Our staff discuss their fav and least favs of all time below
Gilmore Girls: Rory Gilmore
By Rebecca Paz
From the very first episode of “Gilmore Girls,” the writers and producers built Rory Gilmore up as someone to idolize. She was a good student and aspiring journalist with a coffee addiction, nice friends and a whole town that adored her.
She was always the protagonist in the story, always saying and doing the right things. Little did we know she would soon destroy the life I aspired to live in the span of only a few episodes.
Everything started to fall apart when the innocent love triangles led to affairs in later seasons and the mischievous yacht-stealing with her boyfriend led to getting arrested and dropping out of Yale.
I thought Rory hit rock bottom when she gave up her lifelong dream and left the Ivy League behind, but this caused a rift in her relationship with her mother, which the show was based on, dragging the Rory we thought we knew even further down.
I couldn’t stand to watch her make one bad decision after another as she ruined her chances at the life all us viewers planned for her. Sure, maybe not everything always turns out the way we plan it, but the writers took it too far.
They turned a character that I and many others idolized into a character I couldn’t stand to watch as she ruined the premise of the show.
Vampire Diaries: Elena Gilbert
By Rhea Newnaha
Growing up, I always thought the main character was the best character. However, Elena Gilbert is a prime example of why that mentality needed to change.
Bad things happened to everyone, but she acted like she was the only one who was allowed to grieve and feel sadness.
Just one of many examples: By season 4, Bonnie lost both of her parents, her grandmother and Jeremy, but Elena made her own grief everyone’s problem. She went on a rampage after Jeremy died that allowed no room for viewers to find remorse for her. She stole Caroline’s prom dress, went on a murdering spree and played with Damon’s feelings (but she was already doing that anyway, so…)
She toys around with both Stefan and Damon emotionally, and although it adds to the drama, it’s hard to watch because she doesn’t deserve them. I’m struggling to find things she has actually done for anyone else, and while I’m sure they exist, they are few and far between.
Another moment of my frustration was when she wanted to remove her memories after Damon died, which seemed far too irrational.
Everyone lost Damon. Alaric lost his best friend, and Stefan lost his brother, but she was making the biggest deal out of it.
Damon even tells Elena, “I would rather spend every moment of agony, than erase the memory of you.”
It’s just disrespectful.
Gossip Girl: Jenny Humphrey
By Maha Jiwani
Jenny Humphrey was introduced to “Gossip Girl” as a sweet and innocent character who wanted to fit in at her new prestigious private school on the upper east side of New York.
She becomes a minion to one of the most popular girls at school, Blair Waldorf and desperately works to be a part of her friend group.
As time goes by, we see “Little J” turn into a racoon-eyed villain in the show.
Corrupted by the toxic environment of the upper east side, Jenny turns her back on all of her friends and family.
Jenny’s downfall begins as she steals a designer dress, dethrones Blair and stops going to school to grow her fashion career.
She pursues her best friends’ boyfriends, exposes her friends and families’ deepest secrets, and turns her back on the people who love her just so she can climb a step higher on the social ladder.
Jenny becomes everything she loathed in Blair and more, making her one of the most hated characters in “Gossip Girl.”
Keeping up with the Kardashians
By Marie Kah
“Keeping up with the Kardashians” came out in 2007 right as I was about to turn 3 and ran for 20 seasons. Throughout those 20 seasons, I have watched members of the Kardashian family get married, get divorced, get in legal battles and get vampire facials.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of the family themselves but have never been able to stop from indulging in the affairs of America’s, and probably the rest of the world’s, most popular reality TV family. Oftentimes I think reality TV watchers hate-watch to make themselves feel better about the normalcy of their life, but I think others including me watch to gain a sense of nostalgia.
I can vividly remember sitting with my mother in elementary school while she watched “Keeping up with the Kardashians.” Throughout middle school, I remember watching Kylie’s lip kit tutorials and loving her friendship with Jordyn Woods (which did not age well). Throughout every phase of my life, the one thing that has stayed consistent has been the Kardashians.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more conscious of the more problematic sides of the Kardashians’ notoriety. Whether it’s their supposed fetishization of black men, promotion of unhealthy dieting practices or their constant cultural appropriation, the Kardashians have had their fair share of controversies. I still can’t seem to not keep up (pun fully intended) with the first family of reality TV.
Reality TV allows people to think they are making false relationships with the people they’re watching. These false relationships cause people to believe they have some sort of personal stake in the affairs of reality stars’ lives.
This creates a never-ending cycle of reality stars finding new ways to stay relevant and people continuing to fuel their notoriety.
Velma
By Will Blackburn
I went into “Velma” expecting the absolute worst, but somehow my expectations were not low enough. Hate-watching a show can be enjoyable if the comedy is “so bad it’s good,” but “Velma” was far from that. Most of the jokes sounded like middle school humor or tried way too hard to be “woke.” All the other “jokes” were just blatantly racist or sexist. This comedy didn’t even earn a pity laugh from me.
Whenever I wasn’t annoyed with a distasteful joke, I was confused trying to understand the four or five different plots that were going on all at once. Each character was always on their own mission to solve their own frustrating goal that the viewer could never root for because every character in the show is so unlikeable. Each character was poorly written to be egoistic and so unenjoyable to watch that throughout the show I wasn’t rooting for anyone.
So, if the jokes weren’t funny, the cast of characters were terrible and the storyline was confusing, boring and frustrating to deal with, are there any positives? I mean, at least the soundtrack was good.