Kendra Brea Cooper
While the leaves fall, classes start, and the air crisps, television introduces it's new stories for cold nights inside. This year there are recurring themes like procedural dramas and anti-heroes, along with refreshing comedies and captivating reality shows. Television is dabbling in everything from the origins of society to the origins of a superhero.
How to Get Away with Murder plays with praxis when a group of law students have to put theory into action. It's a thriller that takes you into a murder plot with intellectual minds at the core, and heart-stopping twists that will keep you watching.
Forever is the typical procedural drama with a brilliant male character in the lead.The interesting part is not just the characters inexplicable immortality, it is the way he wakes after death or is "reborn" naked in a body of water. It's a very primordial scene.
Comic book characters usually make good T.V. This is because the hero still captivates us. An awkward scientist with a tragic past becomes a super quick hero after an accelerator explodes and he is hit by lightening. While defending the city, the trauma of his mothers murder hangs on tight to the back of his mind.
Like most origin stories, Gotham is dark, edgy, and filled with promises of finding the final piece of the puzzle. Beginnings are what we search for, and this show gives us the birth of Batman and some of his most well recognized villains.
Anthony Anderson plays a dad trying to define himself and his family by searching for cultural identity while living in a mostly white middle class area. It's a warm comedy that has potential in it's set up to actually comment on the intersection of race, class, and cultural definition in the format of a very entertaining sitcom.
The Red Band Society has a group of teens bonding and creating their own community while in the hospital. On the after wave of The Fault in Our Stars, this show will certainly reach viewers. According to critics, it's very well done for an emotional roller coaster.
Selfie is My Fair Lady for the digital age. Eliza Dooley lives her life and self esteem in the online world, where she posts her thoughts as tweets, and life as a string of selfies. Underneath the light-heartedness, it does comment on the blur of the line between the real world and the net world.
The Chair turns the lens back on to two first time directors, Youtube celeb Shane Dawson and film school grad Anna Martemucci, as they take on the same script and budget to create two unique films. What's interesting is how one story is told from two different points of view.
Utopia is a reality show where contestants are left to build a whole new world just outside of L.A. Fifteen people have to self sustain while they organize themselves as a small society on a plot of land that serves as the grounds not only for living, but also for the battle of philosophies. As an experiment, it's missing that real revolutionary drive to create a new world, as a television show, it's likely very entertaining.
Happyland is irony. Underneath the permanent smiles of masked characters, the blinding shine of bright lights, and the excitement-vomit covering the rides, are the complicated lives of those who work at the theme park. It's an other-worldly space where people are looking for magic in all the wrong places.
Pop culture and all that ideology sitting in the blind spot. Also crafts.
