16 & Pregnant - Season 2

The stories that made up the second season of 16 and Pregnant didn't capture me in the same way the select few season one episode I saw did. Nor did they engage me in the manner that the excellent Teen Mom spin-off did. I'm not completely sure on this, but the concept of this series seemed designed to only run for one or two seasons. The stories told this go round are just too similar to one another and to the stories from last year. Every girl here is either a stupid spoiled brat who thinks that having a baby will not change their lives in the slightest (which makes their struggling with their babies all the more satisfying) or the girls have extremely douchebaggy boyfriends/baby fathers. In most cases the girls seem to be a combination of the two types.

One of the few interesting twists on the formula, was with a girl who was impregnated by her rebound boyfriend and really wanted to get back together with her first boyfriend. But it turns out that her old boyfriend is the douchebag type that most of these girls end up with and the boyfriend she's trying to ditch is the perfect idealistic one that most teenage boys should aspire to be. Its a shame that the rest of the stories couldn't live up to that one. I also can't help but shake this disturbing feeling that some of these girls got pregnant for the sole purpose of being on this show. It's a creepy thought, but some teens now-a-days are dumb enough to do something like that. Anyway, there's been rumors that a second season of Teen Mom is one the way, but it hasn't been noted if its going to follow the same girls from the first season or follow the girls introduced in this show. I hope its the former, cause most of these girls, as was the season as a whole, are just not that interesting to follow up on.

The Real World: D.C.

Well...I really don't know what to make of this. After the mediocrity of The Real World's Cancun season, I mentioned that I was actually excited for to see the show go to Washington DC, as it might allow for the cast to engage in some intelligent conversions in between all the boozing and drama. That's kinda what I got, but what I didn't expect was for all of it to be so boring. This may have more to do the fact that the cast itself was pretty dull. Almost all of them were either musicians, artists, or trying to get into the political scene. Now this wouldn't have so bad if there had been a bit more diversity among the cast's interests, but to have 2 to 3 cast members sharing the same goals, made for some pretty repetitive storylines. Its not even worth going into detail on each cast member except for Andrew, who was just weird and quirky and always kept things from getting boring. Mike's coming out to his family story was kinda sweet and some of the strives he takes to become more accepting of his bi-sexuality is pretty engaging. And I guess Ty is worth a mention...for being the most unlikeable twat to appear on the show in a while.

While the political angle of the show was a lot less appealing than I assumed it would be, it was even more disappointing to see that the drama that the show survives on wasn't that appealing. There was a war between "wound too tight" Emily and dumbass Ty that pretty much owned the show for the first couple of episodes, but that didn't really go anywhere and most of the conflict in that war came from Ty's blatant retardation. Even the season's most advertised moment, where Andrew suffers major injury (at the hands of Ty's retardation), went no where and the fact that nothing resulted from it after the episode wasn't much help either. Oh well the season was kinda watchable, at least it was better than the Cancun season, but it still can't measure up to the wonders of the Brooklyn season. I guess I'll never see a recent season as good that one again.

Teen Mom - Season 1

One show I enjoyed last year was MTV's 16 and Pregnant, a documentary series that followed the lives of several girls who were...well, sixteen and pregnant. Despite not being in the target gender demographic, I was intrigued by the hardships that the girls were going through and was shocked that MTV didn't try to sugarcoat any of it and instead offered the cold hard truth about teenage pregnancies. Teen Mom is the follow-up series, focus on who I assume were the four most popular girls: Maci, Amber, Catelynn and Farrah. The series gives us a continued look into the lives of these now-teen parents and the events are narrated by each girl first hand as they must balance their personal life while taking care of their new baby.

Out the four girls, the most interesting one is Catelynn, who gave her baby up for adoption. At first I wasn't too invested in her and her boyfriend Tyler because they didn't have a child with them. But how the adoption effects them is truly an engaging story. This was clearly a difficult choice for them, and they are very supportive of each other as they deal with the pain of not having their baby in their lives. Their parents are not as supportive as Tyler’s dad refuses to forgive his son for putting Carly up for adoption and the same goes for Catelynn's mom. Maci and Amber are similar girls as their stories largely deal with the stress that their boyfriends give them and the difficulties that they have trying to continue their education. Both girls try to work things out with their boyfriends for the sake of their children with varying results. Farrah is, without a doubt, the worst of the girls. She's the only one of the group that doesn't have a significant other and as a result spends most of her time dating and trying to keep her social life exactly the same as was before she got pregnant. Her mother is overbearing as hell, but she basically has put of with a spoiled brat as she dumps her child on her to go out with her friends. Farrah does get her priorities straight by the end of her story, but its quite an annoying tale to watch.

Like 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom doesn’t sugar-coat the reality of being a mother. It shows each girl rising to the challenge of having to grow up before they are ready, and there were some cringe-worthy moments that demonstrated certain levels of immaturity...mostly coming from Farrah. The show's never pretty, it’s just an intriguing look into the life of four teenage girls, who will have to learn to take care of a new baby. The seemingly genuine stories and situations make for a both captivating and entertaining look into life-after teenage pregnancy. 16 and Pregnant is coming back for a second season and it looks be just as captivating as this was.

Best Shows Of 2009

Its that time of the year where people talk about what their favorite shows, movies, etc were this past year. I decided to do the same. I don't watch a lot of the most popular television series because they don't interest me, so most of my picks are based more on my own personal interests than what everyone else is watching. Shows qualify by having a season that ended during the year of 2009 and at least one of my picks are of a show I haven't talked about yet. But first...

Notable Exception

Futurama (Comedy Central/Direct to DVD)

The direct to dvd features of Futurama are officially considered the fifth season of the show. Each movie is divided up into four parts and aired on Comedy Central which ran from roughly mid 2008 to late this year (the dvds were released late 2007 to early this year). As a whole the movies never reached the peak of excellent that the series did, but they're still at least 3 times better than most of what's on TV now-a-days. Their exclusion from this list is largely do to the fact that despite airing on television, these films count more as dvd releases then television premieres (if that makes sense).

Best Television Shows of 2009

5. The Real World: Brooklyn (MTV)

Yeah...you know I haven't watched a lot of television shows when The Real World manages to make it on a best of list. The Brooklyn season managed to do everything that the series has failed to do in the past decade: Interesting cast members with interesting stories to tell and people who could make valid arguments without being intoxicated. There were still a lot of those trivial fights over dumb crap but it was actually really entertaining. The show proved that reality shows can still have conflict but have enough brains to respect each other and remain great television...it's a shame that the Cancun season couldn't follow suit.

4. Glee (FOX)

The season's not over due to Fox extending the season, but it's clear that what has already aired was supposed to be a contained season. I'm not as big of a fan of the show as the self proclaimed "Gleeks", but it's still a very good comedy/drama with a great cast, music, and production values. I can't tell where the story is going to go when the season concludes in April, but as far as being a well put together program, it succeeds.

3. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)

As I stated before, Sunny's fifth season didn't reach the peak of genius that's come before, but the show is still pretty funny every week. I guess they're just running out of sensitive topics to make fun of, but I'm glad that the writers have at least been trying to come up with new ideas for the cast the work with. Despite all that, this show still made me laugh out loud.

2. The Whitest Kids U'Know (IFC)

Much like Sunny, the Whitest Kids 09 season wasn't as fresh as the previous years, but it was still a lot of fun to watch. The new shorter running time of the episodes allowed the show to run the same amount of content in a longer time period. Something I love about the show that other skecth comedy shows don't do very well is the ending of the skits. The cast often find a good punchline to end things on, and when they don't they're not afraid to just let a bit end or completely turn it on its head to finish it. A fourth season is coming and I can't wait.

1. Dexter (Showtime)

I haven't talked about Dexter on this site yet and I haven't talked about it's newest season because I wanted to talk about the first three beforehand. Just know that the fourth season of Dexter is extremely strong and the storyline reaches an extremely tense conclusion. The cast really up their game, Julie Carpenter in particular, and there are moments in the season that rank among the most emotionally affecting things I've seen on television in a long time. The season seems to indicate the series is finally setting things up for the show's grand finale and I eagerly await more greatness.

The Real World: Cancun (Review)

MTV didn’t give anyone time to recuperate after the end of Real World: Brooklyn, giving us a new season only two months later. The Brooklyn season sort of returned to the more respectful Real World of old with legitimately interesting people learning from each other even when they were fighting about something stupid. I expressed concerns that Real World: Cancun would undo all of that and go right back to the sleazy, moron-fest it’s been for the last decade and, for the most part, I was right. None of the cast members this season had any interesting stories to tell or even showed something resembling common sense and every episode showed them going to clubs getting drunk, hooking up and getting into arguments.

However, The Real World is nothing without drama and Cancun was actually decent for a little while because there was near constant confrontations. There’s an engaging and intense feud between the house bitch Ayiia and punk rocker Joey that becomes increasingly severe as each episode goes by. Unfortunately, Joey winds up getting kicked out of the house for an unrelated incident and since Joey was one of two people in the house worth watching, most of the entertainment of the show went with him while Ayiia proceeded to do nothing for the rest of the show. After the Joey/Ayiia arc, the season drags on with a love triangle story between token black girl Jasmine, morally weak-minded, two-timer Jonna and co-worker Pat. It was fun to watch for maybe one or two episodes, but it stretched on and on and on for far too many episodes with little to no fireworks exploding. It became redundant and mind-numbing to watch after so long and showed how unlikable most of the women on the show were. With the slight exception of the underused Emilee, the women in this season were without morals. They slipped into bed with anyone, betrayed anyone for no apparent reason and then cried because they got called on it.

The best cast member without a doubt was crazy party boy Bronne. He mostly stayed out of the drama and just did his own thing which was playing jokes and just goofing around. Once again, all good things come to an end when Bronne gets kicked out of the house (he’s was still on the show, he just had to find a new place to stay) and any source of humor the show had leaves with him as he’s barely featured after that. The other two male cast members were CJ and token gay guy Derek, but they don’t do anything of actual intrest…well CJ gets to tryout for the NFL but it’s plays out rather irritatingly. All in all, The Real World: Cancun returned the series to it’s predictable trite. The season started of kinda promisingly and then faltered with stupid plots that lingered into the last couple of shows. If it wasn’t for incredible Bronne, intriguing Joey, and the temporarily interesting drama, Cancun would have been garbage. The next season is set to be in Washington D.C so maybe there’s some hope for it to good, but I wouldn’t hold my breathe.

Jackass 2.5 (Review)

Jackass 2.5 is nothing more than a glorified dvd bonus feature that was released straight to dvd exactly one year after Jackass Number Two’s dvd release. The film is comprised of deleted material from the second film with interviews from the cast interspersed throughout making the feature a bit more like a documentary than the usual compilation of stunt footage, but thankfully the guys are pretty interesting to listen to. There was two movies worth of segments filmed for Jackass Number Two, and about 90% of the unused bits ended up on the extra features sections of that movie’s dvd. Almost all of that footage was as funny and well done as the footage that made it in the film, but most of what is shown in Jackass 2.5 are failed stunts or stuff that wasn’t noteworthy to begin with. There’s some pretty good stunts here like Bam’s ass kite, the obstacle course race and the gang riding mini bikes through a grocery store, but most of the stuff here is fairly mediocre and forgettable and of course Dave England has to keep taking a shit on camera much to the disgust of everyone. I thought Jackass 2.5 was pretty good. It’s not as incredible of a comedy outing as its theatrical counterparts, but there is enough funny material in the film's brief run-time to give it a look.

Jackass Number Two (Review)

Jackass: The Movie was intended to be the finale of the Jackass series. Afterwards Bam Margera and his crew went on to star in their own spin-off series, Viva La Bam, while Chris Pontius and Steve-o did a spin-off of their own called Wildboyz. Several years later, both shows ran their course and Jackass headman Johnny Knoxville decided on a whim to reunite the crew and do another movie. Jackass Number Two progresses exactly the same as the first movie in that it’s comprised of a series of stunts and pranks with no plot. Everything about this second feature is bigger and better than the first, from the stunts and jokes and even the technical quality of the film itself.

The TV series and initial film featured a lot of the guys pulling pranks on the unsuspecting public, but since then the cast has become more recognizable so almost all of the segments here are the guys inflicting punishment on each other. The only time the public gets involved is when Johnny and one other guy don prosthetics and poses as old people. These bits start off funny but get a bit repetitive each time they pop up. The stunts preformed this time around are just hilarious from the guys having a medicine ball fight in the dark, Bam Margera getting several things put on or up his ass, Johnny trying to catch an anaconda in ball pit, or the really bizarre song and dance finale. The only real bad skit is watching Dave England take a shit…again…its just not funny. That bit aside, I can’t find anything remotely bad about the film. It’s not high art, but I’m up for a Jackass 3 if they ever make it.

Jackass: The Movie (Review)

Every teenage boy has one. That R-rated movie that they're too young to see and no matter how much you beg and plead, your parents just won't allow you to see it. Jackass: The Movie was my one. I was a big fan of the Jackass television show and I was 14 when the series hit the big screen and I kept holding out hope that my parents would let me see it, but to no avail. I finally bought the dvd about 2 years later and found it to be well worth the wait. For the uninitiated, Jackass was a popular MTV show that ran for about 3 years. Johnny Knoxville and his group of frat boy-esque friends performed various dangerous, disgusting, and hilarious stunts or pranks. The show faced the expected controversy of having brain-dead teenagers attempt the stunts that show warns people not to try, but it wasn't enough to stop Jackass from becoming one of the MTV's most popular shows.

Jackass makes the transition to the big screen flawlessly, this is largely because the show was nothing more than a bunch of random segments and the movie is just as much. Just like the show there is no plot or no script, it's all just pure idiocy at its best. With the exception of the opening and closing credit sequence, the actual technical quality of the film is only a slight fraction better than show, at best. The only real difference is that since the film isn't confined by rules of television, the cast knew they could get away with doing stunts they could never do on the show. So, we get a couple of stunts that are more dangerous and crude than usual, like Johnny trying rocket roller skates, Steve-o and Chris Pontius firing fireworks from their anus and groin respectively, and Bam Margera trying to get his mom to say fuck in addition to plenty of unblurred male ass running about. This crew of pranksters just keep on dreaming up more elaborate ways to punish themselves and it just gets funnier as the film goes along. Some of the stunts are a little too much like the paper cut bit or the incredibly unneeded segment were Dave England poops in a department store display toilet, but the good bits far out weigh the bad. The end result is a collection of some of the best physical comedy available. It's not smart, it's not witty, it's just solid entertainment.

The Real World: Brooklyn (Review)

I started watching the Real World during their 11th year: the Chicago season. After that came Real World: Las Vegas, the infamous season where the show stopped being about 7 people learning from each other while dealing with personal issues and forever became a show about 7 spoiled brats getting a 3 month vacation to get drunk every night and bitch about nothing. I was about 14 or 15 when Las Vegas aired and even then I knew it was terrible and stopped regularly watching after the following year: the Paris season. Somehow the show has managed to survive for another 10 seasons bringing us to The Real World: Brooklyn, the 21st season. I must say it's the best season in over a decade.

This season was much more like the original 10 seasons, when it wasn't about drinking and partying, it was about the individual people and their stories. It didn't seem like there were as many drunken nights, it was a much more intellectual show than it has been in the past. People said their views sober, which was a refreshing change. The focus on the relationships and individuals' stories were really compelling. Seeing Ryan get called back into service, having Katelynn talk about her struggles as a recently transgendered woman, having Sarah receive a phone call from her abusive dad, those were all spectacular moments. The only thing that I really couldn't stand was the episode that was nothing more than promo for Mtv's Pedro movie.

My favorite 2 cast members were Ryan and Chet (The 2 guys on the far right in the above pic). Ryan seemed like alot of the people I hang out with: goofy, funny and he'll always defend you. I felt so bad for him when he got called back into service. You could tell he's really hurt and upset that he may be going back to Iraq, but without hesitation, Ryan stood up to the plate. and I love him for it. Chet was the closest to my personality (although a lot more metrosexual) and his goals in life were fairly close to my own. I personally don't think Chet is gay--but I do think that he loves Ryan. Not in just a friend way either. He seems to care a lot about him.

My least favorite was Katelynn, who bitched and moaned her way through the series. She started off as this strong willed person who had an engaging story to tell, but instead she acted like a 12 year teenager. Her gambling with the money Scott gave her to pay her bills really annoyed me. She just became a slag as each episode progressed and I'd like to know in her mind how she justifies some of her actions. Scott went from my least favorite person to becoming a really respectable man; giving Katelynn $1500 pretty much proved that. I mean at first he seemed like a your regular model, macho and brain dead, but he quickly showed that he had the most caring and selfless personality out of the whole cast.

Sarah and Devyn weren't that interesting for me to comment on, while J.D was exactly as I pegged him: a nice guy, but a real asshole sometimes. I did really feel for him in the last episode where the girls make him take the blame for a joke even when he started to cry. I was so glad the guys stood up for him. Finally there was Baya, the wannabe dancer that the show didn't give give a crap about. I guess the increase in cast members from 7 to 8 was too much for the producers to handle.

Overall I was truly surprised by the Real World Brooklyn. It managed to be the complete opposite of every horrible thing the show has stood for in the past 10 years. Sure, there were still a lot of those trivial pranks and fights but it wasn't even that mean-spirited and was actually really entertaining. A cast like Brooklyn that can have conflict but still have enough brains to respect each other can still be good television. I wish the producers would keep this kind of quality up, but the next season is set to take place in Cancun, so I don't have my hopes up. But at least The Real World: Brooklyn was a return to the classic.