HON394

I think another appeal to reality TV shows is the people, which is something that I think is more of a recent development of our generation. I remember watching Flavor Flav's(from rap group Public Enemy) reality dating show back in the day and I would only watch it because of how ridiculous Flavor Flav is. I mean, the dude carries around a clock and says FLAVOR FLAAAAAAAV 

While I was reading "How to Look at Television" I thought about Pokemon and Barney, for the sake of that childhood nostalgia :P I thought of these shows because of the part in which Adorno talks about expectations of outcomes in television. I realized then that in every episode of Pokemon, Team Rocket stirs up some trouble, interferes with Ash and friends, but only to be defeated by Ash's overpowered Pikachu. And every time this would happen, Team Rocket members Jesse, James, and Meowth fly off into the sky and say "Team Rocket's blasting off again!" Thus, every episode, one can expect Team Rocket to "blast off" after failing to do anything to significantly offset the main plot of the show, and the show would end subsequently after. I also thought of Barney because of the trademark "I Love You" song sang at the end of every show and that's when the viewer knew that the show was ending. I did a bit of research and apparently a television trope called "Every Episode Ending" describes this theme. Every Episode Ending is basically a way to inform the audience that a episode of a show is ending without explicitly showing a "the end" or "to be continued". So yeah, I found that element of television expectations to be pretty interesting.

I've always found the concept of nostalgia interesting because I like to ponder over things and reflect upon the past quite a bit and this leads to me feeling nostalgic. One thing I associate strongly with nostalgia is memory. When I linger over the past and develop a longing for a past home, memories come naturally and I'm sure it's the same for everyone. But how do memories appear, visually? What do these images appear as in your mind? I've always thought memories as kind of murky or even smokey in appearance, with maybe a grey-ish or blue-ish tint. Thus, the cigarette smoke in the scene from Mad Men shown today in class at the end with the Kodak machine to me helped to add a stronger sense of nostalgia. When the projected images were shown, the cigarette smoke overlay the images, creating kind of a dreamy and nostalgic feel to the pictures which are Don's memories. So in essence, memory and nostalgia go hand in hand, both of which are a result of one's desires for the past or for something that isn't the present.