Main blog: @rose-val. Welcome to my separate blog displaying my Big Time Rush creative project! Journal entries, side tangents, random rumblings, etc. IG: @btr_project98
Back on my grind last night. I missed Sunday night bc my mom couldn't get upstairs fast enough.
Three points:
I have the episode Big Time Bad Boy listed on my Fav Episodes, but I didn't write much on it, but it's still an enjoyable episode. Kendall's diss rap to Gustavo, people voting Logan getting kicked out of the band, and Molly being exposed as a con artist were funny moments. This episode made the first appearance of bad boy Kendall, or whatever's left of that side of Kendall since the pilot. In other words, I look forward to seeing @btr-rewatch's analysis posts for the guys.
The guy playing Wayne Wayne (Matt Angel) also played Tori's ex/Cat's boyfriend in season one of Victorious.
At the end of the episode, Wayne Wayne joins another band The Ziggle Zaggles. My immediate thoughts goes to the guys meeting one of the OG members of a particular group that you'll instantly recognize just by the parody at the end of this episode. (AKA The Wiggles!) And that happened during the Australian leg of the IRL Tour.
I was watching the first two episodes of Sam & Cat on Pluto TV on Demand last night and all I thought about was... Good thing they didn't air this show after Victorious ended back in the day. There's a plot in the second episode when they're upset about a favorite TV show being canceled. And they're not doing a big finale afterwards. Almost like the writers have spitten in their fans' faces after making that episode. Oh the irony 😐
Also, the YouTube creator Agressively Average is covering the Killer Tuna Jump special this week and I want to be prepared for it. I can't wait for that video, it's a delight whenever he tears into S&C ☺️
I've commenced my “Fav BTR Episodes” rewatch list last weekend with the pilot & BT Crib and now continued on with BT Terror & BT Break. I decided to watch at least two episodes at a time with what's on my list to see if my choices held up.
Two things:
Bless Pluto TV, I think it's one of the few streamers out there that mostly emulated how TV felt like back in the day. Especially for having this show on the platform. The last time I've seen this show was few years ago on Netflix when it was added.
Glad to confirm that this show is still very entertaining. I was laughing constantly through this episode. After revisiting BT Break, I essentially realized it's sort of a "filler" episode. Heck, there's not even a song/performance at the end but I do appreciate (with both these episodes) seeing what the guys like to do for fun/side quests outside the studio. In BT Terror, the guys jam out with the other Palm Woods residents, Fish Sticks for dinner on Fridays, hanging by the pool, catching ghosts, etc. In BT Break, James wanted to audition, Carlos wants to find his missing helmet, Logan wants to meet his idol at an all girls school, and Kendall wanted to get close to the new girl Jo, despite having a "boyfriend".
Very fun watches so far, and I shall continue on next weekend. You don't get those kind of filler plots in TV shows nowadays, and that's a whole other side tangent for a whole another day.
Big Time Rush Season 2, Episode 25: “Big Time Secret"
Highlights: Betrayal. Betrayal everywhere. And it's all Lucy's fault.
We start in Lucy's tiny apartment, where she, the boys, and Camille are gathered. Lucy introduces a fun new game to them called, "What's the worst thing you've ever done to a person in this room that they don't know about?"
Kendall comes out swinging with a great response.
After Lucy accuses them of being a bunch of little scaredy cats, they decide to give the game a try. Lucy explains how it works: she spins a spinner, and whoever it lands on has to reveal one of their deepest secrets about something horrible they've done to someone else in the room.
Lucy is insane.
The spinner lands on James, and (naturally) his secret involves Carlos. He brings up Carlos's childhood camp crush, Heather Fox, and reveals that Heather had given him (James) a note saying that she had a crush on Carlos, but James threw it away because he ALSO had a crush on Heather.
Absolute jerk move. Carlos tackles James through the door.
After the theme song, we go to 2J, where Carlos is sitting on the couch and wearing an expression best described as murderous.
I'm so sick of the helmet, y'all. It never bothered me when I was younger, but I want to rip the dang thing off his head and toss it out a window.
Anyway, Carlos has evidently been silently brooding for fourteen hours. It's honestly probably the longest that boy has ever stayed still and silent for.
When Carlos does eventually speak, he again mourns how Heather was the love of his life. When Kendall points out that Carlos probably hasn't even thought about her in years, Carlos says that's pretty difficult to do considering Heather is the spokesperson for "Face Alive" skincare line.
You know, if James WAS interested in taking over his mother's cosmetics company, Heather would be the perfect girl for him.
Carlos attempts to attack James again, and Mama Knight tries to get the boys to knock it off by distracting them with her famous snickerdoodles. And it has always bothered me that there's that moment where whoever was in charge of editing and the audio of the episode screwed up, and you can hear Carlos doing his "gimme gimme gimme ahhhhhh" thing twice (as Mama Knight is still calling to them and then a few seconds later when they run for the cookies).
The boys go a little nutsy-cuckoo for the cookies
When Mrs. Knight asks why they aren't at the studio, they tell her Gustavo is stuck on the last song for the new album and that he's very grumpy. She suggest maybe some of her cookies will cheer him up and appoints Katie to go deliver them on account of Katie needing to learn to be nicer. She drags Katie out the door.
The delightful cookies only subdue Carlos temporarily, and he goes right back to being angry at James. Kendall says that according to "the best friend code", James has a duty to make things right.
James says that he is well aware of the best friend code, along with "the no dating ex-girlfriend's code, and the don't borrow underwear code," the latter of which Logan apparently violated in the past. Can't even fathom the desperate situation that must have led to that, because Logan seems like the type of person who would rather fling himself out of a moving vehicle than put on someone else's underwear.
James promises to make things right, and Kendall says that this is what happens when friends keep secrets from each other. He then gives a quick goodbye and goes to leave. James tries to get an explanation and receives sass in return.
Hmmm... mysterious
(This was one of my favorite episodes back in the day, so yes, I do very vividly recall what Kendall is sneaking off to do)
But let's pretend I don't! Kendall goes to Camille's apartment, and then the two of them head down to the lobby, where they behave very oddly with each other.
Lucy spots them, then casually mentions to Logan that she didn't know Kendall and Camille were dating, which makes Logan absolutely flip his lid. He tries to chase Kendall and Camille down, but they're already on a shuttle bus, off to do whetever secret thing they're doing.
At Rocque Records, Katie and Mrs. Knight present the cookies to Gustavo and Kelly. And while taking a bite doesn't solve Gustavo's song-writing problems, it does apparently make him feel like he's falling in love again for the first time, which implies that Gustavo has, in fact, been in love before. Would love to know the story behind that.
He wants the recipe, but Mrs. Knight (despite seconds earlier talking about how family does nice things for each other) will absolutely not hand it over.
James attempts to fix things between him and Carlos by presenting his buddy with a big box of corndogs.
Carlos only half-accepts the gift and tells James that Heather was also wronged in this whole situation. To truly make things right, James has to pose as an agent wanting to book Heather for a job so that she and Carlos can be reunited. He finds out Heather is at Colossal Studios nearby. Carlos takes off running to reunite with his long-lost love.
Kendall, meanwhile, returns to 2J to find that Logan is quite suspicious as to what he was doing that afternoon.
After some interrogation while some horror-movie sound effects play, Kendall flees the apartment and goes to find Camille and asks her if she told Logan about them. Camille says no but that maybe they SHOULD tell. Kendall says nobody can know that he "broke the code."
Hmmm 🤔🤔🤔
Over at Rocque Records, Gustavo presents the last song of the album to Kelly, which is an upbeat tune declaring his love for the snickerdoodle cookies. Kelly, too, can't stop thinking about the cookies, and she's sent a car to pick Katie up so that they can try to get the recipe out of her. Katie doesn't know it either (Mama Knight won't tell her until she's 21) but she say's she'll get it for $7,000. Kelly offers her $100, and Katie accepts the deal.
James and Carlos arrive at Colossal Studios and "accidentally" bump into Heather Fox.
Carlos enthusiastically tells Heather that they're in a band now, but Heather is not as excited or impressed as Carlos had hoped. She casually says they should catch up sometime and then leaves.
Logan is in Lucy's apartment, pacing anxiously over whatever is secretly going on between Kendall and Camille. Lucy initially doesn't want to elaborate on what she saw because, despite being the type of person who will suggest a game that revolves around admitting your deepest, darkest betrayals to your friends, she claims, "It's none of my business, and I'd like to stay out of it."
Logan won't accept this and suggests they play a game called "Tell me what you saw in the lobby."
He is unraveling.
After Lucy reenacts the twirling with Logan, he's sure that Kendall has broken the don't-date-ex-girlfriends code but needs more evidence before "unleashing the fists of fury." I would love to see Logan attempt to beat Kendall up. I can't decide if it would be comical, with Kendall just sticking out a hand to easily hold Logan back while he swings at the air, or if Kendall's bewilderment combined with Logan's rage would result in Logan actually being able to take Kendall down.
Logan convinces Lucy to put on a tree hat (that means you're officially one of the gang, Lucy!) and wait in the bushes to spy on Kendall and Camille when they return on the bus. What Logan sees does nothing to ease his growing paranoia. Kendall and Camille exit the bus, arms around each other, with Kendall commenting, "That was very fun" and Camille adding, "And let me say, your moves are very smooth."
Kendall then senses they're being watched and drags Camille into a nearby supply closet, where he regrets ever doing whatever it is they're doing. We then learn exactly what they've been up to.
A secret so dark, one's brain can hardly process it.
Kendall explains that back home, hockey players and figure skaters were always at war over time on the ice, and the animosity between the two groups ran so deep that Kendall and the other boys promised to never figure skate.
It's really funny that they felt the need to make that promise and turn it into a code, because it's such a specific thing. Like...were any of them really at such risk for becoming a figure skater that they had to specifically make a rule about not doing it??
Anywho, some figure skaters from Minnesota called the hockey players cavemen on skates and said they could never do a double salchow or death spiral, so Kendall evidently made a secret promise to himself that one day, he would prove hockey players are just as good as figure skaters.
I mean, good for him and all, but this is also funny because it's specifically JUST for him. Those figure skaters who were mean to the hockey team back home aren't going to know, nor will they care, about his figure skating revenge. Nobody in L.A. is gonna give a hoot about some hockey-player-boyband-boy learning how to do a double salchow or death spiral. This is solely to give himself the inner satisfaction of knowing that Chet and Mimi Camerelli were wrong. And I love that, at some point, Kendall discovered Camille was a figure skater and knew that his time had come.
Btw, these are the moves Kendall mentions and is likely trying to learn:
Carlos and James are by the pool, where Carlos is reminiscing about all the fun times he and Heather had at camp. James is satisfied that he did everything he could, but Carlos creates a "try harder code." James then goes to some extreme measures and helps to recreate their camp experience so that Carlos and Heather can have the love story they were robbed of.
We return to the snickerdoodle plot, where Katie discovers where the secret family recipe is hidden.
It calls for some pretty standard cookie ingredients, such as butter and flour, along with some not-so-standard ingredients like bottle caps, toothpaste, and elbow macaroni. Gustavo, Kelly, and Katie run to the kitchen to whip up a delicious batch of cookies.
Lucy catches Camille and Kendall preparing to leave for figure skating practice and confronts them about dating behind Logan's back. They reveal the truth to her, and Kendall swears her to secrecy by creating the new friend code. Lucy warns them not to leave through the lobby on account of Logan hiding in the vending machine to spy on them.
It is substantially more difficult to sneakily spy on people when you're confined to a small, glass, rectangular box, so I think this goes to show just how much the perceived betrayal has decimated Logan's IQ.
Dude is on FULL DISPLAY, and couldn't even chase after Kendall and Camille if he wanted to.
Campy Wonky Donkey is in full swing, complete with marshmallows (and fire), canoeing in the itty bitty Palm Woods pool, and James and Carlos gluing their hands together with what has to be the world's most terrifyingly strong glue considering the fact it bonds them together instantly.
When it goes to them still glued together during the second campfire but somehow holding the stick, it instantly made me think of that scene from Spongebob.
Also. Absolutely no reason for them to need to stab the stick through their glued-together hands when they both have a free hand still. I love them; they're so dumb <3
Logan is at Lucy's apartment, sulking.
Also, he's wearing plaid! A very unusual choice for Logan. Perhaps he had his backstabbing, plaid-loving friend on the brain when he was choosing his outfit this morning.
Lucy tells Logan that there's probably nothing going on between Kendall and Camille, and after today, they might not even sneak around anymore. Logan knows that Lucy knows something he doesn't, but she won't spill the beans due to the new friend code.
Logan's last fraying thread of sanity snaps, and he grabs Lucy's axe guitar and takes off running.
Starting to lean more toward Logan being able to take Kendall in a fight.
Gustavo, Kelly, and Katie make the putrid cookies
After some guilt-tripping from Gustavo and Katie, Mrs. Knight confesses that her famous family recipe is just ready-made snickerdoodle dough with more sugar added.
It's like that episode in Friends where they're trying to recreate Phoebe's grandmother's famous cookie recipe, and then it's revealed that she just used pre-made Nestle Tollhouse dough.
Love Mrs. Knight's line, "I made up the part about the secret family recipe because I'm a loser, okay?"
Gustavo is thrilled that he can finally finish the album.
James and Carlos are saying goodbye to Heather, and she asks to speak privately with Carlos. We think our sweet boy is about to get a kiss or a love confession, but instead, Heather tells him she has a crush on James and gives Carlos a note to give to him. :(((((
Horrible. Disgusting.
I feel so bad for poor Carlos. It must be exhausting living in James's shadow all the time. James takes his food when they go out to eat, forces Carlos to swap dates when he doesn't want to, and is always getting the girls despite not deserving them.
Ugh, my inner Carlos girlie is alive and well, screaming from the rooftops about how Carlos deserves the world.
Carlos considers throwing the note away just like James did to the note meant for him when they were kids but he can't. You know why? Because Carlos is a GOOD PERSON with a GOOD HEART.
He hands the note over to James, who is super excited until he sees the look on Carlos's face and his conscience kicks in. He tosses the note into the trash and tells Carlos "Supermodel spokesgirls will come and go. I hope. But best friends are forever."
James coming in to redeem himself last minute like he always does.
Kendall and Camille come running out of the Palm Woods to jump on their shuttle bus, Logan runs after them wielding his axe, and Carlos, James, and Lucy take off after them as well. Everyone meets up at the rink.
James and Carlos got glued together again, btw
Lucy begs Kendall to just tell the truth so that eveything will stop spiraling out of control. Kendall takes a deep breath and admits that he and Camille are in love, because that's apparrenty a less terrible confession than his real one.
The other guys scream about the ex-girlfriend code being broken, and Logan is about to go full axe-murderer on his best buddy, when Camille gets Kendall to tell the actual truth.
He reveals his twisted secret to everyone
When this episode originally aired, you couldn't scroll more than 3 posts in the fandom without seeing a gif or screenshot of this moment.
After the initial shock (Carlos passes out), Logan tosses his axe aside and says that he's all better.
Kendall explains that he wants to prove the Camerelli's wrong, and that he couldn't tell any of them because of the code. And guess what? Yeah, they may have screamed at first, but after hearing how Kendall is doing this to prove something to himself, the guys become supportive.
"Go get 'em, my shiny, glittery, best bud," Carlos says. James tells him to go and prove the Camerelli's wrong and to skate like the wind. Kendall is confused by the reaactions.
With newfound confidence and the love of his friends surrounding him, Kendall goes to take the figure skating world by storm.
Stick to hockey, sweetie.
I want to know exactly what went wrong. They were obviously fine during their many sneaky practice sessions. What happened during the competition that led to them being so injured? We'll never know...
Logan suggests they all play a friendly game of truth or dare, which is NOT a game that you should suggest after all the paranoia and betrayal and anger everyone experienced. Candy Land would have been a better fit for this scenario.
The spinner lands on Carlos, he chooses truth, and we cut to the other boys and Camille chasing Carlos through the lobby.
End of episode.
I love this one. It's one of the funniest of the season, and has stuck with me all these years because the fandom really went wild for it. I'm enjoying the way Lucy is adding to the dynamic, and I also really like when Camille gets worked into the storylines.
There's sort of a trend through the series of Kendall hiding parts of himself from people, isn't there? Doesn't want anyone to know he sings along to 90s pop songs, doesn't want Jo to know he's a werewolf (though that's a silly episode, but still), totally closes himself off post-breakup with Jo and can't express to the guys how he feels ("Why won't you let us in?!"), and felt so bound by some dumb code they made as kids that he'd rather sneak around and have people think he's dating Camille than admit he's figure skating.
I feel like. He just doesn't trust that people will love him for ALL of him. He has such a need to be a censored version of himself, which, again, I think ties in directly to his control issues, desire to be a leader and guy who has it all together, the anxiety he very clearly experiences, and daddy issues he's got.
Just. Just calm down, Kendall. Take a breath. You are a mess.
Kendall pep talks: none, but his friends gave him a nice one before his disastrous competition
I was randomly watching some Nickelodeon commercials from 2010 (I watch these videos whenever I'm feeling nostalgic) and I came across a behind the scenes segment of the BTR boys in the studio meeting the pop-rock emo band, Metro Station. Do y'all remember Metro Station, the band that sung the song “Shake It”, and the brothers of Miley Cyrus and Mitchell Musso were the members? Yeah, crazy! I've never seen this segment before, so I thought I might share it with you guys who haven't seen it either! You learn something new everyday.
Also, I do have a later post coming up about BTR meeting other bands that you might be familiar with growing up, and this particular one just completely slipped under my radar. Be on the lookout for that post coming soon!
Since BTR is on Pluto TV on Demand, I'm doing a rewatch of certain episodes for my upcoming Favorite BTR episodes list for an upcoming post and, BT Terror may or may not be on the list 👀
Although, I will say, this is exactly how the boys would react to dealing with a ghost 👻👻
My Reddit to Tumblr Story (YogurtClosetevery669 to BTR-Project 98)
Hey y'all! Remember when @cant-get-enough-btr-forever did a poll this week about the BTR subreddit and most of the results have never even seen/heard of it? Well... you're most likely better off. This is not my typical post & you guys didn't ask but here's my story of my experience within the BTR subreddit (and the website in general).
I was u/YogurtClosetevery669 and this was my avatar. Side note: look how cute it looks? Don't ask about my username though. As much as I do like yogurt, it's a strange username.
I was active on a few subs, and one of them was the BTR subreddit. I started doing appreciation posts, to spread a little positivity and find my stride within the community. One of those posts that really caught on and blew up was about the appreciation of the male BTR fanbase, and that got A LOT of warm comments and upvotes. I loved hearing the many stories from the guys' perspective and it somehow motivated me to keep going with it. I would also converse here and there with the other users in the comment sections and DMs. It was good for a while, or so I thought.
The last post I've done on the @YogurtClosetevery669 account was how vocally bummed I was not being able to go to a BTR show last year at the IRL Tour, despite my best efforts to get tickets. The comment section was pretty supportive. Then, soon after 24 hours, my account got banned. Permanently. I did try to get it back, used different accounts, etc, to no avail. Personally, I think Reddit thought I was a spam bot account since I post regularly. I will say, I did miss making friends that I had on the platform. In fact, that's how I virtually met @cant-get-enough-btr-forever, she can vouch that. There's a few gems of amazing, pleasant people in the BTR subreddit. However, there's a few people that just LOVES to spread negativity/drama or rumors. One user has especially made her mark I think to make the BTR subreddit miserable whenever she posts about the guys personal lives (iykyk). (THIS IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY IN THE SUB WHO ACTS LIKE THIS, BTW.) Nowadays, since I left the platform, it kinda died down since the tour wrapped, but it persists somehow through these kinds of unhinged posts through some users. Not like I can't actively comment on there anyways, I barely interact with the sub due to my circumstances.
I've learned some few things about Reddit with my experience:
The site is like a very hive-minded, biased mindset full of echo chambers. When you voice your own opinion on any topic, and goes against the general consensus, you'll be downvoted at best, banned at worst. Sometimes, for no reason. During my time on Reddit, there's certain popular subs (popculture subs, fauxmoi, Millenials) that feel like that one singular voice represents the whole sub and it's the ONLY voice that matters. It's very high school lunch table mentality. It gives more space for negativity & people obsessed with having the last word in arguments. Especially the snark communities for certain celebrities. Those people I find more dangerously obsessive than the fans are, it's insane.
Because of the anonymity, the users really get to say anything in the comment section, and repeat it in many forms to the point where it gets annoying. Basically the spamers and trolls. I won't say no names (obviously b/c IDK who that person is in real life) but there's a person I befriend few years back and he seemed harmless at first. However, as time went on, his posts has gotten absurd. For instance, this user is obsessed with the rapper Pitbull and every time he posts, it's some form of invasive asking of a BTR and Pitbull collab, or a list of unreleased songs from the ELEVATE album he got on YT years ago, he swears to the bible that it's real. Another user claims that every childhood show he watched is good for a show that's mostly disliked. Another user claims how good a show is just by using ratings, which sometimes doesn't always equate and justify said show being good or not. Mainly that happened in the Nickelodeon subreddit. Luckily, the other users really don't pay them no mind.
The reason why I made the move to Tumblr was bc it was always a site that I “used” but never that deeply, if you know what I'm saying. I had accounts over the years, but it was always to scroll and like a post, much like Twitter. When I started doing this BTR project two years ago, I've thought about what other platform would be perfect to display what I came up with, other than physically with a book. Can't really use Reddit anymore for obvious reasons. Same reasons for Twitter. I barely use Facebook as it is. I've thought about Substack, but let's be real, that site is full of intellectual essays and insight, it's no place for me to chronicle my personal nostalgic story of a childhood show/band. Tumblr, so far, just allows me the space and canvas to say whatever I want to say, and like minded people would follow and resonate. No judgment, no fears. Also, since I'm smart like that, some of my BTR Reddit appreciation posts have become the journal entries I've curated. If you wanted to know how I come up with these journal entries, here's why. Well, that and I have them stored on my notes app on my phone for almost two years now. And the fact that I'd always chronicled my BTR journey back in the day, but never to a “bigger scale” to do so.
Since @btr-project made it's social media debut during the holidays, the posts that I've been making genuinely find their way to the people who are meant to see them and I made friends along the way. I've been regaining my stride on Tumblr thanks to this side project blog, and so far so good imo. It's now been one of my favorite things to do. Thanks to those who been there along for the ride. More content coming soon!
If you have read through this entire thing, thank you for listening to my TED talk and I'll give you a cookie if you do (🍪)
NOTE: More exciting news: the @btr-project IG account has now reached 100 followers!!
I feel like the hyperfixations of my childhood/early adolescence had collided on the night of May 21st, 2011. On Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, both networks were airing their most popular programs the same night at the same time! Nickelodeon at the time was airing the prom-themed newest episodes of hit series Big Time Rush and Victorious.
In the BTR episode, Big Time Prom King, the guys are determined to win the Prom King title, each for their own reasons. James especially wants to win and brings a Kristen Stewart look-alike for his date. Logan wants to ask Camille to prom but Steve (from the episode of Big Time Crush) is her date (I guess L + C is still on their on again/off again shtick, who knows with them really), Carlos asks out brunette Jennifer, and Kendall & Jo sneak out to Prom since Jo is grounded by her CIA father. Really wild side plots all happening at once, complete with a Prom theme performance montage to the song Nothing Even Matters. @btr-rewatch has you covered if you want to see funny & insightful reviews of BTR episodes in her blog, check that out if you can.
In the Victorious episode, Prom Wrecker, Tori hosts a prom (or Prome, as she would call it) at Hollywood Arts, only the events interferes with Jade's art project. It's one of those episodes, much like Tori Gets Stuck, whenever Beck isn't present in a episode is when Jade is at her absolute unhinged & tries to sabotage Tori's prom. Don't worry, Jade gets her commupance by the end, and Tori, Cat, Andre and the band perform Best Friend's Brother, even in the pouring rain.
Fun fact: a little connection to BTR and Victorious. Andre's prom date appears as Stephanie in BTR season 1 episodes Big Time Terror & Big Time Dance as Carlos' short term love interest. Justice for Stephanie though, she would've been perfect for Carlos and a good addition to the female friend group with Jo & Camille. BTW: the real actress' name is Tristan Mays. She has guest starred in a couple of kids' sitcoms back in the day (e.g. Zeke & Luther, Ned's Declassified, True Jackson VP, Kickin It, amongst others).
As these two new episodes were airing on Nickelodeon, guess what Disney Channel decided to air? Get this: not one, not two, but all three High School Musical films, all sing along versions back to back to back! I don't need to explain the plot of the three films, but just know, they were a huge Disney franchise after Hannah Montana, and was the first time in a while that made me tuned back in to Disney in the early 2010s. The tension between me and the TV remote flipping back and forth, was insane. I even wrote in my Wizards diary just how excited I was seeing all my favorites in one night. In a way, I kinda stemmed my love to these two shows BTR & Victorious in thanks to HSM, with the formula of kids on the road to rockstardom. So to see them airing alongside each other in one night, while also kinda being prom-themed, couldn't be any more fitting and poetic.
Speaking of prom themed, I believe Disney even made a teen movie called Prom released to theaters the same year! No coincidence. I'd never seen the movie upon release, but I remember it being promoted a lot on Disney Channel at the time and seeing the movie in passing on TeenNick in maybe 2013. Truly, it's a night to remember indeed.
IRL Tour - Live From Ziggo Dome Special (Thoughts)
Hey yall! I saw the Live From Ziggo Dome special last night and took a few pics and videos from the event. Here's a few thoughts I wanted to share:
1. I think it's so cool and considerate how BTR even putting together this special at all. The idea of me wanting a tour movie/mini doc became a conversation I had with a friend @cant-get-enough-btr-forever back in December, thinking it would be a possibility after this big tour finishes. And now, through the power of manifestation, the idea became a reality! As someone who was bummed who couldn't attend a show last summer, I felt the nostalgia and energy on my best screen possible in the living room last night.
2. At the very end of the full performance, there's a bit of the BTS of the making of the show. I do wish that BTS segment was spread out throughout in between performances. It would be a nice way to break up the show with some fun insight every now and then, rather than shoving it at the very end. However, I do get wanting a little treat to the fans for watching for this long.
3. After the B-Stage acoustic section, as the guys were picking their WWGs, James points out there's a lot of male attendees in the audience. Further proves my fascinating point in my Male Rushers post that BTR does have a interestingly sizable male fan base that's growing everyday.
4. I HATE to compare & contrast since both of these kids shows I've grown up with, but watching the concert livestream made me feel that much more disappointed with the Hannah Montana 20th anniversary last month. I feel like BTR did a better job of honoring their own TV show, complete with a whole montage of clips from the series, with this tour than a show that I watched for way longer and had more cultural impact from the big Disney machine that was Hannah Montana. For that special, it did feel like a HM-themed Call Her Daddy podcast interview with three songs sprinkled in, plus cameos in between. Controversial take, I know. I just had to put that out there.
5. Seeing the live show in its entirety really made me put into perspective just how massive that setlist is. From my stance, I only saw bits of it through YT videos from the long concert blogs and the IG videos. Every song from the show is a lot and I know for sure my throat would be parched & gave out after three songs personally. The biggest shout out to the crew & production team for giving the OG BTR energy to the stage every night and giving their all.
“They're the newest Nickelodeon stars who are giving teen girls everywhere a BIG TIME RUSH.” - Jill Nicolli (Pix 11 News, 2010)
“Some child stars are born, others are created. The boy band Big Time Rush is manufactured by the Nickelodeon fame machine to make tween girls swoon, and guess what? It's working. [...] They're the latest incarnation of kids on the road to rock stardom. Miley had Hannah Montana, Miranda Cosgrove has iCarly, Victoria Justice has Victorious, and the Jonas Brothers… are the Jonas Brothers. Hooked by millions of fans who watched the TV show, who then buy the music and flock to the concerts.” - Juju Chang, ABC News (2011).
(Note: This is meant to be the first journal spread right after the introduction, I just forgot to add it in, whoops 😑. It serves as a prolouge of sorts to put the audience back to BTR's origins and when they were brand new to the younger audience watching the TV show. )
I'ma just start posting fun edits every now and then whenever I feel the need to repost some content for this blog page.
Just like the caption states, it's truly one of my favorite Nick shows that I like to rewatch occasionally. Speaking of rewatch, all (or most) of the episodes from the four seasons are on demand on Pluto TV right now. So if you want to watch some episodes, it's available on there.
You ever just sit down and really think about how crazy unique of a process this show/band is? From day 1 concept to TV scripts to real life music charts and tour stages? I could only name a few artists coming from this caliber, and BTR is far from the first to do it, but the show is still so consistent on what it promised that I never left wholly dissatisfied with an episode, same with the music. You can never stay mad at a show for being exactly what it aims to do.
Anyways, I've said my overall piece with this show in posts past, if you want to check those out, I'll link it here and here. This edit (that went viral on Tik-Tok and IG at the end of last year) is a great overall reminder and accompanied of my thoughts.
Opened Tik-Tok last night and this was the first thing popped up on my feed. Who remembers the episode when Jo came back & Kendall had to choose between getting back to her or be with Lucy? Needless to say, yall know where I stand when it comes to that. As much as I enjoy Lucy as a character, Kendall's mind saw her everywhere but his heart, and it led to Jo. The OG Worldwide Girl. ♥️
Since my birthday was two days before this episode aired back in 2012, I remember having a celebratory slice of bday cake for dessert that night seeing Jo at the door. Noticed how she had been crying and how her voice cracked when she saw Kendall. I love that small detail 🥹
Also, the song No Idea is SO GOOD, and I envy those of you who've heard it live. Upcoming posts for Favorite BTR songs (and episodes) list coming soon.
