TV - TOWIE

"Oh my God, I'm so jel!! Shuttupppppppp!" We have all heard of 'The Only Way Is Essex' (TOWIE) by now I'm sure. The show is on its fourth series of augmented reality type drama, and it's still going strong. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I have been an avid viewer of TOWIE since the first series when I heard Chris Moyles taking the mick out of one of the girls on the radio (Sam Elizabeth Faiers sounding like she said her name was "Sam Available for Affairs). I have really enjoyed this show for the last couple of years, but I have to say, I think it's going downhill (if that's even possible).

The original cast was fairly small and all seemed to know each other. They all had their dramas and tantrums within a little group, and even though we know it's set up, the plot flowed fairly naturally. Now, the cast has expanded, which isn't necessarily a good thing. The chemistry and personality that the original characters had seems to have been lost, with only two or three of the current characters being ones that started the show. Now we seem to have family members, distant friends and random women all creeping in to jump on the TOWIE bandwagon. Mark Wright's cousin? Harry's boyfriend? Strange girls Kirk met at a petrol station? They've all had their 15 minutes (and sometimes much more) of fame. As a result, the scenarios are much more forced. There are plenty of moments that you know that the characters aren't really friends and wouldn't usually spend time together, but they have been forced together for the good of a juicy story line, and sometimes it just doesn't work.

For example, the new girls Billie and Carla (or maybe it's Cara, I don't actually know as I refuse to view these two as proper characters on the show) suddenly seem to be best friends with everyone. I'm sorry, I know people are always saying "small world" but I can't believe it's that small. Kirk met Billie at a petrol station and he and Joey briefly dated the pair last season. Now they are at Lauren Goodger's girly get togethers, they are Lucy's shoulder to cry on and I believe they were present at Lydia's birthday meal. I suppose this is the problem with this kind of augmented reality; people are brought into the show and forced to become friends with other members of the cast to diversify story lines and get them more screen time.

This leads on neatly to the situations that you can tell the producers know about but just force the characters into, or even set up themselves. To be fair it does make for some brilliant TV at times, like the time that Lauren Pope caught Kirk out on a date and he called her friend Maria an extra, but we should probably remember that these are real people, and these are their lives we're watching fall apart on national television. It just seems a bit cold hearted really. The story lines used to be funny, bitching, quarrelling, yelling, more bitching, but I don't like some of the more recent ones. Lucy and Mario's problems a couple of weeks ago was almost enough to make me stop watching. This probably sounds strange as it is tame compared to most of the stuff in the soaps or even on Jeremy Kyle, but I didn't like the way it was used on the programme.

For those who don't know, Lucy is dating Mario, a ladies man. He loves her but is mad at her because she cheated on him in a drunken one night stand, but they are back together and happy-ish. In the episodes a couple of weeks back, Lucy went to some of the other girls and said to them that she was suspicious becuase Mario wouldn't let her look at his messages. The other girls (in typical TOWIE inflammatory nature) said she was right to be suspicious and that something obviously wasn't right. This is all fine, but then then Lucy was shown alone in Mario's flat (where she doesn't live) deciding whether or not to look at messages on his iPad and then eventually looking at them and bursting into tears. She then goes back to the friends to explain that she had found 50 plus messages to other girls.

My issue is this: surely the producers would have known whether or not these messages were actually there, because if they weren't there wouldn't have been a story line worth pursuing. So I'm thinking either Lucy had already discovered these messages and then had to stage this moment again so it could be filmed, or the producers encouraged Lucy to look at the messages while filming to get the reaction. I think both of these are pretty cruel things to do. From what I can gather, TOWIE have specific filming days, so it's not like they are followed around by cameras waiting to capture something exciting like in documentaries or whatever. So Lucy must have been told to go to Mario's flat and look at his messages. I know that the people in TOWIE get paid to do this and there's the argument that once people have become desperate for fame and let themselves into the public eye in such a way as the cast of the show have done, they should expect stuff like this. I can see the point of this, but I still think it is cruel to film the break up of a real reltionship like this.

To be fair, it could all be completely staged and none of this could of happened, meaning I'm just a loser who reads far too much into what they watch on TV, so in case that is true, I am going to shut up about this now and end by saying that, aside from all that I've rabbited on about, for some reason I still can't tear myself away from this programme, so rant over and I will probably write a post far less caring and intellectually questioning this show soon, and far more along the lines of how much better I think Chloe looks with lighter hair and how much of an idiot Joey Essex is.

Ps, I'm sorry I couldn't be bothered to put any photos into this post, google image searching seems to just come up with tons of pictures of Mark Wright with food in his mouth or Amy Childs getting out of cars, and I don't think we really need to see any of that!!

Emmerdale

Instead of doing dissertation research or perhaps reading about Ginzburg or crime in early modern pubs, I am going to write about Emmerdale.

What I like about Christmas Emmerdale is that there was no unecessary tragedy, violence, death or depression to dampen our day... All of that came a few weeks ago with Cain's attack and is now just a standard underlying theme.

So the main event in the village is the revelation that Zack was Cain's attacker... dun dun duuuunnnnn!! If I'm honest, I'd kinda guessed; he was the only one with motive who wasn't being fixated on, and it's always the one that no one expects. There was a nice little emotional exchange between the father and son which invoked two seperate emotions within me.... The first was wonder at Zack's accent. Let's be honest, he's a character with few words so suddenly hearing him speak for over thirty seconds solid made me notice his accent. Is it real? Does the actor who plays him actually come from somewhere up Nawth? Either that or this man is a genius......

The second thing I felt (after my wonder had subsided) was that I actually felt a bit sorry for Cain. This episode was very well written so that it made us do that, and it also threw up interested questions when Zack kept saying stuff like 'I'm your father, I had to be the one to stop you.' But then we probably shouldn't read too much into Emmerdale, I should probably write more stuff about how with a hat on Cain actually looks passably attractive.

Other Emmerdalian developments: Debbie and Andy. This whole thing just makes me go 'ew'. It's always only mentioned in passing as well, so it's a bit like everyone is kind of thinking 'this is pretty strange, if we need to have a story line on it let's just skim over it'. They've moved now from turkey baster type arrangements to actually having sex to attempt to conceive another kid. Debbie doesn't seem pleased (but then when is she pleased about anything?) and gets some wine to get things on the move. I read in the TV mag that next week Andy starts to have feelings for her.... Urgh here we go...

Just to end with another gross story line, Laurel and Ashley making out in Leeds followed by her whispering to him 'I'm just going to nip into a rather interesting lingerie shop..' Seriously woman, get back to Marlon!!

Soaps

And now for something not quite so Christmassy and festive... Soaps. Actually, when I say 'soaps', I really just mean one 'soap', Emmerdale (wow, now I've written it too much and the word soap has totally lost all meaning..). I used to watch them all, Corrie, Eastenders, Neighbours etc., but I had to give up my soap addiction when I went to uni in favour of actually having a life. I'm back into Emmerdale again at the fault of my mother, who has recently become addicted to it, despite it previously being my least favourite in this genre, but it seems to be quite good entertainment at the moment, so I'm sticking with it for now!

The current shocker is that village 'ard man Cain Dingle has been done in with a blunt object. Of course, as always in soap-land, there were weeks of tensions leading up to this moment, leaving us with a whodunnit worthy of a murder mystery series, or at least a game of Cluedo. So we have the possible attempted murderers all walking around looking shifty; Charity, Jai, Moira, John, Amy and probably half of the rest of the village as well. I can't decide who I think is the culprit, and I'm hoping they won't drag it out as long as they did 'who shot Phil Mitchell' in Eastenders back in the day.

I've decided who I definitely don't think it is, and that's John. Speaking of John though, is it just me or is it looking like he is more and more stoned each day? I don't think the guy who plays him deserves an Oscar any time soon, unless moody, wooden, out of it and slightly constipated was the look he was going for with this character.

But anyway, bashing the acting skills of people in soaps is always easy, so let's move on from that and back to the 'gripping' story line. It would all be so much easier to follow if it wasn't for the fact that most of the characters are at least a little bit interbred. Seriously, what is going on with the Dingles? Somehow, Chas is Cain's sister despite them seemingly not having the same parents; Cain and Charity are cousins but also have a daughter together; Zak and Lisa have a child that is basically the same age as Cain's grandaughter and now Cain has another daughter than is younger than his grandaughter... And then Marlon is thrown in as a cousin as well, along with people like Sam and god knows who else. I'm sure if I had watched Emmerdale loyally for all of my 20 years it would be a bit clearer to me, but as I've been watching for approximately two weeks, it's gone a bit over my head really.

The other mystery worth talking about in the village is why so many people agree to get into bed with Cain. Maybe it's the 'ard man vibe but out of all the unrealistic things that go down in Emmerdale, I find this one the hardest to believe. Mind you, Moira had to put up with John the constipated broom, so I'm not surprised she fled into the arms of someone with a bit more personality and a bit less 'urgggggh'.

First TV Chatterings

I've attempted to blog several times before and usually I write a couple of eager posts and then get fed up, leaving a trail of half-hearted attempts across the internet (at this point, who's to say it won't happen again with this blog? Hopefully not...) So, I've decided if I really want to keep myself, let alone anyone else, interested I need to write about something I enjoy doing and am interested in, and sad as it may sound, TV and films tick this box rather nicely! 

I'm aiming not to really review programmes, but more to comment on them really. It will probably seem like I'm pretty one-sided; there really aren't going to be many heavily negative comments, cos who watches a TV shows that they think is rubbish for more than about 15 minutes before flicking over to a Friends re-run or the Simpsons or something? There will be some current stuff, but as a university student who relies on iPlayer, 4od and the like, as well as re-runs and new discoveries of old American comedies, there may be a few blasts from the past too!