This past August, I was on Jeopardy!, wearing all blue from the waist up and looking for a way to be faster with the signalling device (if you call it a buzzer, the producers will hit you with a ruler). Getting to the point where I was standing on a soundstage at Sony Studios in […]
The Tube
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The Tube: Reality television’s representation problem
MTV recently debuted its newest controversial reality show: Scrubbing In. The show follows the lives of a group of traveling nurses in Orange County as they learn the ropes of a new hospital, party hard on booze cruises and “get up in each other’s grills.” Not only do these breast-enhanced and hard-muscled nurses look more […]
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The Tube: In Rebel Wilson’s new show, light comedy is weighed down
ABC’s Super Fun Night features Rebel Wilson as awkward, yet successful, New York City lawyer Kimmie Boubier (yes, it is a boob joke, pronounced like “boobie-yay!”)…
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The Tube: Television rut relief
Lately, I’ve been in a television rut. Few shows have been able to grab my attention enough to stop me from scrolling through imgur or reading Gawker posts while watching. I’ve even felt this way while viewing the most recent episodes of Breaking Bad (gasp!), and I’m not really sure where this boredom is coming […]
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Beyond the rerun: A guide to Summer television
Not too long ago, the beginning of summer marked the end of the TV season. As a child this annoyed me because summer meant that I finally had free time to watch all the television I wanted, yet nothing was on besides reruns and episodes of Maury. I thought the explanation for this was that […]
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The Tube: Have we made a huge mistake?
Maybe it’s my pre-pubescent sense of humor, but the funniest aspect of the fourth season of Arrested Development is Tobias’ new license plate which reads “ANUSTART.” In his bizarro world, that’s supposed to be plate-speak for “A New Start.” The schtick pops up again in a later episode when Lucille 1 encounters Tobias in rehab, […]
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The Tube: Neverending stories
For the last few years, Community has been one of my favorite shows on television. Cancellation threats and time slot changes made me anxious and inspired tweets with the hashtag #SixSeasonsAndAMovie (along with tons of other fans) to show support for the awesomely quirky show. However, something changed this season: Community’s creative force and showrunner, […]
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The Tube: If it looks like quality?
Every mall in America has a kiosk full of bright colored, often gaudy purses, intended to mimic designer styles but sold for a fraction of the price. While some of them look quality at first glance, upon closer examination, the stitching usually isn’t quite right and the materials just feel cheaper. This knock-off purse example […]
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The Tube: Why the classics?
Although people nowadays don’t delve into its past as actively as before, film is a medium with a past that is acknowledged and cherished. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be any effort by people like Martin Scorsese to preserve and re-release films that could be lost to time like the Australian outback film Wake in Fright.
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The Tube: Saying goodbye to 30 Rock
2006 saw the debut of two series that built their plots around the behind-the-scenes action of shows with disturbing similarities to Saturday Night Live. The first was Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Following the success of Sorkin’s The West Wing, and with a cast that included Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet and D.L. Hughley, this show looked like a sure bet. The second show was 30 Rock.
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The Tube: Free yourself from traditional cable packages
In the second installment of a two-part series on a la carte television, Melissa Zimdars asks whether viewers can already unbundle themselves by moving away from traditional cable packages and toward streaming television online. Rumors of cable or satellite television becoming unbundled, which refers to the ability to purchase a particular channel’s content or a […]
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The Tube: The Price of Choice
In the first installment of a two-part series on a la carte television, A.C. Hawley asks if viewers can expect to save money by moving away from traditional cable packages and toward purchasing individual channels online. At the beginning of this year, Internet and business circles buzzed with discussion about a new television project being […]
