The show that I watched for this week is one that I've never heard of before this week but I decided it sounded interesting so I gave it a try. The show is called Gigantic and they air it on TeenNick. You can find all the episodes that have aired so far here:
http://www.teennick.com/shows/gigantic/episode-guide
The show is about the lives of several high school aged kids who live in Hollywood. The majority of the kids are either rich or famous (or both) and then a couple of the other lead characters are neither but are still friends with the others. Anna and her younger brother Walt are the children of two famous movie stars and have just returned from two years in Australia where their parents were shooting a movie. Their friends include Piper, the larger than life adopted daughter of an action movie star who doesn't take crap from anyone, Piper's also adopted brother Finn, Joey, the normal teen who has a mutual attraction to Anna, and Vanessa, Anna's frenemy who is a young actress.
This show is definitely geared towards younger teens. I think what makes it so entertaining and intriguing is that the teens in the show are basically normal teens but of course they live in a very non-normal place. They constantly have paparazzi after them or are attending swanky and expensive parties, but at heart they are just normal teens trying to deal with issues like body type, parents, and crushes. They also get themselves into amusing situations at times. The plot gets very juicy at times with everyone lying to everyone else and even the audience is never quite sure who is telling the truth.
As far as an educational aspect goes, I think this show definitely is educational about social issues. There is a lot of talk about parent/child relationships and everyone in the show has a slightly different relationship with his/her parents (some good and some bad). One of the characters, Piper, is a larger girl but is extremely confident about herself and her body. In one episode after being insulted constantly by a blogger about her weight she tracks down the girl and finding the blogger just an overweight girl trying to compensate by putting others down, instead of having a cat fight Piper tells the girl about how girls need to stick together and not put each other down and how everyone is beautiful. The episode ends with Piper and Anna making a sign to flash at the paparazzi.
(I couldn't get the clip to stop autoplaying so here is the link)
http://www.teennick.com/videos/clip/.html
Besides those issues, Gigantic also deals with other teen issues such as relationships, sex, and the rumor mill. It shows these in such a light as to inform and I think help kids start to think about these kinds of things or what they might do in the same situation.
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