ABC Family

[Wales2004]

This is for anything related to ABC Family.

I'll start with a couple of posts about two of their shows. This one is about "Switched At Birth."

To me this is one of their better shows because the drama seems to develop naturally as part of each episode and they don't just have drama for drama's sake. I watched pretty consistently in the first season but sporadically this season.

There also doesn't seem to be this need to end each season with any sort of cliff hanger so if for some reason they aren't renewed, there wouldn't be this sense that the show ended with a bunch of loose ends.

Even though yesterday's finale did have one of those cheap mystery pregnant woman showing up looking for daddy endings as their lead in to one of next season's s/l, it didn't even seem remotely shocking. Actually that does highlight their one area of weakness in terms of storytelling. Angelo is supposed to be around because Bay wanted him to stay in the country, presumably to get to know him but there didn't seem to be much effort made to connect the two of them. I'm guessing that the reaction to this woman and whatever he does or doesn't know about her pregnancy will be their attempt to draw him into everyone's lives in the upcoming season.

The high points for me were the results of the trial in that both sets of plaintiffs won but the family was only awarded $1 and Angelo $5 million and the way Daphne's affair ended.

I loved Angelo being the only one to have a truly genuine reaction to 16 year old Daphne having a fling with her 27 year old boss. I liked how Daphne thought that quitting her job meant that she and Jeff could be together until he gave her the "you'll find someone right for you" speech and her reaction that she could close her eyes and not know what he was saying and then leave. It was nice that he was genuinely remorseful and how he tried to pretend that Angelo was some sort of crazed lunatic for decking him. They ended that without fanfare as well as Bay's detachment from her tagger/street art friend. And they even set up Bay being able to forgive Emmett by what he said to her and in a previous episode when she seemed to reach a pivotal point with the girl with whom Emmet cheated.

[Wales2004]

Second is "Secret Life....." which will finally and perhaps mercifully be coming to an end.

I am not one of those people who claim this as some sort of guilty pleasure (which for me would be chocolate if I were ever to feel guilty about eating it but I don't). If anything, I might feel ashamed or embarrassed but I have no problem admitting to watching a lot of bad television and this is pretty bad.

The dialogue is unnatural and repetitious. Someone says something and someone repeats it. I was curious about seeing Molly Ringwald but I wish I hadn't been. I was struck by how many times they said the word "sex" for no reason at all. In one of the last episodes I can recall watching, the word "sex" was replaced with the word "gay" like the more times they said it, the more plausible whatever nonsense they were trying to pass off was. I'd stopped watching prior to that because I long since knew that they were tapped out on plots and could only continue to recycle and generate drama from text messages and their other usual insignificant, blown out of proportion non-events, but I ended up channel surfing on that one Monday they had their "gay" centric episode which bordered on laughable and was even more dreadful than their usual dreadful.

After months of juvenile George (Mark Derwin) seemingly accusing Ann (Molly Ringwald) or being gay or maybe he was just insisting because that's what most men do when their ex doesn't salivate over them, and several episodes in which Ricky's lesbian mother insisted that Ann was looking at her (the best detection method for all those "lesbianic" tendencies I am guessing), Ann goes off to Paris and is asked out by a woman. This leads to her discovering.....surprise....she's uhn gay. Then she gives the most awesome coming out speech, I've heard on a television show. Something along the lines of how this woman made her feel complete or whatever verbiage people like me usually relate to the whole I found my soul mate speech--only she was talking about having a drink with some woman leading to her discovering her sexuality. I just felt as if they took this completely serious issue of a woman in her forties coming to grips with this major change in her life and tried to cheapen it down to a little "Jerry Maguire" moment, although Molly Ringwald did her best with that sap.

To top it off, they had two of their most boy crazy horniest teenagers decide to kiss each other because all the girls want to know what that's like right? Ooh I kissed a girl and I liked it--oops no Katy Perry in the background--if only the used background music. Then one of them decides to dress in combat boots and "masculine" garb because the key to being a lesbian is kissing your best friend out of curiosity and then dressing like a guy to get that whole lesbian feeling I guess. it doesn't even matter that they had a lesbian student tell her off about it because they apparently thought the whole thing was enough of a joke that they could use this one girl to fix things. Plus, I am sure they figured that they've championed the gay guys so responsibly that it was a-okay to make fun of lesbians since no one takes girls that seriously anyway. Loosen up people.....it's a joke.

It was funny or not depending on how anyone wants to take it.

[frequentsoapfan]

I stopped watching Secret Life after the first season when it became all about everyone having sex and wasn't even sending a good message anymore like the PSA first season.

And why do they have such long ass seasons for their shows? They always do mid season finales at the end of what should be considered 1 season and then bring the show back to play out the rest of the season. Switched at birth had like a 30 epi season.

[Wales2004]

It seems like they ordered a bunch of episodes when they saw how well they performed in the ratings. They do that summer or fall season then a winter season. "Switched" is back in January.

As far as "Secret Life" goes, they are pretty disingenuous to spend entire episodes loaded with sex and the pursuit and the constant discussion of it and then have some little PSA in between telling kids to talk to their parents and parents not to assume their kids are having sex. Why not be genuine and show kids making responsible decisions to abstain and having enlightening discussions about the ramifications. I don't even think they've touched the topic of STDs (though I may be wrong).

Apparently the only major ramification from having sex is that you get pregnant at 15 and spend your time complaining about how hard it is to be a teenager with a baby, while everyone bends over backwards to help you and discourages you from getting married too young. Then you have to worry about some girl stealing your boyfriend which is more of an issue than balancing a baby on your hips and texting your friends about what she tried to do. I never knew how much of life I missed out on and how much of my high school days should have been preoccupied with discussing sex. I can't believe I even paid that much attention to any of my teachers in class.

[dragonflies]

I like ABC Family and wish they'd not just air Melissa & Joey in just the summer. I'd rather get a season like February thru November or something then they could air as they wanted.

[frequentsoapfan]

No what ABC Family has been doing for quite a few years now that I observed is either showing several epis in summer or fall ending it on what they call a mid season finale then bringing the show back in winter or spring and calling the whole thing one season instead of two seasons.

[Wales2004]

There must be some sort of benefit to their doing that. Maybe they think in splitting a season that way they are building anticipation for the show and the ratings will be better than just airing all the episodes in one continuous bloc.

It might actually be kind of a smart move on their part because it keeps them from preempting shows during holiday periods when major networks end up showing re-runs.

[frequentsoapfan]

Except sometimes they split the seasons too far apart. Like Lincoln heights and Greek for example right before cancellation. I swear those shows were gone for almost a year before being brought back for final seasons. I missed an entire half a season of Greek the way they kept messing with the time and day each time it was brought back.

[Wales2004]

It's almost amazing that they even got that much of a run. I thought "Beautiful People" was interesting but I must've been the only one. I'm not sure about "Greek," since I only watched the final season of it, but I think "Lincoln Heights" could have gone a little longer but it ended well enough.

"Jane By Design" struck me as a dramatic version of "True Jackson, VP" and I don't know what the thinking was behind Chloe the Egyptian Cat. I don't watch their big hits about lying. I did watch an episode in the beginning of PLL when Bianca Lawson's character first appeared but I just didn't get into it. I don't care about any of them and found myself more curious about the dead/missing friend.

[dragonflies]

Nickelodeon does something like this, they split up a season, and call it a new season, when it's actually the 2nd half of a season

[Wales2004]

Nickelodeon is actually a lot worse. ABC Family at least promotes their shows and makes sure viewers know when they are on. Nickelodeon will start a new show and keep it in the same slot for a few months then stop showing it and leave viewers to guess when and if it is still on. Or maybe they just do that with shows when they don't work out. I know this year's hopeful "How to Rock" didn't work out for them and they're going to burn off the episodes for the rest of the year. "iCarly" is on its way out and I believe I read that "Victorious" was going to be done next year as well. So they've got "Big Time Rush" and non-stop "SpongeBob." Oh and some new show with Scott Baio that may also fizzle. I don't even get the purpose of Teennick.

[frequentsoapfan]

At least they split the seasons. I mean Switched at Birth has been shwoing for over a year and just now they ended season 1.

As for Nick I liked the pilot of Scott Baio's show. It's about a sitcom star who's sitcom ends and he ends up as the stay at home dad because his wife got her old job revived on a soap opera. But it's on so early and doesn't repeat so I miss it every Sunday.

How to Rock was based off the book How to Rock Glasses and Braces where a popular girl gets kicked out of the clique she built when she gets glasses and braces yet after the pilot the glasses and braces dissapeared and she's just obsessed with getting her new group popular. That show is boring. TeenNick is all over the place programming wise. Nick Cannon doesn't know what he's doing.

[Becki]

I'd love to see Melissa and Joey on more as well. It's the only show I watch on ABC Family though.

[Wales2004]

I thought Nick Cannon was just an honorary chairman with no real authority. All he's contributed, as far as I can tell, is that Halo Awards program, some promo commercials, and I think he was involved in the production or some other capacity with "Raggs" which probably would have been a much bigger deal on Disney though it did premiere well ratings wise. I just think Disney would have pushed the songs endlessly by airing the songs in music video format and promoting them on Radio Disney.

TeenNick mainly shows reruns of old Nickelodeon shows and whatever incarnation of Degrassi that's out along with various Australian imports. That "SLIDE" show that they promoted so heavily is a one season show with 10 episodes yet you'd think it was something ongoing. The producers already announced that it wasn't returning and some of the cast are on other projects so why they'd go overboard with that makes no sense which is the nature of TeenNick. The new shows on Nickelodeon seem more like they would be on TeenNick but they don't seem to air first run American produced shows with the exception of the episodes of HH they sent to be burned off on TeenNick and they're probably only re-airing all 80 episodes because they have nothing else and they can at least guarantee that the group of fans that are pressing them for a second season will at least tune in to what they consider the most amazing show ever.

I have yet to see the Scott Baio show.

I really don't get why ABC Family didn't split those 30 episodes into three seasons since they seemed to air Summer-Winter-Fall. Maybe one day someone will interview someone at ABC Family who will explain why their seasons are handled that way.

[frequentsoapfan]

Nick Cannon produced a couple of movies for Nick/TeenNick like the failed girl band The School Gyrls(so many members left that group including replacements) and he helped The Wonder Girls promote some of their music in the US with the Wonder Girls movie.

I actually liked the channel better when it was The N. The programming was better and Nick reruns.

Anyway whoever runs TeenNick needs to work on the programming for what is supposed to be a teen channel there is far too much young child programming.

Back to ABC Family. I tried to get into Melissa and Joey but couldn't I can't say I watch alot of their programming anymore. These teen shows based on shallow teen books don't do it for me. When I tried to read Pretty Little Liars years ago I couldn't get into it. And I tried to watch the Lying Game but the acting was so blah(a big lack of screen presence on that show) and the story was boring me. And I watched a half a season marathon.