I'm diving into mass media for Spring semester 2010 at Metropolitan State College of Denver. I'll take a critical look at as many types of mass media as I can and write about them here. This is for my JRN 1010 project.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Everybody Hates Chris- BET

The remote was sitting on the TV stand next to the sofa so I decided to see what was on the tube. I chose an old episode of Everybody Hates Chris on BET.

In this episode Chris was hospitalized for walking pneumonia which sidelined his plans to pay for his family's Chirstmas gifts held on layaway at Goldstein's Department Store.

On top of going to school, Chris had been working two jobs to earn the money for the gifts. In addition to working for Doc at the convenience store, he took a job working as an elf for his Santa Clause father.

Meanwhile, his siblings were at home brown nosing their mother in hopes of landing their own items off the Christmas wish list. Ultimately, Chris getting sick foiled Drew and Tanya's scheme because Christmas is now cancelled for the entire family.  But, while recovering in the hospital, Chris is enlightened by a grouchy, sickly man in the hosptial bed next to him whose banter made him more appreciative of his family and the blessings in his life.

In the end, Chris' dad came through when the family delivered presents to Chris' hospital bedside; he made the layaway payment for Chris and together Christmas was saved. The only thing Chris received was the receipt from Godstein's and his dad saying, "You owe me thirty-five dollars." Chris smiled and the others cheerfully opened their presents.

The commercials during this broadcast were interestingly different from some of the other networks I watch. Payday advances, car loans for people with bad credit and pre-paid Visa card ads were mixed in with ones for acne medicine and previews of The Michael Vick Project.

Volume increased as the show broke to commercial. I suppose the ads were louder on purpose. Though I know this is commonplace on other networks, these seemed to be much louder and was rather annoying.

After blogging about this episode of Everybody Hates Chris, I found the following information on Wikipedia:  The title of this episode, originally airing on December 11th, 2006 was titled, "Everybody Hates Kris", Kris being the cranky man sharing the hospital bed with Chris. 

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