Price Peterson

When we first talked about this assignment in class, Price Peterson (writer for TV.com) immediately popped into my mind when I thought of which critic's style I wanted to emulate. I haven't read much of Price's work, but being a huge fan of Teen Wolf and working on the show this summer, I was very familiar with his popular photo recaps of the MTV show (which basically just recap the episodes in a few pictures with hilarious captions). After digging a little deeper, I found out that aside from photo-recapping Teen Wolf and other shows (like Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle), he actually does write reviews.

Here are four articles of him reviewing various Television series/episodes:
The Originals: S01E01: "Always and Forever"
The Originals: S01E02: "House of the Rising Son"
The Inbetweeners: S01E01: "First Day"
Beauty and the Beast: S01E01: "Pilot"

What I like most about Peterson's writing is that he seems to be very informal, yet also seems to have a lot of important and interesting things to say. The tone of his writing is very conversational, which I enjoy. It makes reading the reviews that much more entertaining for me. After reading his two reviews on the new CW show The Originals, I actually want to watch the show. He also is very straight forward on what he likes and dislikes about particular shows/episodes. If he doesn't like something, he'll tell you. But he'll also tell you why he doesn't like it. Same goes for if he loves something a particular show has done.

As for common themes in his reviews, Peterson tends to talk a lot about the characters and actors on the show. Because most of the shows he is writing about are character driven and rely heavily on character development, I think this is a smart move. He also tends to bring up the network in which the shows air on a lot in his writing. When doing so, he usually references other shows on the network and compares and contrasts the shows. Sometimes he also does this with genres in general, bringing up other shows from other networks in the genre he is writing about. He also tends to ask questions, sometimes in the piece itself and sometimes just at the very end to facilitate discussion.

When I try to emulate his style, I'll be reviewing MTV's Teen Wolf. I haven't read a piece by him where he actually reviews the show or an episode (as opposed to simply recapping it), so I think this will be both an interesting and challenging task.