GLEE: Review

Glee: Drama where I found myself

Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that airs on Fox in the United States, and on GlobalTV in Canada. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing on the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues. (From Wikipedia)

List of Songs I love!!!

- All by myself

- Billionaire

- I look to you

- Loser like me

- Marry You (singing at a wedding)

- Listen (Dreamgirls)

- Blame it (on the alcohol) > my personal favorite movie clip!!!!!

- Forget You

- Pretending & Light Up the World (low quality picture)

- Jar of Hearts (sung when Rachel is betrayed by Finn)

- As long as you're there (Vocal Adrenaline performing)

These songs I have listed above are my favorite songs that I put in my mp3 player and listened to over a hundred times, I guess. I think these songs are amazing and they can be considered as classics. (My definition of classics: any kind of art, in this case songs that makes us feel better no matter how you feel before that)
I have watched whole 2 seasons of glee over a couple of times. When I watch dramas, it's not that there is a specific characteristic that I like, but I evaluate how I feel after watching it. Glee turned out to be very satisfactory, probably because there were whole bunch of great songs that are sung at right moments of these high school students' lives. Also, although these casts are not actually high school students, just thinking of high school in America just makes me feel excited and connected. Characters in glee go through a lot of difficulties, including girlfriend and boyfriend problems, homosexuality, teachers and students, conflicts between different clubs, family issues. Quinn, one of the characters in glee, made a baby with Puck while she was cheating on her boyfriend Finn Hudson.

It seems like, for most Korean students, that american high school students do not learn a lot or study so much compared to koreans. However, I personally think that what they learn through all these experiences are more valuable and extraordinary than merely sitting in a chair looking through textbooks. Through my indirect experiences in glee, I sometimes found myself in these characters, often in a negative way and found some ways to deal with this. Also, I could experience what will happen in my college life in America beforehand, so that it would be easy to solve these commom issues that will attack me in my near future.

While I was watching glee, I found myself sniffling with tears in my eyes or sometimes laughing with these characters. I tend to be very emotional in any kind of films, even with animation movies. This may look very stupid, but I really enjoyed sharing feelings with the characters when they faced problems that seemed like they could never be solved.

One thing I'm disappointed about glee is that the season 3 glee suddenly became terrible. There are no more wonderful songs and the story is so obvious. Also, the characters used to deal with their problems pretty well, but they started to become erratic students. I really hope the director would just get back to the original story again!

Rating:
Season 1:
Season 2:
Season 3:

FRIENDS - Review (The one I want to be graded)

Friends: The Drama I want to write a book on. (Or a research paper like in Mr. Ganse's class...)

Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television. (From Wikipedia) 
When I first came to know <Friends>, I was watching it just to spend my remaining time. Then, as soon as I was watching about 3 pieces, I was slowly falling in love with this drama.

This is the blooper for friends season 8 and 9, just for fun introduction!!! ;)

     <Friends> was always with me since I was in second grade of middle school. I went through tons of stress coming from my studies, my family and my friendship problems during this period of time because <Friends> was there for me, waiting to be watched(?). ;) To sum up how much I love this drama, there are 10 seasons, with each seasons consisted of about 25 pieces, each 30 to 40 minutes, and I have watched at least three or four times of all these. If it weren't for this drama, I would have just given up everything and deviate from my goal completely.

     I was so into <Friends> for several elements and I personally think this is the most perfect drama series that humans ever created. As most people would know, there are 6 main characters, Pheobe Buffay, Chandler Bing, Monica and Ross Geller, Rachel Green and Joey Tribbiani. None of them speaks more or takes more part than others and each of them have their own, very distinct characteristics, which always justifies them for doing weird things. The story itself consists of both big and small experiences these characters go through, including marriage, divorce, workplace experiences or girlfriend boyfriend problems.

     What I learned most from this drama is, definitely love. While GLEE taught me how to deal with high school and university problems that are very trivial and a lot of times fake relationships, Friends gave me lessons on serious relationships, such as guys who would marry me, or even more than that. It's true that I observed many couples and watched in a very close distance of my parents, I never looked from their perspectives. However, in Friends, out of six characters here, there are four of them who get married, and I could observe very serious relationship slowly developing, with so much difficulties and conflicts, then finally reaching a point at which they get married. I don't know how the director did this, but he drew highly sophisticated picture of this process, full of pure emotions, eliminating all the fake behaviors most people do today. I really liked how such comical story developed into such an emotional story, resulting in tears in my eyes.

     To prove that I'm not the only one who was greatly moved by the drama, let me give you some statistics. It is unprecedented to continue one drama for 10 years, with 10 seasons with the exact same flow of story and exact same characters on it, from 1994 to 2004. Of course, their style of wearing clothes or how they wear make-ups have changed a lot during 10 years, but the storyline hasn't changed in a single way. Also, by the time they were filming season 10, the advertisement fees in between the air of Friends skyrocketed. Friends was broadcasted in America every week, on Thursday 5 o'clock in the evening, and by the time season 10 was being aired, the New York city became so quiet suddenly, as all the people were at home, watching Friends at the same time, as there were no prevalent downloading sites on the Internet at the time. In 2004, the weekly salary each of the cast received was over a billion dollars.

     If anyone of you who is reading this haven't watched Friends yet, I strongly suggest you to watch it before you die, unless you'll regret after you die. ^^

Actually I want to give 10 stars out of five, but this is all I can do!

The Body Reading Journal #1

EdUcAtIoN

     God, only if I could teach these kids and keep them under my nose! It's all I could think about as I was reading this book for about 30 pages. The four main characters, Chris, Teddy, Vern and Gordie all come from the family environment where they are not taken such good care of with tenderness and affection. They are either getting too much attention; beaten to near-death like Teddy, or is completely ignored from their parents like Gordie. The worse part is that they themselves know that others think of them as idiots, as they all come from such a terrible family background. People just make conclusions so fast like that, without trying to understand what they have been through and how they have changed. This was very evident when Chris said,

     "And you know what, Gordie? By next June, we'll all be quits." "It's not gonna be like grammar school, that's why. You'll be in the college courses. Me and Teddy and Vern, we'll all be in the shop courses, playing pocket-pool with the rest of the retards, making ashtrays and birdhouses. Vern might even have to go into Remedial. You'll meet a lot of new guys. Smart guys. That's just the way it works, Gordie. That's how they got it set up." Then Gordie said, "Meet a lot of pussies is what you mean." But then Chris gripped his arm and said, "If you don't, then you're an asshole." "What's asshole about wanting to be with your friends?" 

     I was really moved and surprised at the same time at how matured and grown-up these kids are, at least in the inside of their hearts! They do go smoking and stealing guns and talk about weird stuff that I do not understand why, but they do think about their friends so deeply and care for each other all the time. Then I asked myself, 'With these kind-hearted minds, why are they acting so inappropriately all the time, losing their minds once in a while and doing things they're not supposed to?' The answer just came into my head like a lightening: EDUCATION.

     We often say that the best teacher is our parents, and if we take a look at the family situations of each kid we can easily realize what kind of education they received as a child. Teddy must have learned violence and anger from his crazy father and Gordie must have learned to deal with everything on his own. And all four of them, of course, were never treated with tenderness, even at school. I think this environment of the kids have made them so vulnerable and naive. If anyone paid attention to the guys and taught them just a little bit of life lessons or maybe just gave them some interesting and didactic books to read, they would have had much more confidence, wisdom and knowledge.