[hrothgar]

Not sure whether anyone else is watching this, but its quite good...

Pilot is available on Hulu

[Mbodell]

I really liked the pilot and it is the new show I'm most looking forward to.

[Elianna]

I thought that the show was fun, but I don't know if I'll watch it regularly.

I am getting really tired of this continued meme in shows taking place in high school where everyone wants others to stay in their cliques. While there were cliques in my high school, people easily crossed between them. And while there were things like fights and aggressive, mean behavior, most of them were aimed at people IN the clique, rather than outside. So, for example, the chearleaders didn't really have anything to do with the students in AP, unless a few were in both. But people weren't picked on for being in both.

Jocks picking on a guy in a wheelchair? Wouldn't have happened in my high school, the jocks wouldn't have cared less about him. They may have done that to a freshman aspiring to be on their team though.

This meme seems to be more true of junior high than of high school.

[keylime]

I've been watching Defying Gravity on Hulu myself lately. (yes I am still living).

[655321]

There is a show named after Clee?

[kenberg]

I'll be damned. Much to my surprise I watched it all the what through and may well watch it again. That's the best I can do for now but we will see. A show with talent but no gruesome corpses would be welcome (I enjoy Bones, but it does favor some repulsive images sometimes).

The dedicated and sensitive teacher, the manipulative wife (I trust we will soon learn that the pregnancy is a fake), the sassy black girl, the undiscovered talent just waiting to be brought forth, well, it's all a bit much. The high school may as well be on Mars for all the resemblance it has to my own experience, and I doubt my granddaughter, currently in hs, would much recognize it either. Still, it was fun. A good (partial) rendition of "Leaving on a jet plane". I think the show will stand or fall on how successful they are integrating some good musical presentations into the plot.

[MattieShoe]

I enjoyed it.

I don't recall ever seeing a teen angst show that accurately portrays high school. That's just par for the course. :-)

[Elianna]

MattieShoe, on Sep 9 2009, 11:05 PM, said:

I enjoyed it.

I don't recall ever seeing a teen angst show that accurately portrays high school. That's just par for the course. :-)

Freaks and Geeks.

Even though it took place in the 80s, it felt real to me.

[hrothgar]

MattieShoe, on Sep 10 2009, 10:05 AM, said:

I enjoyed it.

I don't recall ever seeing a teen angst show that accurately portrays high school. That's just par for the course. :-)

I'm not sure whether its necessary to accurately portray high school to be an effective teen angst show.

Case in point: I firmly beleive that "Better Off Dead" is the finest movie every made. It - almost perfectly - captures the essence of high school. It's also completely unrealistic. (As weird as my upbringing may have been, my parents never dressed up in "real aardvark fur")

[kenberg]

My So-Called Life seemed, to me, to be reality based. I liked it quite a bit which often seems to be the kiss of death. It never made it through the first season.


Fast Times at Ridgemont High was on TCM the other night. No I don't recommend it, but I saw it when it first came out and I really liked the then unknown Sean Penn. My wife, seeing it for the first time the other night, views my enthusiasm for Penn's performance as further evidence that she is married to an idiot.

[blackshoe]

Since when does a wife need evidence for that conclusion, Ken?

[hrothgar]

Was anyone else surprised by the following exchange on Glee?

Michelle: "I guess I just don't have a gag reflex"
Emma: "Someday when you're older that will turn out to be a gift."

Don't get me wrong... I thought this was hysterical (and Emma, in all her obsessive-compulsive glory, is fast becoming my favorite character). Still, I was surprised this made past standards and practices.

[barmar]

I was also pleasantly surprised at that line. I guess it was sufficiently vague that it would just go over the head of someone who doesn't already understand about fellatio.

Despite being set in a high school, the show is aimed at a mature audience. Another example was the scene of the teacher and his wife in the tub together.

Standards are also lowering, as networks desperately compete with cable TV for viewers. Consider that the most popular show on ABC Family is "The Secret Life of the American Teenager", which centers on a "good girl" teenager who got pregnant, and hardly 5 minutes go by on that show without someone (usually more teenagers) talking about having sex.

[nickf]

I'm becoming a gleek.

nickf
sydney