Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars is back for another season.  I love this show and have yet to miss an episode.

PLL follows the drama surrounding 4 high school friends that are being stalked and harassed by a mystery person that calls them self A. 

While the series hasn't been able to maintain the excellence that was season 1, it's still held my attention.  There are just 3 things I would change about the show.

1. Get rid of Ezra Fitz.  He is creepy and I don't understand why it was socially OK for him to date his 16 year old former student just because he was no longer her English teacher.  It is still a felony.  This brings me to...

2.  Make Aria speak in her real voice.  Aria has adapted a strained whisper voice that just listening to makes my throat hurt.  Unless she's delivering a secret she really needs to pump up the volume.

3.  The fashion- One of the things that makes PLL so much fun to watch is the costuming.  Each character has their own distinct style and it is obvious the wardrobe department works hard to make the girls look great.  But just like with Sex & the City, as the series gained popularity the fashions became over the top and less realistic.  The characters are in high school.  They look ridiculous in haute couture inspired outfits.

Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays at 8pm on ABC Family.

I'M BACK!!!

I took a hiatus from this blog, but now I'm back. There are so many TV shows, characters, and actors that I am dieing to write about from the perspective of an expert viewer!

 I would be remiss if I didn't take this time to mention a few programs I loved but that are no longer with us.
*Emily Owens MD (CW)- As far as I'm concerned this was the best show of 2012.
*Don't Trust The B In Apartment 23 (ABC)- Hated it at first, but ABC made changes and the 2nd season was great.
*30 Rock (NBC)- It was time for it to go, but I will miss Liz Lemon.

I'll continue to add to the list as the shows come to me.

100 Questions

100 Questions is a complete and total failure. I know NBC was left with a huge gap to fill when Friends went off the air six years ago. This show is quite possibly the network's most pathetic attempt at filling that gap. I mean really, the two male leads are such deliberate and obvious rip offs of Joey and Chandler that I just call them Joey and Chandler. The characters are completely unoriginal, the writing is jaw droppingly bad, and for God's sake will someone turn down the laugh track.

You know those movies and shows that are about making really bad TV shows? Well 100 Questions is the bad show they are making. I feel like talking about how unwatchable this show is is like beating a dead horse. NBC reduced the number of episodes from 13 to 6, various cast members are now on other shows, and NBC hasn't wasted one dime promoting it. So however official or unofficial the cancellation is....it's pretty much cancelled.

However, there is one good thing about this comedy. Smith Cho who plays Leslie is a stand out actress. Her comedic timing is enjoyable. These actors have to deliver some of the worst dialogue ever written. But when Cho recites her lines, I can see that it's just bad writing not bad writing and bad acting.

I don't know why NBC even bothered to air this...this insult. And on Thursdays too. I usually can depend on their Thursday night line up to be quality (even though they have nothing good on for the other six days of the week). I watched two episodes of this show, because I seriously thought maybe the pilot was especially bad but the rest of the episodes would be better. I was so wrong.

Everybody Loves Raymond

I don't know what it is about Everybody Loves Raymond, but I am hooked on the reruns. I remember catching an episode when it was still on the air. I was immediately turned off by the set decoration, dialogue, and laugh track. Also, I didn't like that all three of the children were blond yet both parents have brown hair. I deemed the show unwatchable and never looked back.

A few months ago I was home with nothing to do and nothing to watch. I figured ELR was the least bad thing on so I gave it a chance. I was totally entertained. While the set decoration still activates my gag reflex and the Robert character needs work, I really like the parents and Deborah and after a while I didn't even notice the laugh track. The series is syndicated on many different networks but Nick At Nite has full episodes available on line. If you're like me and missed Everybody Loves Raymond the first time, it's worth a revisit.

Lost Finale

After six seasons Lost has gone off the air. When I saw the pilot episode I was hooked. And there aren't words to describe how I felt during the first season finale when The Others rolled up to the make shift raft and said "Give us the boy." I could not wait to find out what the Hell was going on on that island!

However, after catching a few episodes during the second season I lost interest in the show and eventually stopped watching all together. The mysteries that were so captivating became annoying and frustrating. But really I stopped watching because I was afraid. I get really into the TV shows I watch. (So much so that I created a blog just to talk about them.) And I was afraid that I would feel cheated and mistreated if this series took a bad turn with unbelievable plot lines or sudden cancellation. I didn't believe Lost could live up to the hype.

Cut to season three. Tired of being left out of the water cooler conversations, I was back to being an avid viewer. I scheduled Lost on the DVR and watched every episode. When I had questions or just wanted to talk about how hot Sawyer was I would call my sister, Gloria, because this was her favorite show. Then It was announced that Lost was going off the air. The commercials for the final season promised the mystery of the island would be solved. I was beside myself with anticipation.

The Lost finale was so big ABC billed it as an event. Commercial space cost more than The Superbowl. Local businesses were throwing private viewing parties. I spent the Saturday before the finale sitting in the park with friends listing the questions we couldn't wait to know the answers to. It wasn't just me and a select group of people, the country was excited.

Sunday evening arrives and I snuggle in for the two and a half hour Lost finale. After 120 episode I was finally going to be found. Or so I thought. I'm just going to get to the point. The finale was a huge disappointment. Gigantic. The creators didn't address any of the big mysteries. Instead they left us with some criptic B.S. about purgatory and redemption. WTF!!! I wanted to know why, before the plane crash, couldn't any of the women carry a child to term. I wanted to know what would happen if the smoke monster got off the island. I wanted to know what was the deal with the time travel. I wanted to know why the others captured Walt. I wanted to know about the Dharma initiative. I will never get a satisfactory answer to any of these questions, and that is why that crap finale made me see red. And to add insult to injury the show's producers said they didn't address specific mysteries because that wasn't the big picture of the series. That made me want to hurt someone. It is obvious that the writers and producers wrote themselves into a corner. They didn't solve the mystery of the island because they couldn't.

What makes me so angry is I knew Lost was going to disappoint me in the end and I watched and got invested anyway. Well I won't make that mistake again. From now on if I watch a mystery themed show it will have to be advertised like Harper's Island. They told you from the pilot this series will only be one season, someone will die every epiosde, and the killer(s) will be revealed in the end. That's what I'm looking for, no lose ends.

Hot In Cleveland

I am so excited for this show to premiere on TVland. Hot in Cleveland is a scripted comedy about 3 women in their late 40s that can't find love in LA. So they decide to take a girls trip to the most romantic place on earth, Paris. Their flight has to make and emergency landing in Cleveland, and as the ladies are hanging out in the airport they realize that they are getting a lot of male attention. They are hot in Cleveland....get it? This premise is hilarious. I can't help but be reminded of a joke made on 30 Rock when the character Liz Lemon comes back to NYC after spending time in Cleveland and she says "In Ohio I'm a model" and carries the local newspaper circular as proof.

Hot In Cleveland premieres on June 16th on TVLand and stars Jane Leeves, Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, and Wendie Malick. I am so looking forward to this show. All these ladies have proven comedic talents and I am definitely riding the Betty White bandwagon. But I have one major concern. This show has a great cast and hilarious premise, so why is it on TVLand? Why not a network? This leads me to think it might suck, but I will definitely give the first few episodes a chance.

Jaime Oliver's Food Revolution

The first episode of this show was very promising. What's not to love about a hot guy with a sexy British accent that is passionate about improving the lives of children? I liked the pilot so much I watched it again later with my mom (BTW-she enjoyed it too). But the show has gotten progressively worse with every episode, and now I can't watch it.

I still want to like Food Revolution, but this show has a lot of problems that I can't ignore. I'm most aggravated by the obviously produced resentment Jaime encounters from the locals. Jaime must battle the school board, the lunch ladies, and most of all the local radio DJ in an attempt to get people to be aware of what they are eating. Oh please! I can't even name one local radio DJ, and I would never allow their beliefs to effect my judgement. This show is produced by Ryan Seacrest, a radio DJ, so maybe that's why he's trying to portray the local radio DJ as a relevant voice of the community. The problem is it's not.

Jaime often bumps head with the elementary school's lunch ladies. Even though the kids are tumbling into the cafeteria hungry for their breakfast pizza, we're supposed to believe that these West Virginians are so resistant to change that they would rather their kids die a slow death than heed the warnings of a foreigner. The nay sayers are ofter heard saying "we just don't trust his motives". What's could Jaimie's ulterior motives be? What sinister secret could he possible be plotting that requires healthy kids? I'm insulted that the producers think the viewers are simple enough to believe that manufactured plot.

Also Food Revolution has way to much filler material. The producers come up with the stupidest segments just to fill time. In one episode Jaime created a flash mob that danced and sang about food. What? That is not interesting. It's cony and flash mobs are so played out. Note to all reality shows: When you don't have enough relevant material to fill the time slot, try harder.

Food Revolution tries to push a David vs Goliath sub-plot that has gotten away from them. There are genuine obstacles to improving school lunches; budget, time, and the biggest hurdle of all, kids prefer crappy food. These are the issues the show should focus on. Not can Jaime get 1,000 people to attend free cooking classes when the voice on the radio says don't waste your time?