Lovely lovely television

[slemslempike]

I watched an episode of Ruby and the Rockits because it keeps being advertised during Make It Or Break It, and they had a father-daughter dance. Is that something that actually happens in America?? It was INCREDIBLY creepy. It wasn't just a school dance where girls brought their fathers, but a dance where the girls took it in turns to dance soppy formal dances ONE AT A TIME with their fathers in a sort of spotlight while everyone else watched. It was not a good show.

Better Off Ted finished, and I am sad - I love Portia di Rossi, and her management through hairstyle and slapping people and being generally awesome. Ted is less dull than he was, and I love the two scientist guys too. Veridian is so very creepy. Make it or Break it is also finished up (though I have not yet seen the final episode PLEASE DON'T SPOIL ME) and it is some of the most awesome television I've ever seen. I like the relationships between all the girls, it would be nice if they stopped trying to make us like the boys, but whatever happens most of the time there is some brilliant gymnastics going on in the background. Someone's concerned about their personal life, and behind them WHOOSH round the bars and FLIP on the beam and shiny glittery leotards everywhere.

I missed Psych resuming over the summer and now I'm catching up on that, and liking it all even more for the break. They should just leave the whole Shaun/Juliet thing, because it has always been dull and now it is irritating. Lassiter's great, and Cary Elwes was in the first episode! Dread Pirate Roberts is a suave art thief. I am also catching up with Nurse Jackie which I missed the final episodes for. Unfortunately I can't find 7 and 8 for download at the moment so I'm had to skip some. I think Zoe is lovely, with her panda earrings and her childish tops.

I am looking forward to the return of 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory and The New Adventures of Old Christine. I am also really interested in the Seinfeld cast on Curb Your Enthusiasm, though I've not watched the last few series of that. I am less excited about How I Met Your Mother because I think the last two series have had a serious drop in quality, but I'll probably still watch it. A show needs to be very poor indeed before I stop watching it.

I watch Spicks and Specks even though it still infuriates me that they buzz in first and THEN think of the answer. Also The Librarians from Australia, about a weird power-hungry librarian and her long-suffering (and also weird) staff at the library. Jen has been making a list of people from Home and Away and Neighbours who show up in Prisoner [Cell Block H], and Cody showed up in an epsiode of The Librarians! CODY! Mysteriously not dead of an unlikely drive-by drug dealer shooting in a cul-de-sac, but just her same face and voice.

I watched the first episode of The Byrne Ultimatum, a panel quiz show, even though I am not overly enamoured with Jason Byrne. I really liked it! This is despite really rather disliking John Bishop and never having heard of the other panellists, but the silliness of the rounds and the fact that Jason Byrne was in charge and thus not having to desperately interrupt everyone else in order to draw attention to himself more than made up for it. The Panel is coming back too, mysteriously not cancelled after all, though the last series was really not great and suffered from a hignfyish over-reliance on youtube clips.

Peep Show is back. I wasn't overly impressed with the first episode of this series (though it was pleasantly free of jokes about having raped a teenage boy), And In the Thick of It starts again quite soon, so I must watch the specials before that happens. I liked In the Loop an awful lot, and in the next series of ITTOT one of my friends' names will be used on the phone, apparently. I sort of quite like Off the Hook mostly because Jay-from-the-Inbetweeners is not playing the same character which I had imagined he would. I sometimes quite like Rob Brydon on Would I Lie to You and sometimes he is very wearing, but David Mitchell and Lee Mack are good together. Something called Trinity starts tonight and I think it might be just my kind of trash.

What else is going to be coming back? What's new that I don't know about especially in the US? What's oldish that I should find and see?

Comments

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Nope! School dance, where the girls were in short party dresses, aged about 14/15, slow-dancing with their dads while other girls in short party dresses watched. David and Patrick Cassidy are the dad and uncle.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

How weird. I associate that kind of thing solely with very evangelical people and virginity pledges.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I have seen quite a bit of US high school films and TV things, and it seemed very odd to me too. Also, are you allowed to organise events which are only open to girls with dads? What about boys, can they dance with their dads if they want? I mean, surely they can, otherwise it would be suggesting that it was weirdly incestuous for the girls to do it rather than PERFECTLY NORMAL.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I know, what are you supposed to do if you live with your mother and a stepfather (or with an aunt and uncle, which seems to happen a lot more on TV than in real life)? Or with your mother and her female partner? Or if you lost your father in a car accident of much drama in the previous series? Are you allowed to draft in a nonresident uncle or older brother? It seems very confusing and divisive.

Not to mention, as you say, weirdly incestuous. Is it the sort of fandom that is likely to take the incestuous wrongness and run with it?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Actually, Ruby does live with her aunt and uncle, and her uncle was worried about whether her dad would show up at all (she had organised the event as a way of trying to get close to him), and was prepared to step into the breech. Her dad did let her down - at first it seemed like he wasn't going to show at all, and then he arrived with two scantily-clad showgirls in tow to dance for her not with her.

I don't imagine there being much of a fandom - abc family show that is RUBBISH, and already cancelled. Though I shall have a look.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

WTF @ the showgirls. Because the event was already so wholesome before they arrived?

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Er... very evangelical and virginity pledges goes with an undercurrent of paedophile incest?

(I think I'd find the term "evangelical" more acceptable if they paid more attention to the Gospels)

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I think you are putting things together from two different comments there: it was slemslempike, who has seen the show (I haven't, and I don't know whether you have) who mentioned the incestuous undertones.

By 'that sort of thing' I meant father-daughter dances.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

OK, to be clearer: virginity pledges and father-daughter balls remind me of the American evangelical Christian community in particular. I'm basing this on Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready and on Kathryn Joyce's Quiverfull, which mention them as part of that particular end of Christian culture. If I've picked up the wrong impression from these books, I'm willing to be told so.

I do think that purity balls and virginity pledges have some weird though almost certainly unintended overtones: I think that choosing not to be sexually active in one's teens is an entirely valid choice, but I'm a lot iffier about fathers signing pledges on their daughters' behalf, and about peer-pressuring events like The Silver Ring Thing.

I don't have any data whatsoever as to whether actual incest or paedophilia are any more prevalent in Evangelical Christian circles than in the outside world, and I had no intention of implying that they were.

I hope this clears things up.

[orionnebula.livejournal.com]

That kind of father/daughter dance sounds more like something that would have happened in the 50s. I don't know of places that do that now. Though maybe it's tradition... When my mom went to college--in the mid 60s--I know they had a father/daughter weekend.