Life in Pieces

Life in Pieces follows the Short’s, who are a quirky yet loveable American family. The series shows three generations of the family’s life in four short stories which all link to one another (CBS, n.d.). Since the start of the television show in 2015, fans have fell in love with the Short family. The show is currently on the CBS network, Netflix and Amazon Prime. It has been able to climb its way to the top to be the fourth highest-rated and most watched CBS comedy series. Fans of the show have even created social media pages dedicated to the show’s actors showing their true following. The true roots of fans can be seen as appropriating shows and using it as a foundation for the immersion of alternate cultural communities(Jenkins, cited in Storey, 2015)

The awkward and heart warming situations that appear in the storyline of Life in Pieces make it relatable for viewers thus displaying a sense of emotional realism. The use emotional realism is able to connect the audience by using situations like accidents and surprises. TV shows using emotional realism make their characters display feelings that an average person would feel making them more authentic. Life in Piecesproduction includes a handheld shaky-camera which is used as a technique to imitate ‘reality’ and to take away the feeling of professional television production, injecting raw, ad hoc immediacy (Lam, 2014). The filming can also look similar to the audience as a character in the story.  Lam explains (2013) when the camera is constructed as a character, it offers a midpoint of alignment in which the emotions of a scene cannot be portrayed through visuals alone (Lam, 2014). Life in Pieces has been successfully able to renew the show for the fourth season, giving fan more pieces to look forward too.

References 

CBS. (n.d). About life in pieces. Retrieved from https://www.cbs.com/shows/life-in-pieces/about/

Lam, C. (2014). Emotional realism and actuality: The function of prosumer aesthetics in film. The IAFOR Journal of Media, Communication and Film, 1(2). Retrieved from http://iafor.org/archives/journals/iafor-journal-of-media-communication-and-film/10.22492.ijmcf.2.1.06.pdf

Storey, J. (2015). Cultural theory and popular culture. 7th edition. Oxford, U.K.: Routledge