I did this earlier this year and I found it really interesting so I figured that I would revisit to see, who has caught my attention in recent television and who I am looking forward to watching as the Fall season commences. As usual I feel the need to tell you that this blog is incredibly bias but I am also open to argument... if you think I'm wrong or you just want to tell me who you would pick then please comment. Come on, I promise I won't prove you wrong too hard.
Glee
I figured why not start on a controversial point and I'm pretty sure I am going to ruffle a few feathers with this one. For starters, Glee is one of those programs that causes controversy in it's own right. People either love it or hate it, and the people who hate it really hate it. In fact the people who love it really really love it as well, so I am probably not going to win to many friends in either circle with his blog. Whatever, back to Quinn. Sure she was set up as the villain, kind of your typical mean girl, there to get in the way of the main characters journey to happiness. Like most of Glee's characters Quinn us basically a walking cliché, she's head cheerleader, dating the quarter back and president of the abstinence club... that is until she gets pregnant with her boyfriend's best friends baby. This can be seen as your average punish the promiscuous girl trope, and it kind of is (I mean how many high school girls actually get pregnant after their first time – all of them according to American TV). But I see something more when it comes to this character. Quinn lies to her dimwitted boyfriend about him being the father of her child, yes this is not the nicest thing to do but the way she explains it gives her a kind of agency that is not often afforded teen parents. She chooses Finn to be the father because she feels like he will be a better father then bad boy puck. The same determination and ability to act can be seen when she decides that she will give up the baby for adoption, once this decision is made she does not waver in it for a second, despite the attempts from Puck to temp her into the traditional family unit. Quinn is generally depicted as callous, selfish and manipulative but she is hardly the only character to exhibit these qualities. Her rival, Rachel Berry, is constantly acting with selfish motives (I don't know that she ever acts without them) but Quinn's agency is generally shown to be negative while Rachel's is depicted as positive because it concerns her trying to further her career.
I find Quinn's character so intriguing because despite the fact that she is the popular cheerleader, something I am most definitely not, I feel I can relate to her more then any of the other characters on the show. Rachel may be a loser, but she is incredibly sure of herself and she knows who she is, completely. Quinn in contrast is conflicted and unsure, she has no idea who she is and as a result she spends all her time trying to maintain an identity she created for herself, simply because she doesn't know any other way to be. I'm excited to see what happens in Season Three, looks like she taken things to extremes and she's trying a new personality on for size. This is hopefully a good thing because at least she is exploring options which suggest that she might have acknowledged, or be about to acknowledge, that she has no idea who she is.
Caroline Forbes – Candice Accola
The Vampire Diaries
This blonde bombshell is without a doubt the best part about this show. Sure I've said that I like this show, and I do, but if it came down to it I will let ever other character on this program, including the lovely Salvatore brothers die to protect this girl. Yes she's blonde, and a cheerleader (but thats' not really important and kind forgotten about) so I may have a little bit of a fetish at the moment but that doesn't mean that Caroline Forbes is any less interesting. For starters she's the other girl. All these new vampire texts have a quirky/intense/damaged girl at the heart of them, she is both beautiful and deep yet somehow kind of an outcast – in short there is just something about her that makes every single supernatural hunk fall madly in love with her. Caroline is not that girl, she is that girls friend and occasional rival. She's not the supportive understanding friend either, she's the one that doesn't figure out that the town is riddled with vampires despite the fact that she was dating (I used that word loosely) one for a while. Caroline is even openly jealous of the perfect Elena, voicing what all of us at home were thinking – why does everyone love her? To be honest, next to Caroline I don't know why anyone would choose the boring straight laced Elena, but maybe it's a vampire thing. For a character that could have been just another stupid-blonde cliché Caroline manages to show amazing depth even from the first episode. She always says the wrong thing because she tries too hard, this is particularly noticeable next to the ever cool and calm Elena, who doesn't seem to make mistakes – I don't mean the big ones, I mean the little everyday mistakes that everyone can relate to. Poor Caroline makes a lot of these. Also she's is funny, in a dark program like The Vampire Diaries this is really noticeable, and she's happy. Being happy might not seem like a big thing, but sometimes it seems that in this kind of supernatural world all the girls seem to do is wine. You're dating a totally hot vampire, it's like every girls dream quit complaining. Even when something truly terrible happens to Caroline she still manages to have a smile. The action and speed may be what keeps me going back to The Vampire Diaries but Caroline Forbes is the reason I care about it. Now that she finally got the boy I am exited to see what happens to her this season... notice how I am ignoring certain aspects of the most recent episode – it is because I am still in denial and I am too scared to even contemplate it yet.
While this is a list, it's not really a very long one... this is simply because it's something that changes over time as shows move on and develop. So hopefully I will keep coming back to this concept; well is the characters that make us care about TV after all.
Enjoy, or don't... You know the drill - comment.
xx
