Category Archives: entertainment

How TV Gets Me Through the School Year

By Megan Dang


A couple of weeks ago, I finished watching HBO’s dark dramedy Succession after what felt like an eternity of being the only person with a pulse who hadn’t seen it. I immediately texted my parents to encourage them to watch it. Seconds after, I turned back to HBO and hit play on the latest episode of The Last of Us. My mom’s response to my text was full of judgment: “Aren’t you a college student? How do you have the time to watch all that TV?”

Photo by Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash


At first I felt defensive, like I needed to have some reason to justify my (yes, possibly a bit concerning) TV-binging habits. My mom had a point, after all; in the past few months alone, I had serially binged Succession, The White Lotus, The Last of Us, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul, interspersed with a few revisits to some long-time favorite shows. All this added up to a copious amount of hours that, for my own peace of mind, I’d prefer not to calculate. Eventually the excuse I came up with to preserve my dignity was, “I’m a screenwriting major, watching TV is part of my education!.” This is partially true. In all of my film classes, our professors encourage us to watch as much TV as possible in our own time for the sake of studying the writing behind it. How was this plot point set up? How was this backstory established? When you watch TV critically, that can absolutely be a learning experience.


But if I’m being honest with myself, I can’t say that I always watch TV with my writing cap on. As I watched Breaking Bad, I wasn’t thinking about act breaks or story structure; I was so immersed in the on-screen world that I felt like I was living in it. Watching Succession, I wasn’t analyzing the characters and their dialogue; they were simply people I knew, people I could laugh with. The reason for this is simple: it’s hard to look at something you’re experiencing so profoundly through an objective, scholarly lens, especially when you’re in the thick of it.
However, I know I’m not the only college student who spends a little too much time on streaming services—and a lot of those other students don’t even have being a film major as an excuse. But when I thought about it more, I realized that there was no need for an excuse, anyway. Television is more than just a way of passing time that you don’t have. Television is escapism.

Photo by Praveen Gupta on Unsplash


College students are certainly a demographic in need of escapism. In my first few months at USC, I grappled with crippling homesickness. I missed my home, the sense of familiarity and comfort, the feeling of sprawling out on my couch and being surrounded by family. Even now it’s a feeling I experience regularly. Here on campus, TV has become a way to combat that feeling. The screen serves as a universal safe space, an indication that work time is over. The characters become family, keeping you company when you’re holed up alone in your dorm.


There’s no reason college students should feel guilty for our late night Netflix binges, regardless of whether we have the time for it or not. College is possibly one of the most transitional periods of our lives. Things are constantly changing around us: classes, professors, people, homes, friends. Television provides a source of stability and consistency throughout all of that. Often it’s as close to a constant sense of home as you can get on campus. Treat yourself to a binge sometime—you deserve it.

Featured Image by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

Megan is a sophomore studying screenwriting at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s very familiar with the L.A. lifestyle and culture. When she’s not writing movies and TV, she loves to watch movies and TV. Her other hobbies include reading, art, playing ukulele, listening to rock music, and playing video games. Most importantly, she loves being around people and making new friends. 

Grammys Review 2023: Favorite Artists and Well-Deserved Awards

By Natalie Grace Sipula

As an avid music lover, I am always excited to see who the nominees for the Grammy Awards will be. The Grammy Awards, also known as the Grammys, is an awards show presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize talent in the music industry. The award categories span a variety of different genres and roles in the music industry, but the most widely anticipated awards are typically Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. 

While the Grammys have come under criticism in recent years for not always recognizing artists of diverse backgrounds and focusing mainly on pop music, the performances and awards still garner a large amount of recognition for the artists who receive them. It can be fun to tune in and see who wins in each category, especially in years where a lot of big name artists release new music. I was particularly excited for the 2023 Grammys, as two of my favorite musical artists, Bad Bunny and Harry Styles, were nominated for awards. This surely turned out to be a great year for both of these artists, with Bad Bunny performing the opening act and winning an award in the category Best Música Urbana Album, and Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House” winning Album of the Year. You can peruse the exhaustive list of who was nominated and who won in each category here.

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Bad Bunny’s opening performance was particularly notable, as he is the only person to open a Grammys show with a performance entirely in Spanish. He represented his home country of Puerto Rico proudly, choosing songs for his setlist that mentioned the strength of his country and performing alongside folkloric dancers. His performance had everyone in the audience dancing to the traditional merengue dance music. He even made history as the first person to have a Spanish language album nominated for Album of the Year! As someone who speaks Spanish and has been listening to Reggaeton (a popular Latin American music style) for years, I was so excited to see so much discussion surrounding this performance. In my opinion, this represents necessary changes and recognition for minority artists at popular American awards shows such as the Grammys.

Another exciting moment was watching Harry Styles win the Album of the Year for “Harry’s House”. While many people were disappointed to see Harry win over Beyonce’s “Renaissance”, Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti”, or Lizzo’s “Special”, I was actually very happy to see Harry’s win (although I think the other artists nominated had great albums too). Harry Styles has had a landmark year in music, including topping the charts for number #1 album and number #1 track with his single “As It Was”. To me, it is so impressive that Harry has been able to greatly evolve in his sound and musical style across only three solo albums, and that he is already selling out arenas so early in his solo career. I had the opportunity to see his “Harry’s House” tour live in concert at the Forum in Los Angeles, and I completely understood why he has been having so much success this year. He performed a fairly long set list completely solo, remaining high energy throughout the performance even after he had canceled some shows earlier that week from being sick. At the concert, I could feel the positivity and energy everywhere and his live renditions of the songs were even better than the recorded versions!

Photo taken by me of Harry Styles performing onstage at the Kia Forum

Overall, I think Harry Styles’s Grammy award was well-deserved, as was Bad Bunny’s and the other artists winning in major categories. I am excited to see more creativity in new music releases this year, and recommend tuning into the Grammys next year to stay in the know about popular and talented artists. 

Featured Image by Sudhith Xavier on Unsplash

Natalie is pursuing a double major in Philosophy, Politics, & Law and Spanish and plans to pursue a career in criminal law.  She is a senior from Cleveland, Ohio and is a Presidential Scholar studying in the Thematic Option Honors Program.  On campus, Natalie is involved in QuestBridge Scholars, USC Model UN, Phi Alpha Delta law fraternity, Trojan Scholars Society, and Gamma Phi Beta sorority.  Growing up she was dedicated to theatre, including studying and performing at Cleveland Play House.  She has served as a volunteer camp counselor with Mi Pueblo Culture Camp in Cleveland and has volunteered with Angel City Pit Bull animal shelter in Los Angeles.  An avid concertgoer, she also enjoys visiting SoCal’s beaches and mountains and exploring all that L.A. has to offer.  You’ll find her reading Russian literature, watching telenovelas, playing acoustic guitar, hiking, drinking boba and eating sushi.

A Hidden Gem of American Sitcoms

By Yingyi Lin

I am a big fan of sitcoms. I have watched many popular American sitcoms that have gained mass international popularity: Friends, The Big Bang Theory, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and Modern Family, just to name a few. Many times, these shows take place in American metropolitan cities such as New York City and Los Angeles, places which are interesting to international students like me. The hidden gem ranking the top of my favorite sitcom list, however, has to be Veep.

The HBO show Veep takes place in the capital city of America, Washington D.C. For many reasons, Veep is not as popular as other American shows in China, or in other countries where many international students come from. This mismatch of the popularity of the show with its quality is what makes me call it a hidden gem of American sitcoms. Veep has won many accolades for its quality: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the actress of America’s first woman president Selina Meyer featured in Veep, has won six Primetime Emmy Awards in a row. Her award acceptance speech was among the best, and she was even honored the 2018 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor for it.

Photo by Caleb Fisher on Unsplash

Before watching Veep, I did not realize that I indeed care so much about politics. As someone interested in learning about human nature, my favorite quote from Selina Meyer is “Politics is about people”. To me, caring about politics does not mean I care which party people stand for; instead, I am intrigued by why and how people make their choices. The interaction between Veep’s politicians, their followers, and their people is a vivid reality of humanity—one that is not only determined by one’s own personal desires but also deeply shaped by the context of one’s life. Veep is more than a political satire of the country’s many presidencies. To me, Veep is about American politics and the everyday life of people living in America. 

The most interesting thing about Veep is that Meyer, like all other politicians in the show, never discloses which party she stands for. Having witnessed the extreme political divide of America myself, the ambiguous political standpoint among Veepers to me exposes the common (and unfortunate) goal of both parties to win more voters. Politicians strive for what they want, but it is unclear whether these desires align with the desires of the people.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

As someone who studies family dynamics as part of my major, TV shows centering around family dynamics are my favorite, such as Downton Abbey, The Middle (the most underrated American family sitcom), and Modern Family. The family dynamics in Veep, however, are very dysfunctional. The characters of Veep relentlessly sacrifice their families for personal political achievement.

I have learned a lot from Veep, and a lot of what I have learned are things that I would not have consciously sought out. For instance, what happens if there is a tie in a presidential election? Veep hypothetically features this scenario, although a tie did happen (in the 1800 presidential election). Through Veep, I also came to know more about America’s lobbying culture and the polling industry—with the latter sharing similarities to my own research.  Veep also has a rich glossary of newly created words, most of which are used by characters in the show to insult other characters. Many of the jokes compound words to create these insults. ‘Voldemeyer’ is such an example, a nickname of Meyer by the media. It is interesting for me to see these nicknames are formed by multiple words in English, and I have learned many different cultural references from this.

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