Category Archives: Television

TV Time: SYTYCD Season 10 “Top 16 Perform”

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Well that was a bit of a letdown.

Up to this point, I’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of both the dancers and choreographers this season on So You Think You Can Dance. Two weeks ago, I could already see some chinks in the armor, but this week I can’t just be polite and say the show simply faltered a little.

It was a bad episode, as bad as I’ve seen from this show in a long time.

I had a bad feeling about what was to come when I saw Carly Rae “Call Me Maybe” Jepsen on the judging panel, and I’m sad to say my initial doubts about her were spot-on. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a guest judge on this show who was so uninformed about dance and couldn’t even fake it. As someone who takes dance and—by extension (for better or worse)— this show very seriously, I felt insulted that Nigel and Co. would make me sit through two hours of critiques from a woman who spoke as if she’s never watched a dance routine before in her life. It was laughably bad. At least get a guest judge with some knowledge of dance vocabulary next time—that’s all I ask.

The eliminations this week were the only thing I felt was right about the show. It was time for BluPrint to go home, and Mariah’s solo this week felt like a rehash of what she did in her last solo. I like both dancers, but their time had come. Mackenzie’s solo was gorgeously fluid, Curtis’s solo was very strong proof of his skills as a tapper, and Alan’s solo was simply…WOW. That’s the kind of male ballroom solo I’ve always wanted to see on this show—powerful, commanding, strong, and precise. His work with the cape was brilliant, and I loved his stage presence throughout.

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Daily Dose of Feelings #9

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My favorite TV episodes are often the ones that make me cry the most. A good example of this is “Chuck vs. The Cliffhanger,” the Season Four finale of Chuck. I’ve seen this episode a few times since I first started watching the series on DVD last year, and it still makes me cry in multiple places every time.

One of my favorite things about Chuck is the warm and genuine chemistry between Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski as Chuck and Sarah. This episode celebrates that chemistry in the most beautiful of ways: with a much-anticipated wedding. But before the actual ceremony can take place, Chuck has to save Sarah from a deadly dose of radiation poisoning she contracted at their rehearsal dinner. Life and love are never simple in the spy business.

Though things may never be simple for Chuck and Sarah, what moves me the most in this scene is how simple and easy their love feels. Sarah’s “practice” vows are such a genuine reflection of who she is and who Chuck has been for her. She was sent to protect him and teach him how to be a spy, but he ended up teaching her how to be someone who is capable of being so much more than just a spy. Chuck brings out the gentle side of Sarah, the side that smiles almost shyly when she’s done telling the man she loves exactly what he means to her.

And then there’s Chuck—sweet, open, big-hearted Chuck Bartowski. If you asked me to draw up my dream man, it would be Chuck, and this scene shows exactly why. You will never see a man on TV as devoted to the woman he loves as Chuck is to Sarah. Levi plays this character with such beguiling earnestness that it’s impossible not to believe in the love story he’s selling. The moment when he whispers “Perfect” with tears in his eyes before saying it louder to Sarah gives me goose bumps every time I watch it. You can feel how much this character loves the woman he’s going to marry, and that believability is both incredibly uplifting in that scene and incredibly heartbreaking as we watch Chuck sitting at Sarah’s bedside, holding her hand and silently begging her not to leave him. As the scene ends, you get the sense that this man is willing to do anything to bring back the woman who so brightly lit up his life in the flashback we just witnessed.

Sarah wants to show Chuck that he is a gift she deserves, and what’s so emotional about this scene is that we can see that Chuck believes Sarah is a gift, too. These two beautiful characters deserve each other and the happiness they clearly have even in a practice wedding. And nothing makes me cry like two worthy characters finding happiness with each other—and fighting to protect that happiness in the face of huge obstacles.

Daily Dose of Feelings #8

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As I keep posting these moments, you will notice that many of them will fall into a category I like to call “Actors Who Make Me Cry Whenever They Cry.” At the top of that list is Jennifer Garner. I watched Alias for five years, and whenever that woman let the tears fall, I found myself crying right along with her.

While Garner has some incredibly emotional scenes in the Alias pilot, the first scene to make me an emotional wreck came a few episodes later in “A Broken Heart.” With Sarah McLachlan’s heartbreakingly beautiful “Angel” (before it became overplayed) working its magic in the background, Garner allows us to see deep into the aching soul of Sydney Bristow, a woman pushed to her breaking point from bearing the weight of too many secrets, too many betrayals, too many lies, and too many needless deaths.

This scene proves to me that there’s never been a better crier on television than Garner. She’s not afraid to look vulnerable, to let her nose run and her mascara streak her cheeks and her shaking hands mess up her hair. And in doing so, she allows us to connect with Sydney, to see her as a real woman with vulnerabilities and a heart that’s perhaps too big for the work she’s been called to do. When she says, “He was lied to, and now he’s dead,” with such genuine devastation in her voice, I get choked up every time.

What I love about this scene is the way Garner makes Sydney—one of the strongest female characters to ever grace television screens—seem so small and so normal. She’s not a robot, and that’s what makes her such a beautiful character. Alias would never have worked as a show if Garner couldn’t make you feel the humanity at the heart of this character.

The range of emotions in this scene is so vast. It begins with sadness and anger that Jack would abandon Sydney again (though it’s really so much more complicated than that). Then it becomes a scene about loss—both for Sydney’s friend and for her sense of self. Garner sells her identity crisis so painfully well that I always laugh and cry along with her when she throws her beeper into the ocean—one act of defiance for a woman who feels as if she’s losing her ability to stand on her own two feet.

But when she can’t stand on her feet, this scene introduces the one person she could lean on, her greatest source of strength—Vaughn. I love the total sincerity in Michael Vartan’s delivery of “I’ve seen who you are.” Vaughn never wants Sydney to lose that humanity that makes everyone—including the audience—fall in love with her. And when the darkness threatens to overwhelm her, it’s wonderful to see that she finally has someone who can be her anchor, her guiding light, and her guardian angel, helping her find her best self because he believes in and loves her for exactly who she is—the only honest relationship she has at this point.

When Sydney grabs Vaughn’s hand and neither pulls away (despite the fact that they could be killed just for being seen together), I can’t help but cry because it’s the beginning of such a beautiful relationship. Sydney may carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, but Vaughn is the one person she can go to who will help her carry that weight. She may be incredibly strong—and he may be drawn to that strength—but in Vaughn she’s found the one person she can let her guard down with. Everyone needs a hand to hold when they’re at their lowest, and it’s a very emotional thing to see a character as beautiful as Sydney Bristow discover that she has that in her life for the first time.

The Best Thing I Saw on TV This Week (7/14 – 7/21)

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This was a very exciting week in the world of TV. The Bachelorette entered into its final stretch with the “hometown dates” episode, where it became even clearer that Brooks in the frontrunner. Suits returned for a new season with plenty of drama and the promise of much more to come. Hollywood Game Night was hilarious and thoroughly entertaining once again. And Late Night with Jimmy Fallon gave us the Jesse and the Rippers reunion we never knew we always wanted—plus a Jesse/Becky kiss!

My favorite moment of the week, though, came from ESPN’s annual ESPY Awards ceremony. Robin Roberts was given the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage, and no one has ever seemed more deserving. Her acceptance speech was articulate, gracious, and truly inspiring. My love for this strong, beautiful, positive woman grows more every day.

What was the best thing you saw on TV this week?

Daily Dose of Feelings #7

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This one is pretty self-explanatory.

For my generation, there’s no moment in television that gets our collective tear ducts going like the final scene of Boy Meets World. It’s the perfect storm of great writing, incredibly strong (and realistic) acting, and the heightened emotional power that comes with a series finale. This scene gave us a chance to say goodbye to a group of characters that we literally grew up with, to watch their stories come full circle to the classroom where it all began.

Everyone has their moment in this scene that makes them cry the most, but mine will always be Shawn’s goodbye. And if you don’t openly weep when Mr. Feeny turns to the empty classroom and says, “I love you all. Class dismissed,” then I think you need to make sure your heart isn’t actually made of stone.

 

Daily Dose of Feelings #6

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This is a tough one.

When I came up with this list of emotional moments, one of the first scenes I wrote down was the breakup scene between Finn and Rachel from Season Four of Glee. When that episode first aired, I found myself sobbing almost uncontrollably when the couple I’d been rooting for since the pilot ended their relationship for good. I cried because Lea Michele was so raw, real, and absolutely devastating. I cried because this scene perfectly encapsulated the pain of walking away from your first love. I cried because Cory Monteith gave such a subtly heartbroken and lost performance. And I cried because even though this was a breakup scene, it was filled with so much chemistry and so much love that you could practically feel it through the TV screen.

Now, though, I’ll cry even harder every time I watch this scene because of what it means after Monteith’s death. In this scene, he was Michele’s rock, and that’s who he was in all of his scenes on Glee—a rock for his costars and a relatable presence for the audience. Monteith was Glee’s everyman, and the show will never be the same without him. But what really breaks my heart is thinking about how the people who loved him will never be the same without him. It’s clear watching this scene how connected and in love he and Michele were. Throughout the show’s run, he gave her the strength and confidence to go to emotional depths she never reached opposite any other actor. That kind of support and partnership produced her best moments, such as this scene. My heart aches for her when I think of what she lost.

This scene is about the very real heartbreak of the end of a relationship even when love is still clearly there. With time, it will only get more painful to watch as we remember the real-life love story that ended even more painfully than its fictional counterpart.

R.I.P. Cory Monteith.

TV Time: Teen Wolf 3.07

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Title Currents

What Happened? While visiting his mom at the hospital, Scott realizes that healers are the next on the Darach’s list of sacrificial groups, which is confirmed the next day when Deaton calls to tell Scott that he’s going to be taken. While Scott races to find Deaton before it’s too late, Isaac and Boyd come to Derek with a plan to defend him from the Alpha Pack. Their plan fails, and the Alpha Twins and Kali force Boyd onto Derek’s claws, killing him.

Favorite Quotes
“You know, I’ve read online somewhere that sometimes human contact can help with pain.” (Scott)

“You were on watch last.”
“What are you talking about, you were on watch last.”
“You were on watch last.”
“I might’ve been on watch last.” (Scott and Isaac)

“Sweetheart, my last boyfriend was a homicidal lizard. I think I can handle a werewolf.” (Lydia)

“Why would I dream about you going through my stuff?”
“I don’t know that, Danny. Okay? It’s your dream; take responsibility for it. Shut up and go back to sleep.” (Danny and Stiles)

“Your eyes were red…bright red.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s rare. It’s something that doesn’t happen within a hundred years, but every once in a while, a Beta can become an Alpha without having to steal or take that power. They call it a true Alpha. It’s one who rises purely on the strength of their character; by virtue, by sheer force of will.”
“You knew this would happen.”
“I believed. From the moment I knew you were bitten, I believed.” (Deaton and Scott)

My Thoughts I am the type of person who, in general, likes to focus on the positive things about the shows I love. While I know they’re flawed, and I acknowledge and think about those flaws, I prefer to focus on what I love about them rather than all the ways in which they make mistakes or are problematic. So while I’m going to start off with a few things that talk about how some of the issues I had with this week’s Teen Wolf, I will keep most of the focus on my favorite and most thought-provoking parts of the episode.

Dear Teen Wolf: You’ve been very good to us viewers and, generally, I think you do things well. But this season you have now killed off two main characters that are not the most well-represented in media—a woman and a person of color. And this show doesn’t have a lot of those characters to begin with. I’m not saying that you’re necessarily consciously doing this, but it is problematic.

I’m wondering why they decided to kill Boyd in the episode right after the one that actually began to give him more backstory. We barely knew anything about Boyd at all, so why bring up all those questions about him and his sister if we’re not going to see any more about it? Perhaps we’ll learn more later, through flashbacks or through relatives, but for now it looks like our questions will have to wait.

I’m hoping that there’s a plan for at least one of our two Beta wolves to somehow come back to life on the show, since, as we’ve seen with Peter, on this show once you’re dead you’re not necessarily completely dead!

Now, on a more positive note, let’s talk about Melissa McCall. We all wish we could be as awesome as she is, am I right? In this episode, she appears to be dealing with a hospital in chaos without much help; saves Danny’s life with her knowledge and skills; figures out how the healers are being killed through examining the evidence of the marks on their bodies; and brings the sheriff into the loop on this without having to tell him about the supernatural elements. I am so happy to have her as part of the “in-the-know team” this year, and I love her character so much.

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Daily Dose of Feelings #5

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There still has yet to be a show that can effectively tug at my heartstrings on a weekly basis the way the first few seasons of Grey’s Anatomy could. Births and deaths, patients and doctors, moments of pain and moments of love—this show was able to make me cry for so many reasons and for so many characters. And while every couple had (and I’m sure still has even though I stopped watching a long time ago) plenty of poignant moments, Meredith and Derek were the center of so much of what made this show incredible, including its heartwarming and heartbreaking moments.

The scene where Derek comes to visit Meredith after she almost dies in an explosion at the end of Season Two’s “As We Know It,” is the perfect mixture of heartwarming and heartbreaking. The longing in this scene is so palpable that it makes my chest ache even all these years later.

The tension is built so perfectly throughout this scene, with Derek coming to see Meredith even though he’s married to Addison, and then with Meredith telling him that she couldn’t remember their last kiss—her loneliness written across her face like the cut on her forehead. But the tears don’t start for me until Derek describes that last kiss for Meredith. I remember sobbing when this scene first aired, thinking about how romantic it was that he remembered every little detail of that final moment of happiness. Patrick Dempsey’s delivery of that speech is perfect; you can feel every emotion as it courses through Derek—happiness, love, regret, and longing. HIs little smiles throughout the scene still kill me in the best possible way.

Some television moments make you cry because of how badly you want two characters to find happiness, and this will always be one of those moments for me. The electricity in the air between Dempsey and Ellen Pompeo is almost unbearable; this is such a simple scene, but the two of them put so much emotion into it that it’s impossible not to feel a desire to see these two people find love with one another again.

Grey’s Anatomy is filled with big moments designed to inflict maximum damage on your tear ducts. But where the show really excelled in its early seasons was in small moments of genuinely palpable emotion. Meredith and Derek have always been the emotional core of this show, and that’s true because of the quiet power of scenes like this one.

Five Reasons the Emmys are the Worst

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Okay…The title of this post may be a little hyperbolic, but let’s call a spade a spade: The 2013 Emmy nominations (which were announced yesterday) weren’t exactly exciting. In fact, they left many (myself included) disappointed. I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up for the majority of my favorite shows and actors getting nominations, but that should be part of the fun of nomination day. But I guess “fun” and “nomination day” are two words that only go together for the Critics’ Choice Television Awards.

Over at Media Through a Mom’s Eyes, you’ll find some great reactions and analysis of the Emmy nominees, especially in the dramatic categories. Here, I just want to point out five reasons I’m convinced the Emmys are out-of-touch with what’s actually going on in the world of television.

1. I don’t love you, and I don’t like you. Once again, Parks and Recreation was left out of the running for Best Comedy, with only Amy Poehler securing a nomination in a category which I’m sure she’ll be overlooked in once again. I’ve grown sadly jaded about Parks and Rec’s chances of ever getting nominated again, but I really thought they stood a chance this season. While it wasn’t the strongest season overall, it had two of its most compelling episodes ever with “Halloween Surprise” and “Ben and Leslie.” To see such a heartfelt, well-acted, genuinely funny television show go without any recognition (beyond its fabulous leading lady) continues to break my heart and make me wonder what exactly voters are looking for. If you don’t love Parks and Rec, I don’t think you’re the kind of person I want to know—or the kind of awards show I want to watch.

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Daily Dose of Feelings #4

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The summer before my senior year of college, I binge-watched all of Sex and the City. And while I discovered that I am definitely a Charlotte, Samantha was by far my favorite character. And never was she more brilliant than during her breast-cancer arc. That story provided some of the most heartfelt, honest, and realistic moments on a show that prided itself on its candor and its ability to tug at your heartstrings while it made you laugh.

My heartstrings have never been tugged harder while watching Sex and the City than when Samantha decided to shave her head after she started losing her hair. The powerful moment of such a strong character staring at her reflection, razor in hand, trying to accept the fact that she was now going to have to look like a sick person was emotional enough on its own.

And then Smith walked in.

Everyone has their favorite Sex and the City man, and Smith will always be mine. This scene solidified my love for him because he didn’t just talk the talk; when he said he wanted to be there for the woman he loves, he meant it. The grand gesture of shaving his head to try in some small way to relate to her better is beautiful, but what moves me the most is how matter-of-fact that gesture feels. The whole scene has this fantastic aura of reality—they feel like a real couple talking about the realities of cancer rather than actors reading clichéd lines about the illness.

Love isn’t always pretty and easy—life isn’t always pretty and easy. And I loved this scene for showing that, while both of those things may be true, the important thing is having someone who won’t run away—even when it’s scary and even if life freaks us out sometimes.