Laguna Beach: The Real Clueless

Another Thompson essay

Previously on Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, Lauren, otherwise known as L.C., the tall, tan blonde fashionista who seems incapable of wearing anything but see-through white bikinis when she’s near a swimming pool, told her friends that it is impossible to actively look for a boyfriend. Her friends quickly concurred, citing the logical comparison of how hard it is to find shoes when you look for them. This quickly dissolved into an argument about whether that theory can also be applied to purses or sunglasses (but not both, no, never both). It brings to mind a line Alicia Silverstone’s character Cher says in the movie Clueless. “Looking for a boyfriend in high school is as meaningless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie.” If she thought that Pauly Shore movies lack depth, imagine what she’d say about Laguna Beach.

MTV’s dramality, marketed as a reality version of Fox’s hit show The O.C., was actually supposed to be a reality version of Beverly Hills 90210. After all, if people were tuning in en masse to see actors play rich, spoiled, beautiful teenagers, why not just watch the real thing? Apparently the real Orange County has a lot less of shooting your juvenile delinquent boyfriend’s ecstasy-selling brother, but makes up for it with a lot more typical high school drama. There are the normal relationship break-ups and fights with close friends that all high school kids experiences. But these kids somehow manage to cope with teenage tribulations between spring break trips to Cabo San Lucas, surprise BMW SUV’s from daddy and planning their lucrative entertainment careers in L.A. instead of preparing for college. A better title would have been The Real Clueless, because these kids are re-enacting the movie without even realizing it.

Not that they are entirely to blame. For each generation of young girls, there is that one movie that stays in the zeitgeist. For those who are college-aged now, that movie was Clueless, Amy Heckerling’s valley-girl version of Emma. The majority of the cast on Laguna Beach was about eight years old when the movie came out in 1995, and it’s a sure bet that Clueless would be any of their “Top 5 favorite movie” lists.

Take a look at Kristin, the narrator (or Cher) of Laguna Beach. She is startlingly self-confident for her age. She shops and grooms herself constantly. She also is quick-witted, sarcastic and fun. The girl just wants to enjoy her senior year. She flirts, teases, and strings several boys along at once, but never settles on just one. She even drives a white jeep, as Cher did in Clueless.

After the landslides in Laguna Beach in June, the cast from last season, home from school for the summer, planned a charity fashion show and concert at a fancy restaurant to raise money. Not to dismiss the tragedy in the victim’s lives, but if they were living in mansions overlooking the Pacific Ocean, wouldn’t they be up on their insurance payments? This was like in Clueless when Cher decides she wants to do something good and become captain of the Pismo Beach disaster relief. Her teacher tells her they need to collect blankets, diapers and canned goods. Cher instead collects caviar, mini-skirts and tennis rackets.

Clueless satirized the lives of teenagers with money, whereas Laguna Beach takes itself too seriously and misses the punch-line. The popular clique’s pension for sexual antics quickly emerged and became the shows focus. It feels as though they purposely create drama for the cameras. Bad boy Jason has cheated on not one, not two, but three girlfriends this season alone. Stephen tries to rekindle a relationship with either Kristin or L.C., depending on whom the camera seems to be following that week. Kristin even kisses her best friend Jessica’s crush, which is caught on camera, but she never admits it.

The show is an addictive guilty pleasure that over 3 million people indulge in each week. Much like the primetime soap operas it was meant to imitate, it is full of lust, betrayal, stylish clothes, fancy cars and characters that are fun to hate. And much like a Pauly Shore movie, it is meaningless to search for meaning on Laguna Beach. Instead, just sit back and laugh.

Katrina Rant

I wrote this for an independent study I'm doing with Bob Thompson. It's not great, being my first one, but it was more an exercise in just venting against the vast wasteland on paper. Why can't television news be all that it can be?

A round of applause, please, for the broadcast journalists of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, not only did they do their jobs, they did it well. It was exhilarating to watch Anderson Cooper refuse to take prefabricated public relations baloney from Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu. Damn straight Americans shouldn’t feel grateful to the federal government for simply doing their jobs. Oh wait, following that logic, maybe Americans shouldn’t be so grateful to the media for doing theirs.

Perhaps I’m old-fashioned in what I expect from news reports: For them to actually be fair and balanced. Show me both sides of the story without bias. Stay neutral. Keep yourself out of the story. The press has a duty to represent the public, ask the questions we don’t have the opportunity to ask ourselves. Get us answers to the questions we want answered and then trust that we’re smart enough to form an opinion on our own.

That is why watching the media, which has become the Bush administration’s lapdog, finally ask tough questions and not cower was so thrilling. The fourth estate was in full swing. But the brief remembrance of what journalism should be was soon forgotten. Like a petulant child, the media itself needed to be the center of attention and made sure it was by becoming the story.

I was actually OK at first with reporters crossing the line of neutral observer. With no rescue workers coming to the Gulf, the journalists and their production teams at times became the first line of relief. They distributed water, helped reunite families, and even rescued stranded people. They took off their reporter hats and became humans first. A respectable decision considering the situation.

But did they need to broadcast these acts of humanity? Isn’t charity a selfless act? Did they do these things because they really were concerned about these people or because a suit back in New York thought it would test well with a focus group?

The tide quickly turned (I know it’s a cliché but I have that kind of sense of humor) as the news media began exploiting the victims suffering for their own gain. One particular glaring incident happened in a taped segment with Cooper. He was walking around a small town in Mississippi that had been decimated by the Katrina’s winds and ocean swells. He happened upon a woman who was trying to salvage mementos from the rubble where her house once stood. Cooper helped the woman dig through the remains. He walked away to do an aside to the camera and became so emotional, so choked up with tears, he needed to ask the cameraman to stop filming him.

While I’m willing to bet there is some an emotional toll on the reporters in these disaster situations, I also don’t want to see the reporter crying. Especially crocodile tears that make Cooper appear like an actor playing a reporter at the scene of a tragedy. If the woman who lost her house wasn’t crying on camera, why was he?

That was just the beginning of making the reporters the center of the story. Reporters were soon talking about how hard their lives have been, how terrible the conditions they’ve been living and working in are, the lack of sleep and decent food. Keep in mind that they get paid a ridiculously large amount of money to go to these places and report these stories. And unlike the people they were reporting on, they actually had jobs and homes at the end of the day.

In the days following the Hurricane, television critic Alessandra Stanley wrote a complimentary column in the New York Times about the outrage the media felt. In the article she wrote the following about Geraldo Rivera:

''Some reporters helped stranded victims because no police officers or rescue workers were around. (Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety.)''

Rivera took offense to the comment and demanded a correction be run. The Times contends that while there is no physical evidence of a nudge in the videotape, Stanley’s comment was symbolic of how pushy the media was acting. Never one to back away from the spotlight (although I’ve never seen photographic proof of him refusing to back away from the spotlight – I’m speaking metaphorically, Mr. Rivera), he has publicly threatened Stanley by saying if her name were Alexander instead of Alessandra he would fight her on 43rd Street.

He has also called her Jayson Blair in a cocktail dress. Is an off-handed comment in a critical opinion piece really akin to fabricating and plagiarizing entire stories? Are sexist remarks from established news reporter Rivera, who has won a Peabody, really tolerable? If so, the media has much bigger problems than we think.

Rivera is doing exactly what Stanley alluded to in her story. By grandstanding and making himself the story, he has detracted attention away from the real victims in the Hurricane, the people of Louisiana.

So congratulations to all the broadcast news reporters braving helicopter shootings, toxic sludge and wild roving dogs in Louisiana. You did your job well. The American public was aware of the situation as it was and rightly outraged thanks to your camerawork and on-the-scene reports. You helped reunite families and saved family pets. But perhaps when you do the inevitable story about the universities in New Orleans reopening, you can audit a journalism class. If you can walk away from Hurricane Katrina learning one thing, let it be that journalists should not report in the first person.

Wicked twists in plotlines show exciting life on 'Mars'

Originally published in The Daily Orange - 11/18/05

If Nancy Drew and Sam Spade had a daughter, she would probably be a lot like teenage detective Veronica Mars.
Intriguing storylines, razor-sharp wit and a talented young cast make "Veronica Mars" one of the best shows on television.
Veronica Mars (Kristin Bell) solves mysteries in the socially divided beach town of Neptune, Calif. Each episode contains clues about the main mystery of the season: What caused a bus full of her classmates to end up in the Pacific Ocean? Working out of her office in the girls' bathroom in the high school, Veronica also helps classmates solve their own mysteries for a small fee. These range from figuring out who hit a car in the school parking lot to learning why only student athletes from the poor section of town failed their drug screening test. This allows one mystery to be solved each episode, while viewers are still teased with hints about the larger, overarching crime.
"Veronica Mars" has a complicated and absorbing plotline, full of shocking twists. Last season, Veronica was inexplicably dumped by her boyfriend, her best friend was murdered and she had reason to believe her dad wasn't her birth father. But this isn't your typical high school soap opera.
In a town tensely divided between the haves and the have-nots, Veronica frequently tells viewers that nothing happens by accident. Each character has an equally complex background story, and the writers constantly build upon past episodes to weave storylines and characters together. Someone who appeared in an episode last season can easily reappear this season and be the lynchpin to solving that episode's mystery.
The dry sarcasm of the script balances out the often disturbing plots of murder, rape and incest. After telling her father about the first day back at school after summer vacation, he jokingly asks if she had any premarital sex that day. She assures him she did.
"But don't worry, Dad," she said. "I swear you're gonna like these guys."
Veronica's ex-boyfriend Logan (Jason Dohring), the wise-cracking son of a movie star, is arrested on charges of murdering a member of a local motorcycle gang. Called forward in the police line-up, he smugly launches into Sally Field's Oscar Award acceptance speech.
"I'd just like to say, the other nominees are all such wonderfully gifted criminals."
In a cast made up primarily of young actors, Bell and Dohring stand out. Bell is spunky and thoroughly enjoyable to watch. She delivers her wry lines in a perfect deadpan tone. Bell also provides voiceover commentary throughout most of the show, conveying a world-weariness that would normally seem unrealistic coming from a teenager.
Dohring has the bigger challenge of making the arrogant Logan also be a sympathetic character. When Logan is being a jerk, Dohring speaks in a slow sneering tone. When Logan is vulnerable, Dohring's entire facial expression shifts to make him look scared and emotionally raw.
"Veronica Mars," which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on UPN, is absorbing, funny and well worth investigating.

Unoriginal ideas fail to kill 'Ghost Whisperer'

Originally published in The Daily Orange - 11/11/05

The surprising ratings success of CBS's new program "Ghost Whisperer" proves it's not going to die anytime soon."Ghost Whisperer" takes the "I see dead people" premise of "The Sixth Sense" and turns it into a sentimental weekly television melodrama.
Despite an irritating lead actress and obvious heart-tugging tactics, "Ghost Whisperer" offers a spooky, tingle-inducing story with heart.
Cursed with a gift that allows her to communicate with the dead, Melinda Gordon, (Jennifer Love Hewitt), an antique-shop owner and newlywed, reluctantly helps earthbound spirits complete their business with the living so the spirits can cross over to the peace beyond."
Ghost Whisperer's" biggest flaw is Hewitt, a poor actress who comes off as phony and insincere. Her speech and movements are too stiff and practiced to convincingly convey a free spirit like Melinda. All of Hewitt's long, flowing dresses and the elaborate sets decorated with candelabras and velvet chaise lounges can't hide the actress' painful lack of talent.
The show's storylines are clichés, shamelessly designed to elicit the sympathy of viewers. An episode about a woman whose dead fiancé haunts her is neatly tied up when Melinda introduces her to the man who received her fiancé's heart in a transplant. A little boy who died because he disobeyed his mother refuses to move on until the mother tells him she forgives him. A missing soldier from Vietnam can cross over only after he sees his son, who was born after the soldier died, have a child of his own.
Despite the triteness of the plots, the show is surprisingly effective. It is a guilty pleasure despite, or maybe because of, such hokey storylines. It deals with death in a straightforward manner, making it a part of life instead of a macabre plot device. A spooky vibe permeates the show, but the chills come from scenes of spirituality rather than cheap scares. The positive effect of Melinda's helping the spirits cross over is what really involves the viewers' emotions. The loved ones of those left behind finally have closure as they move past the deaths that haunted them. They, and the audience, are left feeling uplifted instead of scared.
"Ghost Whisperer" is unlike any traditional ghost story, and viewers know they are being manipulated. The conclusions are never really surprising, but each week they provide a satisfying ending.

Rock hits bottom with lack of comedic material

Originally published in The Daily Orange - 10/28/05

The great appeal of Chris Rock is that he's an equal opportunity offender. He'll crack jokes about anyone, regardless of race, gender or class. "Everybody Hates Chris," airing Thursday nights at 8 on UPN, tries to contain Rock's edgy humor in a half-hour family-oriented comedy.
Unfortunately, the jokes that work in his stand-up routine fall flat when they are scrubbed clean for primetime.
The show is set in 1982, when Chris (Tyler James Williams) and his family move from a housing project to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The social awkwardness facing any 13-year-old boy is compounded when his mom Rochelle (Tichina Arnold) enrolls him in the all-white Corleone Junior High. With his strict parents working hard to provide a better life for the family, Chris often finds himself stuck with more responsibility than he wants as he tries to control his younger, but taller, brother and his bratty little sister.
Rock provides voice-over narration to establish the setup for each episode. Since the show is done without a laugh track, the audience is cued when to laugh by the infliction in Rock's voice. A lot of the one-liners he provides as commentary would probably cause eruptions of laughter in a comedy special. In this context, they cause a smile at best.
When speaking about the street he lives on, Rock explains despite the presence of "hundreds of kids" on the block, there were only four fathers. Rock continues to tell the audience that "between these four dads, they had 16 jobs and worked 492 hours a week." In his stand-up, Rock would be making social commentary on dead-beat fathers. On "Everybody Hates Chris," it just seems stereotypical in the worst way.
Chris is always worried about upsetting his parents, and is scared to tell them his bike has been stolen. He imagines how his mother would punish him if she knew. "I smacked him into next week," she tells his younger siblings. "He'll be back on Tuesday." Sadly, this was the funniest line in the episode.
"Everybody Hates Chris," is nothing more than a typical family sitcom. There are running jokes in each episode about family members. Julius (Terry Crews), Chris' dad, is so cheap he knows the exact amount of food wasted. As he cleans up the breakfast plates, he picks up some scraps and says, "That's five cents' worth of bread," before popping it in his mouth. Rochelle is always quitting her temp jobs, telling her employer how many jobs her husband works, before she storms out. The show successfully conveys the love this family has for each other, but so does "Two and a Half Men."
"Everybody Hates Chris" lacks Rock's street-smart and honest humor. Cleaning up his obscenity-laced routine for television shouldn't have removed his social message.

Egomaniacal satirist broadcasts Stewart spinoff

Originally published in The Daily Orange - 10/21/05

Spinoffs are rarely as good as the originals. Just look at "Joey" if you need proof of that. "The Colbert Report" makes no effort to distinguish itself from its predecessor, "The Daily Show." That is why Comedy Central's satire of the political pundits on cable news channels is so easy to swallow. It's not really a spinoff of "The Daily Show," but more like an extension.

Stephen Colbert is a former correspondent (and staff writer) on "The Daily Show," best known for the segment "This Week in God," where he points out hypocrisy in organized religion. As host of "The Colbert Report," he is a reactionary, self-centered, patriotic blow-hard. To highlight his egomaniacal side, he stands in front of a portrait of himself, in which he is standing in front of a portrait of himself. He is a conglomeration of the Bill O'Reilly and Joe Scarborough types that are skewered mercilessly on "The Daily Show" for their combative commentary. As he told the audience during Monday's premiere, "If you're not scared, I'm not doing my job."

The similarities to "The Daily Show" are evident throughout the show, particularly through the slyly named segments. During "Threat Down," Colbert lists the top five threats of the day, ranging from the Avian Flu in Asia to the effect early potty training will have on the diaper industry. "The Word" focuses on a word of the day like "disappointed," which he uses to define his feelings on the Saddam Hussein trial.

There are also the familiar guest interviews with members of the media elite. Colbert's quick-witted, off-the-cuff responses to guests are by far the best part of the show.Of "Dateline NBC's" Stone Phillips' mock turtleneck, he remarked, "It's very Steve McQueen in 'Bullitt.'" When Lesley Stahl of "60 Minutes" told him Sunday's show is experimenting with limited advertisements, he asked, "But where will the people at Centrum Silver run their ads?"

Colbert will also continue to do the taped interview segments he did on "The Daily Show." Somehow, producers still manage to find people who don't realize the interview will be used to mock them. When Colbert interviewed the congressman from the 1st District in Georgia, he asked questions like, "Are you a Georgia peach?" and insisted that the state song, "Georgia on my Mind," was sung by Jamie Foxx, not Ray Charles.

Although Jon Stewart is not behind the large, C-shaped anchor desk with Colbert, he is an executive producer. Stewart even provides Colbert with a lead-in each night, when the two briefly exchange fake niceties during the closing moments of "The Daily Show," and viewers are given a preview of what's coming up, just like cable news channels do with their star journalists.

Fans of "The Daily Show" will enjoy seeing longtime correspondent Colbert getting the chance at his own show, even if he is just pretending to be an ultra-conservative Stewart. Soon "The Colbert Report" will need to go it alone, though, or it will become as unimportant as day-old news.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

I'm addicted to my DVR (ghetto version of TiVo). Without it, how could I stomach a nauseatingly sweet 2 hour specials of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Last night's episode was about the Tom family from Northern California. This woman adopted 8 kids with disabilities, ranging from two Russian girls born without legs to a little girl who had been burned in a crib fire.
The show is guaranteed to cause tears and I'm never so willing to be manipulated to tears. Almost every episode makes me wonder where they find these people. She's a single mom raising orphans with serious orthopedic problems. And all these kids want is to have a normal life, to be able to wash dishes and cook dinner and get upstairs when it's bedtime. I'm a little jaded and cynical but I can't believe there are people THAT good.
So these lovely, charitable people are deserving of all the goodness ABC and Sears are sending their way. Aside from the stupid and antics of annoying Paul, (seriously, you want to know how to make a little kid dying from cancer smile? Stop using her illness for ratings you jerk!) the "design team" is made up of people who seem to genuinely care about these people and believe in what they are doing. Again...are people who get paid to be on-air really THAT good?
The fun part of the show starts 15 minutes before the end. When the family arrives home from their Disney World vacation they are greeted by a crowd of hundreds of cheering neighbors. Wonder where those people were before the camera crews showed up. The reaction when the family sees their new home is priceless. I can't imagine how jarring it would be to go away for a week and then come home to a place you've never seen. And to know it's yours. The tour inside is always great and truthfully, I've even started looking at the Sears website to decorate my house. The kids rooms are cheesy. The Backstreet Boy room? She's 16, by 17 she'll be over them. The book room was a good idea but c'mon, he drilled through perfectly good books to make that bed. But the kitchens and bathrooms are always amazing.
You'd think the free vacation, brand new house with brand new stuff would be enough but not for Ty. Ford delivers new cars, there's a swimming pool out back and wait for it...rip up that mortgage Mama Tom.

Welcome to the new and improved Couch Critic

I tried to be good about my blog but truthfully, it wasn't interesting me, so why would it interest you. Instead, I'm going to try a different tactic. I'm just gonna write about television, like I would talk to my friends about it. That's part of the learning curve I'm going through at school. I'm trying to write these brilliant and insightful essays about why a show is great or why it sucks and instead I get nervous and stiff. I'm still going to post my articles in the Daily Orange and the critical essays I write for my independent study with Bob Thompson though. I just finished one on Laguna Beach that I'm going to give him on Tuesday. I get so nervous before I give him my essays because, well, he is the expert. He's been great though, encouraging me to just write, stream of consciousness about shows and then to go back and shape them into essays. But the Family Guy is on so it's time to log off for today.