Watch On: Amazon Prime|c_203658092358_m_ftpwmNU6-dc_s_&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr9nw48mb2QIVWLnACh0Kzw7IEAAYASAAEgKni_D_BwE What is an empty ice rink good for, if not for letting a teen vampire slayer beat off evil demons before kissing the demon face of her ensouled demon boyfriend? NOTHING, is what. So much sanctioned touching! So much adorable clumsiness to bond over! So many possibilities of wowing a crush with some sweet ice-bound skills!Īgain, as with skiing, American television offers lots of options.īuffy the Vampire Slayer, “What’s My Line? Part 1” Where shows use the lodge and/or slopes in ski trip episodes to limit their characters’ (especially romantic) options, they use figure skating episodes to expand them. It’s very bright and gross and fun, and will make you just as very glad the 1980s are over. These people are monsters, but they sure have a great time skiing and sending up the hook-up ski party flicks of the 1980s. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “The Gang Hits the Slopes” As a bonus, it features a whole snowboard-based Civil Rights Movement subplot, in which Junior learns the meaning of “I Have a Dream” by being discriminated against as a snowboarder. It’s a sunny, snowy blast.Ī classic from black-ish’s first season, this is one of the Ski Trip category’s family crucible episodes. This two-parter from the first big star of MTV’s scripted Golden Age (RIP) sends Jenna (Ashley Rickards) and her friends on a senior ski trip up and down a real live mountain covered with real live snow for two full episodes, leaving plenty of time for skiing and smooches. That said, most of those dramatic crucibles don’t contain all that much skiing. It’s not just romances that benefit from the crucible of the slopes, though-family shenanigans ( Sabrina, the Teenage Witch), friend drama ( Girl Meets World), and murder plots ( Murder She Wrote, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) all thrive up where the air is spare. Skiing, what with its built-in elements of isolation and confinement, is the go-to outdoorsy plot device for shows with couples who are facing obstacles both getting together ( That 70s Show, Frasier) and still smarting from a breakup ( That 70s Show, Friends). The making of the list itself was illuminating-I welcome everyone to dip in and see not only all the shows that have taken on winter sports, but also the ones that have done so multiple times (predictably, South Park less predictably, Sister, Sister)-but for those of you who just want a straightforward guide of the best episodes representing each Olympic event that are currently streaming somewhere easy to turn to in between NBC’s official coverage of the actual 2018 games, here you go: Luge has only ever been made the focus of a show once, by Nickelodeon’s Rocket Power. Ice skating, skiing, and hockey are all heavily represented. These lessons spring from a spreadsheet I compiled of 130+ unique representations of winter sports on English-language television ranging from this month’s upcoming 4-episode reality miniseries, Bachelor: Winter Games, all the way back to 1955’s “George Goes Skiing” episode of the classic comedy series Burns and Allen. ![]() And yet, there are more episodes of television that feature curling than those that feature snowboarding (my working theory is that everyone who cares about snowboarding would rather be out actually shredding powder than sitting home and watching actors pretend to do the same). Doug fought so hard to establish 25 years ago.ħ. Bobsleigh does not get the cultural glory John Candy and Doug E. Hockey stories are used either as the locus of murderous rage (crime procedurals), or as lowkey ways to drag and/or subvert the grossest excesses of the patriarchy (sitcoms).ĥ. Relatedly, most figure skating episodes only exist to give characters a chance to be romantically Machiavellian.Ĥ. Ski trip episodes, if they even make it up the mountain in the first place (ahem, Friends), are almost universally about romantic adventures to be found in the ski lodge rather than the (un)athletic misadventures to be found on the slopes.ģ. Despite the x-treme value we place on pop culture jackassery, American TV viewers do not seem to know or care about the very x-treme sports of luge or skeleton (a huge loss, when considering how obvious a one-off plot that could be for so many of the current crop of shows about pretty people in the midst of self-destructive quarter-life crises).Ģ. Here is what I have learned after a few weeks of researching television’s irregular relationship with winter sports:ġ.
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