JPTV: What I'm Watching Tonight
MTV
It's Laguna Beach. But no Laguna. And a different Beach. Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County, debuting tonight on MTV, moves the Laguna Beach formula up the coast. The original Laguna, of course, also gave us The Hills, whose third season debut--which I still have to catch up on--drew around three and a half million viewers, a massive audience for MTV. It also developed a new vocabulary for docu-soap storytelling, combining a scripted-drama production style (musical cues, story editing) with lush cinematography and a dry, verite approach to the falling together and falling apart of teen relationships. (Update: You can preview Newport Harbor here, if you do not, like me, use a computer that will explode upon trying to view MTV online video.)
The makers of Laguna Beach, by the way, are also producing one of my most-anticipated fall shows, Fox's Nashville, which applies the LB technique to aspiring country stars. (It's still in production, and Fox hasn't yet sent a screener, but a preview reel at the upfronts in May looked pretty gorgeous.) They took the same approach a couple years ago to Rollergirls, A&E's series about roller-derby queens, which remains one of my favorite reality series ever. I'm hoping they can make country music sing.
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1
i watch these shows and i think "whats wrong with the world", that for these kids the most drama in their lives comes from who is dating who and hooking up with who. it sickens me. and yet...i still watch these shows...
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2
As someone with a few friends who love these shows, I would like to see some kind of critical analysis of this seemingly next step of reality tv.
We can all see the fabricated qualities of reality tv (the floodlights and camera men huddled around the "intimate" dinner date), but these shows seem to take it to another level. Is it just the high quality movie style cameras? The glossy production values? I don't think that the "characters" on the Hills are reading from a script, but some of the situations definitely seem fabricated. Has anything been said about this? I haven't seen much about it, but it is just hard to believe that these shows are real.
Maybe it is just that the line between "fake reality tv" and "actual reality tv" has just been blurred that much.
Any thoughts?
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3
Great, a new crop of stupid, spoiled whores for America's young women to look up to. These kids live in a fantasy land where nobody has to work, appearance is the only character trait that matters, Dane Cook is considered funny and anybody who reads a book must be some kind of fag. Between the complete destruction of popular music and the "reality" TV craze, MTV has done more to contribute to the dumbassification of American than even George W. Bush. If the 3 million teenagers who watched The Hills instead watched the last season of The Wire, maybe they'd realize there are people in America who actually have real problems, and they're going to get worse before they get better.
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4
I watched it last night just to see what was going on, had no idea there was no more "Laguna." I didn't really keep up with that one either. However, this show killed my brain cells and I lost 20 minutes of my life I can never get back.
MTV could have at least changed up the song and chosen a name that didn't have to sound familiar to Kristin.."Chrissy." Still trying to understand how she got a TV show if her parents are so strict..way to sell your kids to the media.
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 5 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 6 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 7 hours ago
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