Jump to content

The Beautiful Life: Discussion Thread


Toups

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 28
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

I really enjoyed this show!! Sara Paxton's character is great.. I can only guess what her secret is. Loved Chris/Raina together.

Mischa Barton..lol.. I never watched her on "The O.C." but her acting was pretty horrendous in the first episode. I do like Sonja's secret about the baby, I really thought she'd just end up being another air headed model with a drug problem.

I have high hopes for this show, I really enjoyed the pilot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrator

She's already my favorite character.

That scene with Chris in the chair and Raina helping him at the photoshoot was hot!! I'm already rooting for them.

I like the secret too and me made interested in Sonja.

It was a good pilot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Watched the second episode right before Vampire Diaries. It was a great two hours of my life LOL

I love how full on these plots are already but the show still manages to be character driven. It keeps me very interested.

It was refreshing to see the Cole not have a romantic thing for Raina and I was surprised about the Sonia and Cole connection. The way the writers threw the viewers off about Cole in this episode was a nice twist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Saw this coming sadly. I have yet to see the second episode, but the pilot was great. Oh well, opens up a time slot for me to record Modern Family/Cougar town. Doubt we'll ever see the unaired episodes on the CW.

And please don't mention Privileged! I was so bummed when that got canceled. :(

I actually thought this show was pretty good, had some potential. But combine that with the numbers on Wednesday (Glee, ABC's comedies, etc..), it really didn't stand a chance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

My problem with this show was that it just wasn't offering anything new. Most of the stuff they were doing has already been seen a thousand times before, especially on the CW. The poor casting choices(sans Paxton, the hot British chick with the five head, and the Cole dude) didn't help IMO. I wish Mike Kelley & Co had stuck to the original, and as much as I hate to use this word, edgier pilot script.

Oh, and I hope Dawn O has learned her lesson; that you can only have so many shows about pretty young people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • Like I've said before, I think the show is often a very strange (and admittedly fascinating to me) mix of very old-fashioned, purple dialogue and classic soap opera structural elements - right down to the insanely blatant, virally successful product placement for P&G - mixed with other dialogue or material that tries desperately to be current and hip. One moment it will remind me of very hokey old B&B stuff or expository stuff out of the '60s, and the other it'll look and sound like the Prospect Park soaps. Some of the hipper dialogue or material (Chelsea's sexuality, etc.) works for me, others are pure cringe. Same with the classical stuff, like the characters (particularly the elders) gathering around to recap plot, make grand pronouncements about each other or their children/family, or make grave portents of the future. Then there's the whole piano thing lol. It's a weird mix, but not one I'm mad about atm so much as mystified by. As a longtime soap fan it is very compelling to examine even when parts of it really don't work, because so much of BTG feels both very old and very new at the same time. I do think they need to dump the Bell (or maybe more accurately Brad Bell) school of dialogue MVJ has been working from for years, and bring in more of the naturalistic GH house style she and Guza worked from in the '90s and 2000s. If that means dumping a lot of the dialogue people so be it (I do think some are good). OTOH the Bell style seems to work for a lot of the social media and probably offline audience that isn't me, so who's to say. I don't think Dani is at all in the latter-day Carly though. She's not on quite as much, and she's far from always right. I do think they are definitely playing it down the middle with the Duprees while waiting to reveal more, but I do think they want you to see them both ways or divide the audience on who they are. Which seems to have succeeded because some people are baffled.
    • Might this show be a black stereotype? Angry crazy acting women like Dani and Leslie. Cheating punk men like Bill and Ted who didn't keep it in their pants. Angry black men like Martin. Promiscuous black man wanting the white girl. Dirty black cops. And so on?
    • Please register in order to view this content

       
    • That would require Dani to think about someone/something other than herself.. and we all know Dani only thinks about Dani.  Including her butting into Nicole's business instead of just being a supportive sister.
    • I also hope there will be a follow up to Dani noticing Vanessa with Joey. We need another scene of them two together. And does Dani have any knowledge of Vanessa's affairs?
    • One of the soap greats. I wish I had a stronger connection to her, but her major soap stints passed me by. However, the way veteran watchers have described watching her back in the day makes me yearn for the glory days of soap. As a DAYS fan first, her time on the show is basically an enigma. As years have passed as a member of this board, previous and current members have talked in fondness about her obviously major story with Dickie and David's death, but even more interestingly, her romance/friendship with Bill, and the fascinating tangled tale of her encounter in the park with Eric Peters. It's such a shame DAYS never swayed her back home where she belonged. Though I am more than thankful RC and JG didn't get their grubby paws on her, especially with the horrible example of how they saw fit to write Marie and Liz's relationship with all the nuance and sophistication of a pigpen.  SSH's remembrance of her was wonderful to read, so thank you to whoever posted. Could be cool too if any of her Clear Horizon material popped up. Does anything of that show exist?
    • All this! Especially the highlighted. If today was any indication to what's to come, I see Mona and Shanice roles being beefed up. I personally think they are going to test her out with Doug.  I initially didn't see it for Kat, since the Eva reveal, and few of her scenes around it. Made me warm to her for some reason. 
    • Agreed, pretty much with everything. The dialogue bugs the hell out of me. I don’t think a lot of it even works written out on a page, much less spoken. Even a veteran like TT can’t help but sound stagey with such purple prose. Re: the Duprees. I’m guessing that they’re holding their cards close to their vest on them for the various mysteries that will unfold, but I wish they weren’t so opaque and tonally weird as characters, especially in these make-or-break early days. (One reason why I wish they’d give up on keeping secrets from the audience and just allow them to speak freely, allowing the tension to come from what other characters don’t know.) Dani is giving Carly Corinthos realness, which isn’t a compliment. Oh, don’t get me started on the Black male characters and the tropes they’ve employed thus far. I had hoped a Black-created, NAACP-co-produced soap would be more cognizant of these traps, but nope. At least it seems like they’re playing the long game with Andre and Dani after all this feening over basic Ashley.
    • I feel like the reason they went with these two stories is because these are common stories told on soaps that allowed them to really tie the entire canvas in and help develop their relationships. I do understand the implications of having two cheating stories and these being Black characters but MVJ has always been clear that she wanted to show us the same way characters are featured on any soap. I don't think any story should be off limits just because the majority of the characters are Black. We have several positive representations of Black men so it's not like everybody is a cheater or a bad spouse. I also think the two stories and relationships are different enough that the stories don't feel similar in any way.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy