game changers

The first couple seasons for a show are critical.  You are constantly wondering if they will get picked up for a second or third season.  There is something that I like to call the “game changer” that solidifies a show as one that will be around for the long haul.  These so called game changers are those shocking, dramatic and downright fantastic episodes that leave viewers with their jaw dropped.  Although some of these shows are full of game changing moments and plot lines, these game changers were the episodes and moments that I go back and re-watch.  I can remember exactly where I was when I watched the episode and that was when they went from being just a show I watched to being a show that I couldn’t stop watching.

photo courtesy of google images

One Tree Hill is one of the few shows that I started watching from the very beginning.  It started when I was in high school so there was an obvious connection to this teen drama.  Although I didn’t go to a school like Tree Hill or have those kinds of high school experiences the characters were very relatable and I was hooked from the start.  The show was full of ups and downs with friends, lovers, school, sports and families.  For me the game changing episode for this series was called, “"With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept" and it was in season 3.  For fans of the show this is the school shooting episode.  Not only was this episode emotionally driven as our favorite characters were either being held up with a gun or bleeding out in the library, but that episode ended with a bang. Literally. The last moments of this episode turned tree hill upside down and changed the whole series forever. The episode ends with Dan picking up Jimmy Edward’s gun and shooting his brother Keith square in the chest.  Tree hill was never the same and the show wasn’t either.



photo courtesy of google images

Grey’s Anatomy has always been one of my favorite shows.  I used to watch ER with my mom growing up so Grey’s became my doctor show.  Grey’s has had a lot of game changing moments starting right from the start.  Season one, which was only 9 episodes, ended with the reveal of Addison Montgomery, “And you must be the woman that is screwing my husband”.  After that cliffhanger, audiences were bound to tune back in for season 2. Now for those of you who haven’t watched from the beginning Grey’s Anatomy originally aired on Sunday nights with desperate housewives. Shocking, I know, that there was a time when Grey’s didn’t consume your whole Thursday night.  The game changing episode that I am talking about is the bomb episode.  It was a two hour special episode that came on after the super bowl.  It was the highest rated episode of season two.  The two part episode started with a man coming in with an un-exploded bomb in his chest on being held together by a timid paramedic. Code Black.  The hospital is put on lock down as most everyone does the best to stay away from the bomb, including the paramedic, Hannah, who does not want to die.  The first part ends with Hannah running away and Meredith replacing her by putting her hand on the bomb. Along with being two hours of constant suspense and emotion, this episode was a turning point in the MerDer relationship. This episode highlighted the incredible writing skills and mind of creator Shonda Rimes and really showed audiences what a medical drama could be.  If this captivating episode was foreshadowing for seasons to come, I know why I kept watching.

Every show has game changing moments that keep audiences watching and those were just some of my personal favorites, comment below and let me know some of yours!

debriefing a-day

I am changing things up in this week's blog post!  Today's blog post comes in the form of a podcast!  If you have yet to watch last week's Pretty Little Liars don't click on the podcast below because I am diving into the season two finale while I try to wait until June 5th when it returns for season three! This is my first podcast so let me know what you think!!

spoiler alert podcast

Theme music credit: I'll Be There For You by The Rembrandts
Podcast infomation: abcfamily.com, entertainmentweekly.com

guessing game

As you can probably tell I watch a variety of different television shows.  I mostly like fiction shows, specifically comedies, but I do watch some reality shows. However, there is a new genre that two of my favorite shows have really taken on.  These shows are very different but they both put a high emphasis on the mystery of the endgame.  The endgame for a television show is how everything will end up at the end of the show.  The two shows have you constantly questioning every episode, every character, even every moment. Although they are two very different shows, they both keep audiences on the edge of their seat dying to have all their questions answered and to finally be in on the big secret.

First off, there is How I Met Your Mother. The title pretty much leads right into the question that viewers are dying to know, who is the mother?  How I Met Your Mother is currently in its seventh season and you find yourself wondering how much longer this can go on!  Although I find myself plagued with intrigue at who the mother is and when we will meet her or find out who she is, the show keeps audiences interested with hilarious plot lines and random yet strategic clues in many episodes.  In seven seasons we have come to learn a lot of this so called “mother” but we are still interested in all the other characters and the part they play in this long winded story.  The basis of the whole show is the story being told by the main character, Ted Mosby, to his kids about how he met their mother.  The writers and producers use this narrator technique to slip in clues  from time to time while telling the story of the current episode.  They introduce clips of future events yet use coy phrases like, “but more on that later” to keep audiences guessing.  As I’ve said before I believe that this sitcom's ensemble cast and outstanding comedy writing puts this show at the top of my list of favorites.  I don’t think I’ll be able to stop watching until I find out who the freaking mother is…. but more on that later.

The second show that keeps me coming back each week is a bit of shock because it’s an ABC family show.  ABC family was originally most well-known for the overly dramatic and slightly weird teen soap opera, Secret Life of an American Teenager. But once the show Pretty Little Liars began it was an instant hit among audiences.  For those of you who haven’t seen this past Monday’s season 2 finale I won’t be giving away any spoilers but you definitely should go watch now!  Pretty Little Liars is centered around 4 best friends whose other friend Alison went missing and eventually was found dead.  The girls are being constantly tortured by a character that goes by “A” who is seemingly all knowing and loves to threaten, blackmail, and mess with the girls.  This is where the mystery comes in.  Over the past two seasons, theories have been running rampant among viewers who are dying to know who the elusive “A” is.  Pretty Little Liars was originally a book series but as we’ve seen with Gossip Girl, television shows don’t allows stay on the same path as the books.  Pretty Little Liars ends each show with a short clip of A sneaking around and doing something that will likely come back to bite the 4 main characters.  Even in this week's finale, when audiences found out who “A” is, there are still so many questions to be answered that it still left viewers wondering.  Pretty Little Liars does an amazing job of keeping audiences interested in the plot and making us questions every move.

If you aren’t watching these shows you should be.  They both make TV show watching an engaging and interactive activity because you can create theories and answers to the questions that confuse you.  These shows keep audiences interested by making us think and guess and hang on to every last word because it might be a clue.


photos courtesy of google.com