA, "White Collar," looked like it had a really cool idea. The FBI hires a brilliant white collar criminal to help on cases in exchange for release from jail. They made this deal after he escaped from prison with only four months left in his sentence to chase after his girlfriend who broke up with him from behind the glass.
The concept of the show is great, but one of my friends said that it's kind of drawn out. I agree with that. But kind of like how Chace Crawford, just by being Chace Crawford, makes up for his character on "Gossip Girl" being dull, Matt Bomer's character Neal Caffrey, brilliant, funny, charming, makes the show worth any slow moments. He just does.
Can't concentrate on superfun DNA replication until I post this because the song is stuck in my head now that I started thinking of 80's sitcom theme songs. My grandma loves this show. It's actually really cute.
The show is about three single middle aged women who moved to Cleveland from LA and still try to act like they're 30. (Sex and the City anyone?) The three of them are funny, but it's the 80 something-year-old quick-witted caretaker of the house played by Betty White. She was cast in the pilot of the show as a guest star and was not meant to be a regular, but her appearance received such enthusiastic reception that she was written in as a main character. 
Betty White is adorable. She is 89 years old and still kicking. In the last couple years she's been on Saturday Night Live, the movie The Proposal, You Again ("I'm also on Facebook. And the Twitter!"), an episode of 30 Rock, and several other things including a major role on the show "Hot in Cleveland." She won a SAG Award last night for her role on the show.
This show is about three old women who live together in Miami, and one's mother who hangs around their house and gets in the best sarcastic one-liners. Estelle Getty was to Golden Girls what Betty White is to Hot in Cleveland. They're all basically a family and have problems you would expect among a group of young women, made funny by the fact that they're in their 60s. 
