tv recommendation of the week
I had a sweet babysitting job this weekend in which I got paid $12 an hour to sit on my butt and watch TV while the baby slept. I haven't had access to cable (or, to be perfectly honest, TV at all) since I moved to New York, so clearly the thing to do was to catch up on everything I've missed on my favorite channel, The N.
If you're my friend, I imagine that you're plenty familiar with The N, but just in case, here's what you need to know: The N is awesome. It is a channel targeted pretty much solely at 12-15 year old girls. It runs reruns of My So-Called Life, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Daria. Sometimes, it randomly runs music videos instead of commercials. Most awesome, however, is The N's "original" programming. I put original in quotation marks, because frequently, The N confuses "original" with "Canadian", as in the case of what I believe are its two most popular programs, the dreadful Instant Star and the supremely addictive Degrassi: The Next Generation.
What I want to talk about today, however, is a show that I kind of doubt anyone is watching: Girls vs. Boys. Girls vs. Boys is in its (I think?) fourth season and it is fantastic. It's a reality show in which teams of high school students compete in a battle of the sexes in a semi-exotic location (Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and somewhat bafflingly, Montana). Its awesomeness comes from many sources. First of all, high schoolers are ridiculous. Someone is always crying, someone is always yelling and someone is always scheming a way to hook up with someone else.
The first season that I watched was the Hawaii season. The six kids on the Hawaii season seemed like genuinely nice, normal kids. When two cast members from Degrassi were brought in on a ratings stunt, they too seemed like genuinely nice, normal kids. All this niceness was put to the test by the competition and resulted in maybe the most awesome thing I've ever seen on television. The teams were competing for a prize that worked out to about $10,000 each. The scores of the boys' and girls' teams were close to even going into the final challenge and then the girls won it. The challenge involved setting up letters in a field (?) and the boys loss was immediately followed by all of them running through the fields sobbing. Four sixteen year old boys crying in a meadow. It was both unintentionally hilarious and genuinely a little touching. I was hooked.
Unfortunately, the two seasons since have not neccessarily been populated by such well-intentioned teenagers. The Montana season featured some kids who thought a little too much about strategy, forgetting in the process that sixteen year olds have no subtlety. The current season also involves a little too much strategy, although the cast members are a little more likeable. Girls vs. Boys does, however, always hold the possibility for ridiculous awesomeness and I highly recommend adding it to your TiVo or TiFaux.
If you're my friend, I imagine that you're plenty familiar with The N, but just in case, here's what you need to know: The N is awesome. It is a channel targeted pretty much solely at 12-15 year old girls. It runs reruns of My So-Called Life, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Daria. Sometimes, it randomly runs music videos instead of commercials. Most awesome, however, is The N's "original" programming. I put original in quotation marks, because frequently, The N confuses "original" with "Canadian", as in the case of what I believe are its two most popular programs, the dreadful Instant Star and the supremely addictive Degrassi: The Next Generation.
What I want to talk about today, however, is a show that I kind of doubt anyone is watching: Girls vs. Boys. Girls vs. Boys is in its (I think?) fourth season and it is fantastic. It's a reality show in which teams of high school students compete in a battle of the sexes in a semi-exotic location (Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and somewhat bafflingly, Montana). Its awesomeness comes from many sources. First of all, high schoolers are ridiculous. Someone is always crying, someone is always yelling and someone is always scheming a way to hook up with someone else.
The first season that I watched was the Hawaii season. The six kids on the Hawaii season seemed like genuinely nice, normal kids. When two cast members from Degrassi were brought in on a ratings stunt, they too seemed like genuinely nice, normal kids. All this niceness was put to the test by the competition and resulted in maybe the most awesome thing I've ever seen on television. The teams were competing for a prize that worked out to about $10,000 each. The scores of the boys' and girls' teams were close to even going into the final challenge and then the girls won it. The challenge involved setting up letters in a field (?) and the boys loss was immediately followed by all of them running through the fields sobbing. Four sixteen year old boys crying in a meadow. It was both unintentionally hilarious and genuinely a little touching. I was hooked.
Unfortunately, the two seasons since have not neccessarily been populated by such well-intentioned teenagers. The Montana season featured some kids who thought a little too much about strategy, forgetting in the process that sixteen year olds have no subtlety. The current season also involves a little too much strategy, although the cast members are a little more likeable. Girls vs. Boys does, however, always hold the possibility for ridiculous awesomeness and I highly recommend adding it to your TiVo or TiFaux.
posted by Leila at 4:08 PM
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