2 posts tagged “tv”

Ok, I have to admit that the NBC show Scrubs is a guilty pleasure for me.  It is not at all Simon friendly, so I have to record it and watch it after he goes to bed.  I don't love it enough that I ever tape or watch the reruns, but I think I will keep last night's musical episode on my DVR forever.

For anyone who has ever even remotely liked Scrubs, and anyone who is at all familiar with musical theater, this episode truly is a must-see.  I don't know when Steve and I have laughed more at a tv show than we did this one.  After it was over, we watched it all over again.

Essentially, the main plot point revolves around a woman (Stephanie D'Abruzzo from Avenue Q) with a condition that causes her to hear every conversation as a song.  It was written by the people who wrote Avenue Q--who started their careers writing songs for Sesame Street.  Each song was a parody/homage to a song from another musical.  When we watched the second time, we tried to figure out the inspiration for the songs.  I can't remember all of them at the moment; but Les Mis, Gilbert & Sullivan, Rent, The Full Monty, Grease, and Avenue Q were definately included.  It was brilliant!

You can already find individual songs on YouTube. (I hope someone will upload the whole episode soon.)  They also said last night that you'll be able to download it from iTunes. 

While I was going through boxes in the basement, I ran across a book about "The Real World" that I bought back in 1995.  It has info on the first three seasons of "The Real World".  Synopses, pictures, and where-are-they-now kind of stuff.  (Which wasn't all that interesting because it was printed just a year or two after the shows aired.)

I remember buying the book because I had gotten to sucked into the San Francisco season.  I hadn't ever watched the show before, but watched an episode or two of San Francisco toward the beginning of the season, became hooked, and wound up watching it for hours at a time when they'd play marathons of it on MTV.  

For those of you who don't remember (and how could you not remember) San Francisco was the season with Pedro, Rachel, Cory, Mohamed, Pam, Judd, Puck, and Jo.  Pedro was the adorable guy from Cuba who was the AIDS educator. Rachel was the conservative brunette who started sowing her oats by getting tatoos and piercings the minute she joined the house. Cory was the cutesy, blonde doormat. Mo was the super-cool rappin' hipster with the dreads.  Pam was the super-smart Asian chick with orange hair, who was going to med school at Harvard.  Judd was the cartoonist who was perpetually looking for love.  Puck was the obnoxious bike messenger who was kicked out, and Jo was the British vegan chick with the abusive ex-husband who came in a replaced Puck after they kicked him out.

I wasted spent a little time this morning Googling them to find out what's happened to them in the almost 15 years since then.  Of course we all know that poor Pedro passed away from complications of AIDS the day after the last episode aired.  (We all watched the memorial episode and cried like babies.  If I'm not mistaken, Steve watched it with me and he even cried like a baby.)   Rachel wound up marrying Sean Duffy from the Boston season, and they're living in Wisconsin with their two daughters and son.  As of 2004, Cory was living in Anaheim with her husband and teaching English and French.  Mohamed got his masters and is now a speaker who tries to train people to be more tolerant of each other.  Pam is a now a doctor, and in 2000 she married Judd who wrote a book about his experience with Pedro, illustrated a bunch of the "Idiot's Guide" books, and created "The Life and Times of Juniper Lee" (if you have Nickelodean addicted children you know who that is.)  Puck managed to irritate people a little past his alloted 15 minutes, had a few appearances and bit parts, but doesn't seem to be doing anthing noteworthy.  I couldn't find much on Jo, but I saw that she did have a bit part in the remake of "Sabrina", playing one of Sabrina's Paris friends. (I'll have to pull out that DVD and watch it to see if I can spot her.)

So there you go, more than you ever wanted to know.