I am very excited for the upcoming Supergirl/The Flash musical crossover, and am especially hoping for a Jeremy Jordan/Jesse L. Martin duet of some kind. In preparation for this episode, I started thinking about some of my other favorite musical television moments.
1. Smash – Don’t Forget Me
There were a lot of great performances in this series, but this one still gives me chills. While I do feel that ultimately Ivy made the better Marilyn, I was rooting for Karen when this finale episode aired and this performance, in particular, really moved me.
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Going Through the Motions??
This is not necessarily my favorite number from this episode, but it is the one that set the tone. A musical demon is making everyone sing their feelings, and sometimes those feelings are things people have been keeping hidden from everyone else. Since Buffy was brought back from the dead, she has been ‘going through the motions’ and she’s finally admitting it out loud.
3. One Tree Hill – Brooklyn
This was really the first show that made music into one of its characters instead of just something to set the mood in certain scenes. Grubbs only stuck around for one season as the bartender at Tric, and was played by Wakey Wakey’s Mike Grubbs. For some reason, his acoustic performance of Brooklyn has always stuck with me. I could not find a clip of the actual scene, but here is another performance of this great song.
4. Eli Stone – Faith
Eli is a San Francisco lawyer and he begins to have visions that encourage him to choose more virtuous cases. In this first episode, he believes that God is speaking to him through George Michael. It was a brilliant, but short-lived, series.
It is pilot season, which means networks are deciding which scripts they want to see made into pilot episodes and then, ultimately, which of those pilots will get made into full series. While we wait to see which shows will get picked up this year, I started thinking about my favorite pilots. Not all of these shows made it past their first season, some of them did and eventually lost me, but they all had great first episodes. For fun, I put them in chronological order, and there are definitely spoilers.
1. Cheers – Give Me A Ring Sometime
While waiting for her fiancé Sumner to get his grandmother’s ring from his ex-wife so they can go to Barbados and get married, Diane Chambers is introduced to all the interesting employees and regular patrons at this Boston bar. After Sumner returns an hour later only to leave again, Diane calls the airline to change their flight and discovers that he has left her and gone to Barbados with his ex-wife. Owner Sam Malone feels bad for Diane and offers her a job. This is still one of my favorite series of all time, and it all started with this episode. Sometimes you really just wanna go where everyone knows your name.
2. My So-Called Life – Pilot
So, she started hanging out with Rayanne Graff, because it seemed fun and because, it seemed like if she didn’t, she would die. That may sound overly dramatic, but that is exactly what Angela says in voice over at the beginning of this series. Angela is a typical high school student in the suburbs. She starts hanging out with new friends that her parents do not really approve of and she lies about where she’s going. She thinks about having sex with the boy she has a crush on, and she daydreams about him in class. From this very first episode, this show just felt like it was about my life and it still speaks to me today. The characters talked to each other like real teenagers. They did not have philosophical conversations about issues happening in the world, they talked about the things that teenagers talk about: things that directly affect their lives at that particular moment.
3. Sports Night – Pilot
This show takes place at a fictional sports show called Sports Night, with anchors Dan Rydell and Casey McCall. It is executive produced by Dana Whitaker, with the help of associate producers Natalie Hurley and Jeremy Goodwin, and their staff. They all work under managing editor Isaac Jaffe for the Continental Sports Channel (CSN). Still getting over his recent divorce and becoming disillusioned by the state of sports, Casey contemplates leaving the show. After an argument with Dan and a historic run by a South African distance runner, Casey ultimately decides to stay. In this episode, we also see how much Dana and Isaac butt heads with the network, but also how loyal they are their staff. Awful laugh track aside, this pilot is still one of my favorite episodes of television ever.
4. Alias – Truth Be Told
Sydney Bristow is a typical grad student. She has two best friends, Will and Francie, and she just got engaged to her doctor boyfriend, Danny. Oh, and she also works for a covert branch of the CIA called SD-6. After Sydney decides to her fiancé her secret, the agency kills him and tries to kill her as well for breaking their number one rule of secrecy. She then learns from her estranged father that SD-6 is actually not the CIA, but an enemy organization, so she goes to the actual CIA to become a double agent. Even though I was not a huge fan of this show as a whole, it started off strong and the pilot drew me in with its kick ass lead character and its secret agent storyline.
The newest Netflix show Sense8 is about eight uniquely different people from all around the world that start seeing and hearing things that they have not experienced themselves. They each have specific talents and often help each other out of their individual predicaments by being able to share senses within their group. It sounds super complicated, but is actually a really great show that you should be watching.
Inspired by this show, I decided to make a list of TV characters that would make a good group of Sensates. I admit that I am totally stealing this idea from Todd VanDerWerff and it was not as easy as I thought it would be. Trying to come up with a list of people that all have different skills which compliment each other was incredibly difficult. I also decided to leave out anyone who came by their gifts supernaturally, because that just opened an entirely different can of worms.
1. Cosima Niehaus – Orphan Black
She has Ph.D. in Experimental Evolutionary Developmental Biology, which basically means she likes to make crazy science, but she will also keep everyone mellow.
2. Mike Ross – Suits
He may not be a real lawyer, but he can pull it off because he has a photographic memory.
3. Melinda May a.k.a. “The Cavalry” – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
She is smart, resourceful, knows how to fly a plane and will kick your ass if you mess with her.
4. Rickie Vasquez – My So-Called Life
He is brave, compassionate and protective of his friends, but also has a flare for the dramatic.
I grew up with a mother who did not really know how to do anything to my hair except put it in a ponytail. (Yes, I had a bowl cut for much of my childhood, let’s not talk about it.) Needless to say, I have always been jealous of people who can pull off funky hairstyles. This is my list of female TV characters with awesomely crazy hair. Spoiler Alert: there are lots of braids.
1. Naevia – Spartacus, played by Cynthia Addai Robinson
When you are spending most of your time killing Romans, you need some badass hair to go along with your new badass gladiator skills.
2. Suzanne ‘Crazy Eyes’ Warren – Orange Is The New Black, played by Uzo Aduba
This hairstyle totally suits her personality and I do not think her eyes would look quite as crazy without it.
3. Rayanne Graff – My So-Called Life, played by A.J. Langer
Rayanne’s style is totally ’90s Grunge and I always loved the one random strand in the front that was usually blonde, but was sometimes other funky colors.
4. Octavia – The 100, played by Marie Avgeropoulos
Once she joined the Grounders, Octavia needed to look the part of one of their warriors.
Everyone went back to school this week here in Austin, so I thought I would give you my list of TV schools that would have been a lot of fun to have attended in real life. I was never a big fan of studying when I was in school, so most of these choices are not academic in the least.
1. Liberty High School – My So-Called Life Executive Producer Marshall Herskovitz is from Philadelphia and I am pretty sure that this show is supposed to have taken place at Lower Merion High School, so technically I did go to Liberty. However, I do not remember Jordan Catalano being there.
2. Neptune High – Veronica Mars Sadly, I probably would have been friends with the 09ers in high school, or at least the jocks. However, I definitely would have gravitated towards the Meg Mannings, as opposed to the Madison Sinclairs. Either way, Veronica always kept things interesting.
3. Cyprus-Rhodes University – Greek I was not in a sorority in college and I definitely would not have joined Zeta Beta Zeta, but I would have had a lot of fun hanging out with the Kappa Tau’s at all of their crazy parties.
4. S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Who wouldn’t want to learn how to be a super secret agent?!
Today is my sister-in-law’s birthday and so I have put together a list of my favorite sisters in her honor. I do not know what it is like growing up with a sister, as I only have the one brother, but these relationships made me want one. Sometimes they even reminded me how annoying I was myself.
1. Danielle – My So-Called Life played by Lisa Wilhoit. We did not really know very much about Danielle, except that she was usually jealous of Angela and had a crush on Brian Krakow. I’d like to think that if the show had lasted more than one season, we would have learned more about Danielle and her life.
2. Rudy, Vanessa and Denise – The Cosby Show played by Keshia Knight Pulliam, Tempestt Bledsoe and Lisa Bonet. They fought a lot, just like siblings do, but they were also always there for each other. There was a fourth sister played by Sabrina Le Beauf, but I never really liked Sondra or her storylines and she never lived in the house with the rest of the family.
3. Ginnie, Anne, Marjee and Rose – Related played by Jennifer Esposito, Kiele Sanchez, Lizzy Caplan and Laura Breckenridge. This was a WB show that only last one season, but I really loved the family dynamic between these four sisters. They were each different and had different interests, but they supported each other and were very involved in each other’s lives.
4. Ellie – Chuck played by Sarah Lancaster. Ellie was kept in the dark about what her brother was really up to most of the time but, since their mother left when they were young, she had basically raised Chuck and just wanted him to be happy and safe.
Welcome to My TV Family! I have decided to move on from my previous website, Aye, Tortuga!, and start fresh with a more television focused blog. I am glad that you are joining me on this new adventure! To kick things off, I present you with my favorite TV make-overs. Some of these are permanent changes the characters made to their appearance and some are simply one-time looks, but all are amazing.
1. Veronica Mars: At the request of her friend Meg, Veronica is forced to go to the ’80s themed Spring Dance. She describes the Madonna-esque outfit as “Manila Whore Barbie.”
2. My So-Called Life: In the series premiere, Angela is convinced by new friends Rayanne and Rickie to dye her hair red.
3. Firefly: In order to meet a new contact for a job, Mal and Kaylee have to get dressed up and go to a ball. Kaylee uses the opportunity to wear a new dress she had been eying and Mal is her escort, tight pants and all.
4. Orphan Black: After seeing Beth, a woman that looks remarkably similar to herself, jump in front of a train, Sarah decides to take over this stranger’s identity. In order to steal all of Beth’s money as well, Sarah needs a new hairstyle and a new accent.
My TV Family 