The Valley Wire - 9/25/2009

Hollywood Tunes into TV
By Mary Beth Gentle

It’s that magical time of year. All that glitters is gold. And for one brief moment in time all shows on the New Fall TV Schedule hold the promise of brilliance. And much like a kid on Christmas morning, I race home from work eager to unwrap each new show. Luckily the new and returning shows are premiering in a staggered schedule so my DVR should be able to keep up.

My favorite new TV show of the fall season so far is Glee, the story of a high school glee club full of underdogs. I can already tell that this musical ‘dramady’ with a heart will be my guilty pleasure. The story lines and cliché characters are nothing we haven’t seen before, but once the music starts to play and the characters burst into song I am a willing and captive audience.



Glee centers around the ever optimistic High School teacher and glee leader, Will Shuester (Matthew Morrison), as he helps a rag tag group of adolescents discover their dreams and at the same time re-discovering his own. The glee club consists of awkward teen misfit, Rachel (Lea Michele), football star Finn (Cory Monteith), wheel chair bound Arty (Kevin Mchale), flamboyant fashion plate Kurt (Chris Colfer) and diva in training Mercedes (Amber Riley) to name a few. Every high school click is covered in the show, even down to the overly perfect cheerleaders out to take down the glee club.

You might think the drama ends there, but most of the drama actually takes place in the teachers lounge. There is the domineering cheerleading coach who refuses to let a dime of the schools budget go to the support of the glee club, there is a testosterone charged football coach and a germ phobic guidance counselor who has a crush on Will. Not to mention the drama that Will encounters on a daily basis with his somewhat shrewish wife who would rather he was in a job that was more upwardly mobile.

From the onset, the pilot is packed with musical numbers that are both impressive and entertaining. And there is enough quirkiness to raise this show above all the other teen-based dramas clogging up the airwaves. In the pilot episode when Will takes the glee club to check out the competition, we quickly understand as do the kids in the club, that it’s going to be a long year with lots of musical numbers if they are going to make it to the State Championships. But, with lines like Rachel’s, “We’re gonna win because we’re different. That’s what makes us special.” She proves that the show has the heart needed to make us care about the characters. And when it comes to TV, new or old, without heart we aren’t going to tune in.

If you have already missed the opening episodes of Glee, you can catch them online at either Fox.com or Hulu.com. And if musical teen dramadies are just not your thing, there are still plenty of new and returning TV shows to tune into in the coming weeks, some of the other new shows that I will be checking out are; Flash Forward, Cougar Town, V, The Good Wife and the Vampire Diaries. And the returning TV shows that I can’t wait to tune back into are; Fringe, Survivor, Ugly Betty and Brothers and Sister to name a few. This is one Hollywood Cube Dweller that has her fall TV schedule all planned out…and here’s hoping that a least a few shows live up to my hope for brilliance.

The Valley Wire - 9/4/2009

Hollywood Pays Tribute
By Mary Beth Gentle

Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; these are just a few titles from the man that put pen to paper and helped define a generation, my generation. When the news hit my desk last month that Writer/Director John Hughes had died, a black cloud drifted over the Hollywood Cubicles. My entire youth flashed before my eyes and then slowly, I began to smile at the memories his movies brought to mind. John Hughes was a master at capturing the moments of teen angst with a perfect balance of heart and humor in a way no one had before or has since.

I pulled up his list of credits and was amazed at just how many films John Hughes had written, produced and directed. And was even more amazed by the fact that I have probably seen most of them at some point in my life. I sat down and decided I was going to try to pick my top three John Hughes movies. Too hard. So, I had to narrow it down to the top three that he both wrote and directed. Here is the list I came up with:

Sixteen Candles – 1984

The story centers around a slightly awkward high school sophomore, Samantha "Sam" Baker played by Molly Ringwald, as she struggles to get through her sixteenth birthday, which her entire family has forgotten as they prep for her sister Ginny’s big wedding day. As Sam struggles to survive a house filled with chaotic wedding plans, two sets of slightly insane Grandparents and a ‘geek’ with a giant crush on her, she must also come to terms with her own infatuation with the very popular and attractive senior, Jake Ryan. John Hughes captured the angst of high school life in this coming of age tale with real characters dealing with real problems in what is still a very funny movie. Will anyone remember it’s Sam’s birthday? Will her sister actually get married? And will true love find Sam and Jake together at the end? If you haven’t seen this one – it’s worth checking out.


The Breakfast Club – 1985

This ultimate teen angst movie finds a diverse group of high school students, consisting of an athlete (Emilio Estevez), a criminal (Judd Nelson), a basket case (Ally Sheedy), a princess (Molly Ringwald), and a brain (Anthony Michael Hall), sharing Saturday detention. Over the course of the day, they attack the barriers that ordinarily kept them apart, they discover more than just a few similarities in their lives and new bonds are formed. They discover that maybe they are not as easily defined as the labels put upon them by both the outside world and themselves. At the end of the film they go their separate ways, but still hopeful that these bonds will exist outside of detention. This movie had something that everyone could relate to, because some part of each of us can be found somewhere in these characters.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – 1986

Deciding he needs a day of fun with his girlfriend and his best friend before they all head off to different colleges, high school senior Ferris Bueller, played by Matthew Broderick, decides to skip school on a spring day by convincing his parents that he is sick. When the rest of the school learns of Ferris's exaggerated illness, they begin to offer donations to help "Save Ferris”. But there is one person not convinced by the deception, the school's Dean of Students, Edward Rooney. Ferris and his friends arrive in downtown Chicago and have the time of their lives, all the while avoiding Ed Rooney and making sure they get back home before Ferris’ parents get off work. Ferris Bueller did what the rest of us could only dream of doing – he took the day off!

Here are a few more of the many John Hughes movies that I have enjoyed over the years; She’s having a baby, Pretty in Pink, Uncle Buck, The Great Outdoors, Planes Trains and Automobiles…the list goes on and on. So whether you in the mood for the teen angst of The Breakfast Club, the comedy of Dan Aykroyd and John Candy or some good old family fun with the Home Alone Movies, I recommend you settle in and watch a movie in honor of John Hughes.