Tag: Madison Palmieri ’22
Falling for New Shows Coming to Network TV
by The Cowl Editor on October 3, 2019
Film and Television
by Madison Palmieri ’22 A&E Staff
While the shift from summer to autumn means saying goodbye to beloved reality shows like America’s Got Talent and Bachelor in Paradise, the fall television season brings not only the return of hits like Modern Family and Riverdale but promises exciting new fare for viewers to fall in love with on all five major networks.
ABC’s new programming tends towards female-driven narratives. Emergence tells the story of a memoryless girl found at the scene of a plane crash and the police chief determined to help her. Stumptown centers around a private investigator and her personal troubles. The network will also debut mixed-ish, the second spinoff of the comedy hit black-ish, focusing on Rainbow Johnson’s formative years. Rounding out the newcomers is the rebooted variety show Kids Say the Darndest Things, hosted by comedian Tiffany Haddish.
The theme of NBC’s new programs is family. Drama Bluff City Law will explore the complex relationship between a father and daughter working together at a law firm. Comedies Perfect Harmony and Sunnyside center on the families forged when a former music professor joins a small town’s church choir and a former politician works to help a diverse group of New Yorkers achieve their dreams of citizenship, respectively.
CBS strikes a balance between work and home with comedies Bob Hearts Abishola and Carol’s Second Act, with the former set to detail the trials and tribulations of a man who falls in love with his nurse and the latter telling the story of a fifty-year-old mother and divorcee who finally begins to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor. The network’s other new comedy The Unicorn centers on a widower looking for love with the support of his close friends. Drama All Rise offers a female-driven look into the lives of judges and other legal workers in Los Angeles, and Evil sees the unlikely pairing of a psychologist and a priest-in-training who investigate the unexplained for the church, raising discussion about science and religion.
FOX shares NBC’s theme of family. Animated series Bless the Harts centers on a struggling, female-led, southern family, and Almost Family tells the story of a young woman who believed she was an only child, only to find out that she has more siblings than she could have ever hoped for. Prodigal Son promises to mix the complex work of its criminal psychologist lead with his complicated family.
While the CW is only offering two new programs, both are female-driven, steeped in beloved source material, and will be sure to please audiences. Nancy Drew sees the girl detective and her peers as murder suspects who must clear their names; Batwoman tells the story of Bruce Wayne’s cousin, Kate Kane, as she takes Batman’s place after his disappearance.
In the age of streaming, these television networks are forced to compete with services such as Netflix and Hulu for viewership, so they must offer programming that is both innovative and entertaining. Whether or not these new shows will meet this challenge remains to be seen, but perhaps one of them could be the next This Is Us or Game of Thrones.
Let’s Remember: Friends Celebrates Its 25th Year
by The Cowl Editor on September 26, 2019
Arts & Entertainment
by Madison Palmieri ’22 A&E Staff
On Thursday, September 22, 1994, viewers tuned in to NBC to watch the pilot episode of a new comedy. It opened on a group of attractive, fashionable twenty-somethings in a quaint coffeeshop. Within the first few minutes, the audience became acquainted with both their individual personalities and the close-knit bond the titular friends shared. From the introduction of Ross’s signature “hi” to Rachel’s entrance in her wedding dress, the show’s opening set it apart from the rest for those viewers in 1994 and continues to do so today.
A few years ago, Friends experienced an intense resurgence in popularity. Young people could not stop talking about it, debating whether they were more of a Monica or a Rachel, and if the guy they were crushing on was a Chandler, a Joey, or—God forbid—a Ross.
Maybe it was the comedy, the recurring jokes that became as familiar to the audience as they were to the friends themselves. Maybe it was the sense of family that the tight-knit group shared. Maybe it was the routine of each episode, with guaranteed warmth like comfort food on a stressful night. Maybe it was the romantic idealism of finding love within one’s immediate social circle that Ross and Rachel and, more satisfyingly, Chandler and Monica brought.
Perhaps it was the actors themselves, a group of relatively unknown people who together catapulted to superstar status. From the first episode, it was clear that the six friends shared a special bond, both onscreen and off.
Or maybe it was the show’s relatability. From Monica’s obsessive tendencies and sibling rivalry with Ross to Chandler’s self-esteem issues and complicated relationship with his dad, viewers could see themselves in the characters. They could be fashionable like Rachel, goofy like Joey, intellectual like Ross, self-assured like Monica, sarcastic like Chandler, or kooky like Phoebe.
At the same time, however, part of the show’s appeal was the escape from reality it offered. The relatable friends often found themselves in the most unrelatable of situations: adopting a chicken and a duck, accidentally saying an ex-girlfriend’s name in weddings vows, and acting as a surrogate for a family member and his home economics teacher-turned-wife. While highly unrealistic, these moments made audiences fall even more in love with the characters.
Friends endures, then, because of its humor and heart. The jokes are witty and seldom overdone; the characters are realistic enough to be emulated yet removed enough from reality to give the group a sort of sacredness about them.
The theme song repeats the line “I’ll be there for you.” This is what the show is truly about: being there for your friends, even when they sing about smelly cats or refuse to share food. This much is true even twenty-five years after Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Joey first became friends with each other, and with viewers around the world.