TV Studies 2024

by Kate Ward

As my Hulu password recently ran out, I’ve recently been pursuing the “watch again” section of the other streaming services I’m stealing my brother’s passwords to. Scrolling back far enough, I spotted Freeform/ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars, a teen drama about four high-school girls being stalked and harassed by the elusive “A” (later “AD” or “A Team” or “Red Coat”, this show had to create a lot of new villains). Every episode, they get a text message from “A” blackmailing them or leading them into hazardous situations. 

As I began to rewatch the show, I couldn’t help but think about the piece we read on Gossip Girl and transmedia TV. I think Pretty Little Liars would also have been a great candidate for a case study in this method. 

Like Gossip Girl, PLL relies on the audience wanting to be like the main four girls. Would the audience ever want to be in a remotely similar situation to any of them? I can’t imagine. But while they are experiencing their psychological torture, they are fashionable, wealthy, and adored by their hot partners. The audience can’t help but want to be like them. This is where the marketing comes in.

While watching a season three episode, I noticed a long pan over a beautiful organized display of Tresemmé dry shampoo. “Wow, this is obnoxious”, I thought to myself. Then, one main character told another, “Try this Tresemmé dry shampoo, it’ll fix that oil”. What I probably would have just rolled my eyes at in the past, I begin to think a little more deeply about. If I were to have watched this episode when I was younger (which I did not because 1) my mom wouldn’t let me and 2) it seemed scary), I would’ve run to a local CVS to pick up this product if it meant I could look like Hannah. I find this thought sad and also a little insidious. 

It’s not hard to find media that pushes products onto young, impressionable and insecure girls sad, but I think I’m opening my eyes to places I didn’t even realize it was being done. In a way, maybe I’m healing my inner child. It’s nice to know that maybe I didn’t need to buy the right dry shampoo to look like a PLL girl, they were just 35 playing 15 year olds.

A few days ago The New Yorker published a piece by Emily Nussbaum detailing various lawsuits and allegations from former Love is Blind cast members accusing Kinetic Content, the show’s production company, of mistreatment. I’ve watched the show since it was first released four years ago and knew there had been various controversies and that some former cast members had started a nonprofit advocating for labor rights and mental health support for reality TV stars. Most of the examples of mistreatment in the article struck me as standard practice in reality TV production. The isolation, the emotional manipulation, the constant supply of alcohol, the lack of regard for mental health issues—it’s all unethical but not surprising. The article wasn’t revelatory or groundbreaking, but it makes me wonder whether discourse surrounding the ethics of reality TV has changed significantly and if so, whether industry practices will meaningfully change. 

It feels weird to think of reality TV stars as victims because they voluntarily sign up for their roles and they gain social media followings and brand endorsements. But Nussbaum outlines how former Love is Blind cast members have made a case for themselves as exploited and underpaid workers (because appearing on a reality show isn’t typically understood as labor, reality TV stars are often unpaid or paid under minimum wage, which is part of why reality TV is so cheap to produce). I’m not sure Love is Blind’s treatment of cast members differs much from that of other shows now or in the 75 years the genre has been around, but I think the traction these claims have gained partially results from the dissonance between the show’s marketing and cast members allegations. Netflix advertises Love is Blind as an alternative both to the shallowness of online dating and the trashy reality dating shows that saturate the market. It is framed in pseudoscientific terms as a social experiment and exercise in looking past superficial distractions and social barriers to build romantic connections. So despite the show resembling other reality TV in most regards, the language used by the hosts and Netflix to sell it suggests that the show should be helping and therapizing the cast rather than exploiting them for drama. 

The reality TV-star-to-influencer pipeline has also contributed to increased criticism of the treatment of reality TV cast members. Social media has allowed former reality TV cast members more opportunity to craft their own images. Working within the limitations of their contracts (though many Love is Blind cast members have revealed information that potentially violates their contracts on the grounds of talking about abuse rather than sharing trade secrets), cast members can attract followers by revealing exclusive behind-the-scenes info and also reframe public perception if they feel they received an unfair edit. This increased access to cast members outside of footage produced and edited by Netflix and Kinetic Content has given more space for cast members to air their grievances. I’m not sure if this shift in discourse will change the reality TV industry. And if it does, Nussbaum asks the question of whether the genre will work without all the manipulation and unethical production practices, which I’m not sure Love is Blind could be so popular without.

By Yoel Izaguirre

Last year, I found myself complaining to my brother, who is equally obsessed with TV, about the lack of contemporary shows that I could relate to as a Latino. When it comes to TV and Latinos, many people immediately think of telenovelas. While telenovelas are indeed a significant part of our storytelling tradition, they aren’t the only way to tell Latino stories.

Take Jane the Virgin, for example, which is a fantastic modern telenovela. The storylines are wild—Jane, the protagonist, is accidentally artificially inseminated and ends up pregnant. The father? An old fling she hasn’t spoken to in years, while she’s dating someone new. The show is packed with drama and twists, just like a traditional telenovela. However, one major shortcoming of the show is its writers’ room, which is predominantly white with only a few Latino writers. Knowing this, I’m not surprised by some of the issues I’ve noticed, particularly regarding the use of Spanish.

Spanish is the dominant language for many Latinos, and we use it in our daily lives. Yet, US shows often fail to capture our relationship with Spanish accurately. Here’s a TikTok from a Latino creator that humorously highlights this common misrepresentation: TikTok Link. Hollywood writers seem to think that Latinos frequently switch back and forth between Spanish and English, inserting Spanish words randomly into English conversations. Jane the Virgin is guilty of this.

Frustrated by this lack of authentic representation, my brother recommended Vida, a series set in East Los Angeles that follows two Mexican-American sisters, Emma and Lyn Hernandez, who return to their old neighborhood after their mother’s death.

From the first episode, I was immediately hooked. Why? BECAUSE THEY GOT THE LANGUAGE RIGHT!!! Both sisters are Chicanas, and their language and slang reflect the blend of English and Spanish they grew up with—something we call Spanglish. An example from the first episode is the verb “parkear,” which means “to park.” Though “parkear” isn’t a proper Spanish word (the correct term is “estacionar”), it’s commonly used in Latino communities in the US.

The use of “parkear” isn’t something you can just look up and write about; it comes from lived experience. This authenticity in language and cultural nuance is what makes Vida so special and relatable. This authenticity stems from the show’s writers’ room, which is predominantly composed of Latino writers who bring their personal experiences and cultural knowledge to the table. The result is a show that accurately represents the Latino experience in a way that feels genuine and deeply resonant.

This blog post was inspired by a conversation my mom Carrie initiated during our weekly family Facetime. It went something like this:

Carrie: What do you think about all this Bridgerton stuff?

Esmé: What do you mean? I haven’t seen it but know a lot of people like it.

C: I mean, with all the Black characters. Don’t you think that would confuse little kids?

E: ??

C: There isn’t slavery in the show, right? I mean, what do you think of all this representation stuff? Isn’t that confusing for a kid to watch a story that takes place back then but without the racism and slavery?

E: Well, I don’t think it’s confusing, and I think more people of color were in aristocratic positions back in the day than film/TV up until this would’ve led us to believe… The sense that I get is that there is still racism within the show but it’s not as explicit as slavery, it’s more nuanced and implicit like today.

C: But what about people who don’t believe slavery happened? Doesn’t that further their argument?

E: I mean, it’s a fictional show…

Hindsight is, famously, 20/20, and there are many things I wish I’d pointed out to my mother in the course of this conversation: that Bridgerton is a bodice-ripping soap opera that even the most oblivious parent probably wouldn’t let their child watch, and that historical fiction is so whitewashed it’s become difficult for us to imagine people of color even existing in the distant past, much less succeeding or holding any position of power.

Again, let me preface this by saying I haven’t seen any Bridgerton at all. All my knowledge of it has been filtered through newspaper op-eds, TikToks, and word of mouth. The especially salacious parts naturally get the most press: Sex! Sex in regency England! Naked sex in regency England! I remember comparisons to horny Jane Austen being made about it at the time and thinking, But Jane Austen’s already horny…

After recently seeing Challengers, the baffling new Luca Guadagnino film, I hunted high and low for different readings of the film, explanations for what I experienced as a nearly incoherent, anti-erotic story that had the entire movie theater laughing when it definitely did not intend to.

I promise this has something to do with TV studies!!!

Questions of authorial intent and formal filmmaking decisions aside, this recent convergence of watching Challengers and having this odd conversation with my mom made me think about Mimi White’s essay “Ideological Analysis and Television”. Buckle up for the words you’re about to ingest, dear reader: White’s essay, which I read within the past month, is possibly the singular encounter I’ve had with (and understandable explanation of) Marxist ideologies.

At an American liberal arts college.

Wow. Just let that concept sink in. I’m as shocked as you, don’t worry. My point in mentioning this is that it’s inhabited a place at the front of my mind through which I’ve filtered a lot of media and conversations, especially television. A classical Marxist take on Bridgerton and other shows in the Shonda Rhimes cannon would shovel it in the same pile as Fox news and Say Yes To The Dress, arguing that television as a medium is not harmless entertainment, but a bourgeoisie brainwashing tool to convince the masses to participate in the (economic, social) systems that oppress and blind them. As White fleshes out, though, classical Marxist thought is flawed in more ways than one. A more complicated take holds that individuals find pleasure in mass media like television despite its propagandistic elements, and thus it has positive value to the individual viewer. It’s over-simplistic and snooty to categorize all media made for profit as valueless when shows like Bridgerton and Grey’s Anatomy imagine worlds in which marginalized viewers see themselves in characters who have agency and are more than a hollow racial or gendered stereotype.

During the rough years of middle school, a friend and I were comforted by the shows Once Upon A Time (2011) and The Flash (2014). Both shows referenced and included popular and lesser known icons into their existing “universe” and demonstrate why the Fully Interactive Model is the most accurate out of Gray’s four models for how intertextuality exists in media.

First, The Flash often references other shows also produced by CW. Supergirl, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow all include cameos of other major or minor characters from each show. The show also is obviously based on the DC comics. In this way The Flash can be seen from the Hierarchical Model (The DC comics influenced the show) and the Working Together Model, where all CW shows are all part of the same “team” through their similar messages, themes, and tendencies. However, because The Flash’s intertextuality combines both the Hierarchical Model and the Working Together Model, I believe the show actually is best seen through the lens of the Fully Interactive Model. Even though the show is influenced by the DC comics, it is also influencing the comics through its modern retelling. Nowadays, most people in my generation will think of the show when hearing “The Flash”. The interconnectedness of the CW universe also supports the Fully Interactive Model through changing the plot of each show, going beyond the limits of the Working Together Model.

Similarly, Once Upon a Time draws upon world-wide famous characters but with the twist of putting them in the modern world. Through this twist, the show challenges our expectations of villains and heroes, making each character more realistic and morally gray. In this way, the show also disrupts the Hierarchical Model and integrates a new perspective into the existing universe of fantasy media.

As more shows include crossovers and references to build a loyal fan base, the fully interactive model seems to be more relevant when analyzing intertextuality.

I highly doubt that anyone in this class has watched the recently aired Netflix special, The Roast of Tom Brady. Hell, as of yesterday, I hadn’t even watched the recently aired Netflix special, The Roast of Tom Brady. But I was scrolling through different streaming services today trying to jog my brain because I couldn’t think of what to write about for this post and somehow this is where we ended up. Unfortunately. 

I’m really not trying to be the fun police here but I must say this shit suuuuuuuucked. The roasts delivered by non-comedians were painful but even some of the professional funny people failed to impress. In large part because the material was so redundant. There are only so many things you can make fun of a man for, so it just felt like a competition to see who could make the edgiest joke about Tom Brady’s divorce. 

And it went on for 3 hours. I only watched parts but I genuinely can not imagine sitting down for the full runtime just to watch a bunch of rich, famous people make fun of other rich, famous people and they’re all just laughing at each other because they’re so rich and famous that none of it matters. For 3. WHOLE. HOURS. This is what we’re platforming, this is what television looks like I guess. I suppose there’s potential catharsis in seeing said rich and famous people get torn apart- even if it’s just for show- but I just could not be bothered. 

Apparently plenty of others could be, though, because 2 million people watched this the day that it aired! And who knows how many have watched it since. I’m not surprised, just disappointed. Again, I’m not trying to sound holier than thou here but given that we live in an online world where a lot of people would rather tell each other to go kill themselves than engage in productive discourse, I can see why this was a hit. 

Celebrity roasts are supposed to be scathing (and I usually love me some edgy humor) but this felt like they were being provocative for provocation’s sake. As if The Roast of Tom Brady was designed to trend on Twitter. It worked, of course; all the news headlines about it are just reacting to this inflammatory joke or that extreme reaction. 

There’s a place for this kind of content and I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying it. It’s just a Netflix special. I’m also not saying this is the absolute state of post-network television and the internet, but it is a pretty grim snapshot if you ask me.

By Theo Weldon

Denise Mann’s 2009 essay, “It’s Not TV, It’s Brand Management TV,” uses Lost, the high-budget serial drama series that dominated pop culture discourse throughout its six year run, as a defining example of the 21st-century “transmedia franchise.” Mann observes that “blockbuster” shows like Lost have grown so large and technically complex that they cannot be centered under the creative control of a single “auteur.” The single showrunner has been replaced by a team of executive producers delegating creative responsibilities to a group of middle managers, who then coordinate teams of specialists. This bureaucratic structure resembles a corporation more than a production team, placing TV programs somewhere between “art” and “brand.” Indeed, Mann notes that writers and producers are often contractually responsible for creating “multimedia content” such as blogs, webisodes, and behind-the-scenes documentaries as accessories to the main television product.

Lost ended when I was 8 years old. I never watched the show, and I don’t remember the discourse surrounding it during its run. The one thing I do remember, however, is my older cousin complaining about the show’s disappointing ending. Apparently, the show’s final season kept introducing new plot points and mysteries without resolving old ones, leaving the audience confused and unsatisfied until the very end. I imagine that the show’s unfocused ending reflects its unfocused production team. With what Mann calls “an army of writers and producers” working on this billion dollar TV franchise, the scale of the project had grown too large to hope for a coherent conclusion. In the absence of a single creative vision, I believe that the writers fell back on what made the Lost “brand” successful in the first place: mystery. Lost probably failed to stick the landing because its noncontiguous production team began to overrely on flexing its brand of mystery without understanding why/how it worked in the first place.

Though I never watched Lost, reading about the show’s pseudo-corporate production and controversial ending reminded me of the final few season of Game of Thrones. GoT’s scale makes Lost look like small fry in comparison, with thousands of extras, massive CGI battles, and dozens of worldwide shooting locations throughout the series. GoT also found itself transformed into a multimedia brand, it had official blogs, podcasts, video games, and accompanying documentaries releasing throughout the show’s run. The sheer size of GoT undoubtedly made production a game of frenetic delegation and compartmentalization, but the show maintained a cohesive direction for most of its time on air due to its status as an adaptation. As the show’s source material, George R.R. Martin’s book series A Song of Ice and Fire gave GoT a detailed, streamlined creative vision that original shows of similar scale simply could not reproduce. It was far easier for showrunners D. B. Weiss and Dan Benoiff take on greater responsibility for growing the GoT brand when the bulk of the show’s writing and identity had already been established for them.

Unfortunately, George R.R. Martin never finished his book series, leaving Weiss and Benoiff with no source material for the last few seasons of the show. As is well known, this is where things started to go off the rails, and GoT slowly transformed from a medieval political drama with magical elements to an expensive mess of poorly written dialogue, draconic violence, and unresolved plot threads. I view the ending of GoT the same way I view the ending of Lost; when the writers of a series don’t have a coherent vision for the story, they fall back on the elements of the show that they view as integral to its brand. For GoT, this crutch manifested in a final season overstuffed with dragons, magic, and random character deaths. These were all things GoT was known for, but their gratuitous implementation felt forced and insubstantial. The outrage surrounding the ending of GoT did serious damage to the brand, with the franchise having barely any staying power in pop culture discourse (until House of the Dragon saved the day).

Thinking over the endings of Lost and Game of Thrones, I wonder whether the creative failures of these shows can be attributed to their evolution into “brands.” The goal of a brand is inherently commerical, it seeks to propagate itself across a diverse array of products, mediums, and audiences to ensure its growth and survival. The brand managers of Pepsi and McDonalds don’t think about they’re going to “end” or “wrap things up,” so how can we expect satisfying endings from television that structures itself like these corporations? We see this problem with film franchises too, with the MCU long overstaying its welcome after what would have been a fitting conclusion in Avengers: Endgame. I see this phenomenon of corporate branding among high-budget movies and TV as an unequivocal negative for the creative potential of these mediums, but I don’t know how showrunners could create large-scale, high-budget projects without succumbing to it.

By Jonathan Nguyen.

I recently finished watching the HBO Max series (or is Max now…) Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids Television the other day. Honestly speaking though, I didn’t even know that this series was released (or even series at all) if it wasn’t for the emergence of the series on my TikTok feed. I remember I was scrolling through my TikTok and there was a video of Drake Bell coming forward about being sexually assaulted while he was child acting on Nickelodeon. Naturally, the two minute segment on TikTok had me pulled into the series and before I knew it, I was finished with the four episode documentary. 

While I was watching the docu-series, it occurred to me that there were so many issues relating to gender and race happening behind the scenes of many of my favorite television series growing up and even more that goes unheard of on many other sets. Watching this series reminded me of one of the class readings I had for my TV Studies Seminar: Felecia D. Henderson’s writing of “The Culture Behind Closed Doors: Issues of Gender and Race in the Writer’s Room”. 

I knew that the issues of gender and race in many different fields is an ongoing issue, but being able to read personal experiences and short anecdotes made me realize the extent to these issues in the industry workplace. Having read this reading in conjunction with watching Quiet On Set and actually hearing and seeing a variety of different perspectives and personal recollections on this matter made me realize how awful these biases can be. Quiet On Set excels in shining light onto these prevalent and ongoing issues that aren’t talked about as much as they should be. Yet this is only one step towards tackling this issue and I hope that there continues to be dialogue and conversation relating to this. 

Thus, I have a few questions that I am curious to hear your responses on. Is there a way to limit these unethical approaches and treatment in the television industry? Or at the very least, methods to ensure that the environment on set–both on-screen and off-screen–fosters a community that is collaborative and inclusive?

We all know how “Black Mirror” is well known for its commentary on technology and depictions of dystopian futures. Being an episodic show, “Black Mirror” tells a complete story every episode, each with a beginning and end.

But whether you may have realized it or not, since its launch in 2011, the show has been building a complicated universe. By analyzing the easter eggs Charlie Brooker includes throughout the episodes, it’s clear how “Black Mirror” isn’t just a collection of standalone narratives. “Black Mirror” utilizes a mix of characteristics from serial television and more narratively complex shows to appeal to a large audience.

In season 6 alone, Charlie Brooker includes numerous easter eggs that indicate shared universes across episodes, making “Black Mirror” a narratively complex television show. For example, in episode one, “Joan is Awful,” Joan’s coworker Sandy receives a notification from an app called Smithereens, a social media app featured in Season 5, Episode 2, “Smithereens.” In another scene in the same episode, Joan is reading a newspaper with a sidebar titled “Grains Going Out of Style,” referencing the memory grain technology from Season 1, Episode 3, “The Entire History of You,” a device that records people’s memories to rewatch later.  

In episode 2, “Loch Henry,” a documentary called “Euthanasia: Inside Project Junipero” is mentioned by one of the characters. This is a reference to Season 3’s episode “San Junipero,” in which there is a project where people can choose to live in a simulated world after death. 

Through easter eggs, “Black Mirror” adds narrative depth to its episodic nature by allowing relationships between characters and episodes to develop, the more you watch the show. Piecing together the pieces and completing the puzzle to the universe in “Black Mirror” becomes part of the experience for fans, as they make connections between characters and technologies, birthing theories and predictions and creating a rich viewing experience for long time fans. “Black Mirror” not only appeals to audiences with episodes that give a satisfying beginning and end to each story, but also by creating room for audiences to analyze the complicated plot and connections made throughout the series. 

On the dawn of its highly anticipated and constantly teased second season, Smiling Friends (2022) ramped up the absurdity with its first episode “Gwimbly: Definitive Remastered Enhanced Extended Edition DX 4K (Anniversary Director’s Cut).” The episode melded the 2D animation of the show with older, low-polygon 3D graphics to represent Gwimbly, the has-been video game character that Charlie and Pim are tasked with helping. This comes along with a heaping helping of criticism for the modern games industry which comes close to satire, but does not meet the political nature of most satire. The following week Adult Swim would air “Mr. President,” pulling Smiling Friends into new territory as they take a more directly political approach to their meaning-making.

The episode opens with Charlie, Pim, and Glep watching coverage of the presidential race on TV. When asked whether he would vote for the incumbent, President Jimble, or the challenger Mr. Frog, Charlie launches into a rant about how he and his colleagues are “peons” who don’t make the decisions, meaning that their vote would be inconsequential. Much of the show does not find its satire in particular examples or corollaries to the real world, but rather launches an all-out attack on the state of US politics as a whole, drawing attention to the overall circus and its own contradictions, similar to how the Simpsons supposedly sets up any idea only “in order to undercut them” (Gray, Jones, 7) Additionally, each character has their own opinion or strategies for going about political participation. In this sense, Smiling Friends is acting as a cultural forum and political satire simultaneously, allowing its viewers to identify with any of the tactics put forward by its characters. Pim becomes an advisor to President Jimble, Charlie uncovers a vast conspiracy that confirms his theories, The Boss prepares his AWP bolt-action rifle ahead of an all-out war, and Glep simply sits there and votes.

What I find most interesting is that Glep is shown to have made a tangible difference in the race when the results are announced alongside his photo, the caption declaring him as the singular vote that turned the election. Compared to Glep, everyone else still finds utility or comfort in their political action, despite the unexpected and disastrous outcome of the election. I find this episode of Smiling Friends to be remarkbly effective with its satire, and it is a welcome change from the consistent parody and social commentary the first season was so loved for.