TV Show Theme Songs

What makes a TV show great?

***FRIENDS spoilers***

To this question most people would respond with great characters that are relatable and you can sympathize with, plot twists, and cliffhangers that leave you coming for more.

One thing you may not be thinking of is a show with an amazing theme song. While some theme songs are highly overlooked others are cherished by fans. You eventually become attached to this song even if the song doesn’t contain any words what so ever. For example, the “Friends” theme song is memorized and beloved by many of the fans of the show. This song is both catchy, fun, and has meaning to the show itself. In the theme song the phrase “I’ll be there for you” is repeated over and over. This shows just how close all six friends are and how throughout the series they were there for each other from Ross’s divorce, to Rachel and Ross’s on-again off-again, and Monica and Chandler dating. Over the 10 years that the show aired all of the main characters remained friends (though they do have some fights) and support each other the best they can.

Another great thing is the interactive part of the song. This is something that everybody does even if they won’t admit it. The song starts out with “So no one told you life was gonna be this way” *Three claps* “Your job’s a joke, your broke, your love life’s D.O.A…”. If you have ever seen Friends you’re definitely singing along with the words above my now. After the first line you can hear the sound of someone clapping three times and you can’t help but clap along. I think this adds to the energy of the theme song and shows the quirky-ness of the show “Friends” itself.

This weekend I was bored and I decided that I should watch a new TV show since I had just finished watch the final season of “Parks and Recreation” and all of was doing was watching old episodes of “30 Rock”. So, I started going on the search for a new TV to get addicted to on Netflix. This show ended up being “Gilmore Girls”. After watching a few episodes I realized how much I loved the theme song. Similar to the “Friends” theme song, the “Gilmore Girls” theme song is reflects the relationship of characters in the show. In this instance, the song is about Rory and Lorelai’s mother and daughter relationship and how they will always be there for each other not matter what. It also reflects how Lorelai rain away when she was younger and Rory “ran away” once during the show and how Lorelai doesn’t want Rory to be like her and wants her to be able to talk to her when she’s in trouble or just sad.

Now, whenever I hear a theme song I start to analyze what it means to the show and how the characters or their attitudes are shown. By doing this you can learn more about your favorite TV shows and how their theme song affects the show.

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Why Netflix Original Shows Are The Future

        Over the summer I watched the entire first season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and I don’t feel guilty about it at all. Netflix original shows are the beginning of something new, going much past the modern media.

         While shows on prime time TV have to fight to get certain time slots and could get cancelled based on people in the company no longer seeing the show as profitable, on Netflix there seems to be much more flexibility. On Netflix writers don’t have to worry about being picked up for a certain time or if the certain time slot that may be on at the same time as another popular show that could take away their viewership and lead to their show getting cancelled.

        Netflix shows are also gaining a lot more popularity than shows on regular TV. In the past year all I’ve heard people talk about is Orange is the New Black, a Netflix original show. The way Netflix releases show also makes it a bit easier for people to watch. While regular TV shows release one episode once a week, Netflix releases an entire season at once which allows people to watch when they want to. If they feel like watching three episodes and then stopping for two weeks and then restarting, they can without having to worry about falling behind or missing something important. The only problem with this type of release is people talking about it online and in real life and easily getting spoiled and viewers forgetting what happened in the first season by the time the second season is released.

       Netflix also gives their shows a lot more flexibility than regular TV. When a show is on regular TV it is closely regulated by the channel and criticized by insanely over protective parents who don’t know how to just change the channel if they don’t like what they’re seeing. On Orange is the New Black one of the first few episode show a girl in entire nudity and isn’t blurred out in the slightest. If this were on regular TV that would never back it into the first draft. Shows are able to go beyond the TV-14 rating put in place by an unspoken rule and can make their characters more rebellious and wild and can use worse language.  While The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is not as “out there” as Orange is the New Black it’s basically to be expected. Tina Fey, the writer of the show, wrote for shows like 30 Rock and SNL, where they can be very suggestive, but they can’t actually show or do anything. I see shows in the future pushing the bar and being more progressive than ever before.

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Diversity in Grey's Anatomy

                Continuing my segment of things wrong with Hollywood (and trust me there are a lot of them) I’m going to be talking today specifically about race in the media. Diversity can include many different things, but this blog post is going to be specifically centered on race.

                The first shows that I can think of, and is basically on every single one of my blog posts, that makes an extreme effort to have a wide panel of races in characters is Grey’s Anatomy. While a larger amount of main characters are white, there are still a large amount of minorities on Grey’s Anatomy to the point that critics have said that the show doesn’t reflect the population of Seattle and is much more diverse than any hospital in real life Seattle would be.

                One way that Grey’s Anatomy has diversified TV is through interracial couples. While I never thought much of it when I first started watching I later realized that most TV shows have white characters dating and marrying other white characters and black characters dating and marrying other black characters. On Grey’s Anatomy in the first season Cristina starts dating Dr. Burke and she is Asian (Korean to be more specific)-American and Burke was African American. I never thought about if that much when I saw if, but a lot of other people never wanted them to be together and thought it was a little weird. There have also been many other interracial couples on Grey’s Anatomy; Dr. Webber and Ellis Grey, April and Jackson, Arizona and Callie, and many others that I can’t remember off of the top of my head. Grey’s leads television in the most interracial couples while shows like 30 Rock were still making fun of it and trying to see how the audience would react.

                Another way that Grey’s creates diversity is though children of different race. When Meredith and Derick couldn’t have kids they adopted Zola, an African orphan who was taken to the hospital for a surgery when she was a baby. Arizona and Callie also have a baby that was between Callie and Mark and would therefore make Sofia half white and half Latina and is being raised by a white Mom and a Latina Mom. This show, like Modern Family, show the changes of what family has meant of the years and what a family looks like in modern day America.

                By including more races in the show it leads to a wider audience that can relate to the characters they are seeing on their television. Cristina is one of the only female Asian characters on television at the time period and that other girls could look up to. On NCIS, for example, the character Ziva David, played by Cote de Pablo, not only brought in a large Latin audience because of her actually being Latina and from Chile, she also brought in a large Israeli audience because of the character, Ziva, being from Israel. More diversity=more viewers overall.

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Why is TV So Addicting

***Grey’s Anatomy spoilers***

When you start watching a new show it’s like entering an entirely new universe. New characters, new plots, and thousands of possibilities. It’s also easily possible to get hooked on a show and want to binge watch it for hours on end. But why are TV shows so addicting?

                The first thing I can think of is suspense. This is part of how writers keep you coming back. You need to know if Meredith really dies, or if she ends up with McDreamy, or if Burke really leaves Christina at the altar. Cliffhangers are a great method of doing this. At the end of the season of the last episode, the season finale, a giant mega bomb is usually dropped and then not resolved by the end of the episode so you have to wait until the end of September to see what happens. This helps bring in ratings and explains why season finales and primers are the most viewed episodes. 

                TV shows also begin to feel like a habit to people who regularly watch certain shows. They know that Grey’s Anatomy is on on Thursdays at 7pm. This way people adjust their lives and their daily routines for a TV show without even noticing it. People make sure that they don’t work at a certain time and if they have to go to a kid’s basketball game or party the make sure to DVR the episode or plan to watch it on the app of whatever channel the TV show

               Soon enough you find yourself sitting in class daydreaming about 30 Rock and wondering what will happen on the next episode. Your mind is filled with the theme songs of the shows you watch and the plot twists and secrets that characters are keeping from each other. You begin to wonder if a big, dramatic change will happen in the next episodes and if you’re extremely dedicated to the show you will check gossip blogs, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube to see what other people are saying about your TV show.

                For shows that don’t are not dramas and don’t have regular cliff hangers at the end of each episodes it can be the unique characters that bring you back every week. For example, on Castle (A show I love, but haven’t had time to watch due to school and homework and work.) has a wide variety of characters that are lovable and, in some cases, relatable. My two favorite characters on Castle and obviously Kate Beckett and Castle. I’ve always loved to the friendship and romantic relationship between them and even though every episode ends with them finding the murderer and ending the day with the case closed and no loose ends, people still come back for the next case and so they can watch the relationship between Kate and Castle and the rest of the team.

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What's So Great About Love Triangles?

               I hate love triangles, I always have, always will. They seem to add unnecessary drama and give people the false impression that when they grow up they’re going to have people all over them and they will have to choose out of two people who they want to be with, when its more likely that it will be hard for them to even find one person.

****spoiler alerts for Grey’s Anatomy****

                By season two or three Meredith seemed to be the girl who had it all. Her biggest dilemma was choosing between McDreamy and McVet, two daringly handsome men, one a brain surgeon and the other a veterinarian, who both desperately wanted to be with her. Then she’s chooses McDreamy and live happily ever after… not. Love triangles always lead to the character wondering “what would have happened if I had choose the other person?”. This also lead to people on the Internet choosing teams like team Edward and team Jacob and going crazy over it. They’re ridiculous. 
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Why Do We Love Star-Crossed Lovers?

                Romeo and Juliet, and more recently Hazel and Augustus, literature and movies love to play around with what are known as “star-crossed lovers”. What does that even mean? Star-crossed lovers are basically defined as two people who want to be together, but can’t, because of fate, or family, or disease, or whatever is pushing them apart. We just love them for some odd reason. Why is it?

                I feel like part of the reason people love the idea of star-crossed lovers is because it gives them hope that they can find their “soul mate”, the person that is fated for them. Star-crossed lovers show people this and give them they idea that can find their Romeo or Hazel Grace. People think that just because a few unlucky couples couldn't make it that they will be able to. Sure maybe they’re single now or in a relationship that is just “average” and isn't like what they've seen in the movies or TV shows that they love. A lot of girls what love like Romeo and Juliet (you know, minus all the dying and stuff.), a love that would be worth risking what anyone thought about you so that you could have that wonderful movie love. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you really think about it.) this does not exist.

                When I first read Romeo and Juliet in ninth grade I thought it was the stupidest thing ever. Why would two teenagers ever think that they could be together forever when they had so much life ahead of them? Now, thinking back to when I read The Fault in Our Stars in seventh grade, I thought Hazel and Augustus’s romance was riveting and perfect and that would have been together forever, even though they were also only teenagers. The difference between Romeo and Juliet and Hazel and Augustus is that they were star-crossed by something that couldn't be controlled, cancer. With Romeo and Juliet you can say that they were stupid and ignorant, but you can’t say that about kids with cancer.

                We all the magically excitement of the movies, even when we know it doesn't exist.

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Why Aren't Movies Like Their Books?

                 I’ve been an active reader for as long as I can remember. I grew up reading Junie B. Jones and the Magic Tree House and now I read a variety of genres amongst YA and Adult fiction. The first movie to book adaptation I can remember watching is Charlotte’s Web. For a long time I never knew that it was based off a book and just thought that it was only a movie. When I discovered that it was a book I begged my dad to buy it for me and then never read it… Even though it had been a movie aimed towards little kids I never really got into the book, partly because I knew what was going to happen.

                Since then I have seen many book to movie adaptations and they’ve all been… mostly horrible. There are a few expectations to this that I will talk about later, but for the most part books to movies are very inaccurate. They either completely change the plot, don’t have the same tone as the book, cast actors much older than their character, cast actors of the entirely wrong race, and try to make the movie more “relatable” for those who don’t read and are more interested in social media. These are just a few problems with book to movie adaptations.

                The most well know book to movie ultimate failure is Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. If you say that you like that movie I will probably want to kill you (Along with one of my friends who wrote a list of over 300 things that the movie messed up from the book). This movie both messed up the plot completely and tried to make the movie more relatable. They played Lady Gaga instead of Hilary Duff so they could try to connect with viewers and tried to make that characters act more like twenty years unlike that teenagers they are actually playing. Yes, they had almost thirty years old playing characters in a novel that on the first page states “My name is Percy Jackson and I just turned twelve.” Twelve. This has led to complete hatred for this movie from the book community and is pretty much a joke amongst readers and a fear that their favorite novel with turn into a “Percy Jackson movie” and will completely suck.

                A few books to movies adaptations that earn a gold star from me include the Hunger Games trilogy, The Fault in Our Stars, and Bridge to Terrabethia. The Hunger Games novels had such a large fan base back when they first came out that the directors knew that they couldn’t mess those movies up. They did a great job at casting characters that actually met their book descriptions (In Percy Jackson Annabeth was described as a blonde with gray eyes and was played by a brunette.) The plot of the Hunger Games was almost exactly identical to the novel and has been approved by readers and movie watchers alike. The Fault in Our Stars was also a major book to movie success. Another recent movie that was a breathtaking (anyone see that pun there? No? Ok.) novel that was also very similar to its movie adaptation. Although the movie felt very fast and short compared to the book and left out a side characters and minor scenes it was pretty similar to the movie.   

                So what is the main reason that some movies get so messed up? The writers and directors. People seem to get mad at the authors even though authors sign over all rights to their books at the beginning of the process and have to hope that their novel turns into a good movie. Writer and directors and caster usually try to fit in as much of the novel as they can, but what some readers don’t understand is that even though they would sit through a 10 hour movie with every single line from the book word for word, most normal people would not. They also think that if they are not relatable then people won’t watch it. Directors think that they need to have 20 year olds playing 12 years old or else no one will watch it. There are serious issues in Hollywood.   

  

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