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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Why I Hate Horror Movies

           When is a time when people voluntarily put themselves in a terrified state just for the “fun” and the “adrenaline rush” (whatever that means)? Roller coasters, jumping on and out of things, and horror movies. We’re going to stick with the worst one today: horror movies.

            Ever since I was little I’ve hated any types of scary movies. It took be until I was 12 to even be able to fully watch and enjoy the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (Yes, I know they are not horror, but to a five or six year old they are terrifying even though they are Disney) and 15 to watch my first horror movie. Since I was the older sibling I never had any sibling pressure to watch horror movies until I was 15 and my sister was 13. Then she began her horror movie phase and wanted to watch dozens of horror movies with her. It didn’t go so well.

            Part of what I hate so much about horror movies is that they aren’t very realistic and ninety percent of the time they end with the little kid being the murderer. What? I would hope that people in real life and much smarter than the people in horror movies. These people think that they are invincible and they can do whatever they please. It has always been hard for me to take people in horror movies seriously based on their actions.

            Also, there is a lot more gore than there is in real life. In real life if you accidentally cut yourself with a kitchen knife you would clean it and possibly need a few stitches, while in a horror movie you would be gushing blood and leave a trail along the ground that the murderer follows. Its insane.

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