I visited my pst host fam the other weekend, and it was great. I also watched loads of Armenian television. Got to see my favorite show Anna, which actually isn't a good show, but it's my favorite, I can usually understand the characters on that one more than others.
But then I saw this other show that I watched around New Year's which I never figured out the name of, or understood at all, but I do know that it is one of the worst shows in the world (from an American perspective. I realize comedy is culturally defined and varies widely from culture to culture). It has a logo that looks like it could be for two and a half men (not that I've seen that show but I'm pretty sure you can guess what the logo would be from the title).
The show basically is this guy with a big nose and a pained, awful, fake voice that is meant to be stupid of funny (you see this on a lot of Armenian comedies) and then another smaller guy, who always has his back/shoulders hunched, and a sideways-looking 'I'm constipated' face, and also speaks in a stupid fake voice. And the little kid, I see him sometimes, don't really know what he does, it's a child actor, I'm not gonna get on him.
And how do I know that they are using fake voices and what not because I saw interviews with them at New Year's during commercials and they have normal voices.
And finally the name, which is also the theme song is Kargin Serial. Kargin is a word that is essentially meaningless, but just means good, or nice. I have seen it do describe various types of stores. And serial is just, serial. Serial tv show. And the theme song is those two words repeated. Le sigh.
And also, this is a topic I have discussed before, that of the music used in Armenian television. First of all it's taken from other sources (I didn't say stolen and used without permission, but it probably is).
This is a given, they steal from movie soundtracks, lots of orchestral stuff, okay, whatever. Well then I was surprised when first, I heard a country song. I can't remember what it was about but it was happy sounding, so it was like, happy montage sortof scene from something. I told my parents that the song is in English, and it's American bar-bar (bar-bar is the Armenian word for dialect/accent). I think they understood me.
Then I was floored when I heard this ominous sounding thing on another serial which took a moment for me to recognize . . . It was from a video game. World of Goo. A really cute, simple, physics game. And they stole from it! It was really cool.
It's this ominous song, and they used it for just the random parts, and I saw it multiple times because the new show from the night before is played 3 or 4 times during the day. So I saw it again and again. And again it is used so inappropriately! Nothing is happening! And it's this very ominous song.
It's so annoying for me. I want some subtlety to the music in my shows. For example, I'm watching this show Game of Thrones on HBO (I recommend it to anyone, amazing show!) and you have a king and queen talking, they had a political marriage, the king loved someone who was killed when he was fighting to become king.
The conversation starts pretty light, they both hate each other but are comfortable enough to talk openly. No music.
Then they start talking about the women he loved, and then some slight orchestral music comes in with "you wanna know the horrible truth . . . " and he says some things, and the music is played, with still some background noise coming from birds and such outside. The queen says she felt something for him once. The music continues.
Then she asks if their happiness could have ever been possible. Then the music cuts out to just the outside noise, as the king answers. Genius. Subtle. (And also still, culturally bound to my American expectations of music in tv/movies).
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