mahidevran

The usual suspects -- the Bachelor/ettes, the Honey Boo Boos and their reality brethren, and especially Girls (looking forward to the day Lena Dunham tumbles into the black hole of irrelevance) -- have already been brought up several times, so I won't expound on what's been already said. With that in mind, Outlander, which has also been mentioned for being a 'rape show', but my annoyance stems more from the discourse surrounding it. I've see it presented as the "feminist fantasy alternative" to Game of Thrones (which is a damn low bar to set in the first place), touted for it's exemplary handling of sexual assault -- but no commentary has presented a compelling argument why. The pieces of the episode I know only leave a worst impression: from what I remember the heroine (Clare?) being bent-over, half-naked, threatened with rape for an extended scene while the male lead barked "get ur paws off mah wife". It seemed exploitative and I doubt that scene is an exception. I'm not opposed to depiction of rape onscreen, but its seems too many series end up displaying this edgy voyeurism in portraying such heinous acts. Not even going to get into the husband's "punishment" for her "disobedience" (which led to the attempted rape), or the crummy way that dilemma was resolved. Domestic violence is an absolute no-no for me in a 'ship', historical fiction or not -- this aspect would work if it were presented from Clare's perspective of a woman negotiating those waters (especially one from a different time period!), but when the relationship is nonstop pushed as the one true love to be shipped by the audience, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I'll also mention The Tudors. Largely due to over-saturation when it comes to historical fiction and period drama in general, but also because I find Anne Boleyn vastly overrated as 'heroine'. Just doesn't interest me (Natalie Dormer's acting is also fairly cringeworthy).

I saw these in air in Oregon and Washington, so you may be on to something there. There's another version of the ad which involves a swarm of ninja clones (played by the same woman, who can now also fly), but I can't seem to find it online.

Commercial for the plant fertilizer HB-101. Not so much a head-scratcher in terms of internal logic, but in the sense of who in marketing thought this was good enough to air? It is dreadfully, embarrassingly bad.

"Delish" as apocope is first attested in the written corpus in 1920, and has rapidly increased in frequency since the late 1990s. I'm inclined to say Rachael Ray and her use of slang is more reflective of popular trends, in which her show is part of a larger feedback loop, than a pioneer of the term herself. Indeed, its popularly assumed that broadcast media has led to widespread systemic language change, including dedialectalisation, but such statements misrepresent a complex topic (and ignores sociolinguistic concepts such as register!) So while television has been linked with these trends in some cases, I wouldn't say regional varieties have been "flattened out" because of it, not by a long shot. I apologize in advance as I don't know of any non-technical literature focused on this particular topic, but this article (2014) is a good introduction to the subject and includes a review of recent scholarship (skip to p.21 if you're uninterested in theory and frameworks). A more technical read, which references the trend in Glasgow, as well as a study in rural Japan, can be viewed here. Sections 1.1 and 1.2 of the EastEnders article in my previous post also provide an overview of studies.

What a perfect place to make my first post. I study linguistics; this is my jam. One of the more fascinating recent studies (2013) examined phonological shifts among working-class Glaswegian youth, influenced the popularity of London-based series -- in particular, Eastenders. The full article may be read here (it isn't too technical, as far as linguistic publications go). And even if the study isn't of particular interest, the first section offers a brief summary of broadcast media's impact on language change.