andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

This Week on Peak Season: Episode Five

Another Monday night has passed, and with it, another drama-filled episode of Peak Season. As I sat down with my twelve-pack of beer and snow globe (the closest I can get to be Whistler local), I realized this episode marks the halfway point of the first season. It’s almost like the six month anniversary of a relationship, when you decide to persist or ditch. Is it worth the emotional investment, the time and the mind games? In my opinion, yes. Sure, it’s maddening when your emotional other can only dedicate thirty minutes to you a week, but sometimes, that’s what these one-ended relationships consist of. I mean, what other show has tractors plowing snow as a riveting opening shot? It’s one-of-a-kind, and I’m excited to see where this season will take the psychologically-insane individuals of Whistler.

What happens:

Stephanie Just: The fearless snowboarder.

In this episode, a lot of focus is put on Steph and her snowboarding. Her pass for the slopes has been reinstated, and she wastes no time getting back on the hill. When watching Steph in the park, hitting every jump and rail possible, it’s hard not to feel inadequate in comparison. I find myself on my feet, carving and leaning as though she is my Wii character (outfitted in my baggy pants and Jamaican toque), and I’m (not her!) garnering points for every trick. It works wonders for temporary self-esteem boosts.

In shows like The Hills, Lauren and Lo can use their powers to bypass lines at celebrity-infested club events. However, in shows like Peak Season, Steph and her friend use their overwhelming star power to wheedle and talk their way into getting spots in full Snowboarding competitions, more specifically, the “Showcase Showdown.” This competition features inflatable Redbull, gnarly tricks and Steph’s announced “aggressive frontside board slide.” I feel as though this is a personality characteristic of girls in Whistler. Instead of long walks on the beach, the new thing to enjoy is aggressively grinding a rail (no inappropriate innuendo implied).

After placing a respectable fifth place in the competition, probably due to a tragic bail on her final run, Steph congratulates her third-placing companion with a reassuring “I told you, if you beat me, I would kill you.. Congratulations!”

It’s truly hard not to love this girl.

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Chris Brown opened up about his assault on former girlfriend Rihanna during the MTV News special “Chris Brown: The Interview” on Friday (November 6), elaborating on his destructive behavior, explaining his previous apologies and describing his ongoing therapy sessions.

According to mtvnews.com, Brown told MTV News correspondent Sway that he has finally come to terms with the fact that he was capable of such violence.

“I think you’d be in denial and be totally naive not to,” he said. “And not being able to realize and own up to the fact of your own wrongs. I mean, me, I’ve come to terms with it and I’m working on it. … For that moment or whatever had me at that place, I want to erase that from what my character is. I want to be totally different from now on. I don’t want to be that person.”

“I’m confused right now as far as the public perception [of me],” he said. “Like, I think with my fans, they still love me, they support me, definitely. You have those people who will support you. So it’s kinda like 50/50 for me. I got the people that will come out and support and then the people that don’t wanna see me do anything. They basically want me in jail.”

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Beautiful scenery, beautiful people, and drama galore nestled in the slopes of Whistler, British Columbia. Sound intriguing?

MTV’s latest documentary series Peak Season, surrounded by much buildup, debuts Monday night (Oct. 19).

So what’s all the hype about?

First, it’s a bold new approach to Canadian-focused television. It’s also unscripted, raw, and features personal stories that hit closer to home.

MTV Canada has ordered 10 episodes of this fresh series which follows the lives of a tight-knot group of people in Whistler, British Columbia. Peak Season offers an up-close look into their personal struggles and achievements, ranging from a tearful break-up in the first episode, to the distinct possibility that you will always run into that  certain someone you were avoiding at the bar. This tight-knit group consists of Dre Morel, Lauren Horton, Amanda Scheller, Ian Ross, Matthew James, Stephanie Just and Elle Hetherington. Each 20-something-year-old has their own story to tell, and all is revealed in the long days, and even longer nights, in the town of Whistler.

Stephanie Just and Dre Morel are ambitious Whistler locals, while others such as Scheller (Morel’s ex-girlfriend) moved to Whistler when she started dating him.

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The regret surrounding the tragic death of Adam ‘DJ YM’ Goldstein will deepen when MTV airs his eight-episode documentary ‘Gone Too Far’ on Monday, October 12th, MTV reports.

The documentary will feature DJ AM’s meetings with addicts, along with their friends and family, discussing the struggles, causes and possible solutions of addiction. The episodes will also reveal the details of his personal addiction, predominantly to crack cocaine.

Goldstein’s mission to blow open the discussion on drug abuse in North America came to a halt when he died of an accidental overdose at his New York City apartment on August 28th. Many suspect that the excessive drug use was linked to the mental and physical trauma he suffered after a plane crash in 2008.

His death may help cement the documentary’s conveyance of the dangerous toll that drugs take on the lives of addicts, and also those around them. He is a living example of that senseless fate.

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Lauren Conrad’s spotlight may be gone from reality show, The Hills, but she has deftly redirected it to her newest movie-making endeavor.

Conrad has decided to work with the executive producers of Twilight, Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey, to turn her novel, “L.A. Candy,” into a film.

“I mean, you can’t do much better, right?” she remarked to MTV News at the launch of her Kohl’s LC Lauren Conrad clothing line.

According to mtvnews.com, she went on to explain that the book was never meant to be a movie. Instead, Conrad had envisioned it as a TV show. The former Hills star knows a thing or two about TV. “Originally, when people started talking to me about turning the books into television, I was really excited,” she explained. “Then we got approached about the movie and I wasn’t really sure it would work. The story is supposed to take place over a couple of years and it’s hard to do with a movie.”

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If you mixed “The Hills” with TSN, you’d get “Over the Bolts,” MTV Canada’s brand new reality show that documents the country’s national snowboard team as they vie for 18 Olympic spots.

The show premieres this Sunday at 10 p.m. on MTV, but we got to see the first two episodes before its debut. And let’s just say you can already set the Tivo because “Over the Bolts” is as addictive as they come!

Michael Lambert, one of the country’s top snowboarders who stars in the show, admits there’s just something about reality TV that gets you hooked. “One of my friends was on the show ‘The City,’ Duncan Davies, so I enjoyed watching it and watching him interact with his girlfriend and stuff like that,” shares the athlete. “I think the dangerous thing about any of those TV shows is you can say ‘even though I may not watch them, every one of them is addictive.’ I could just watch two episodes and I could be hooked on any of them,” he laughs.

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We all know what KanyeWest did at the VMAs and it looks like we’ll be talking about it until the Grammys. But shouldn’t we be prepared for this by now?

Kanye has based his career on the unlikely pairing. College student becomes iced-out rapper. Rapper wears sweater vests and horn-rimmed glasses. Prep-school rapper spits rhymes about Jesus and the politics of blood diamonds. Catholic hip-hopper samples Ray Charles for a song about women horny for money. Blues piano samples replaced with electro-house synthesizers and Auto-Tune.

Et cetera.

When he stormed the MTV VMA stage on Sunday, interrupting the sugary acceptance speech of tween country princess Taylor Swift, the event was actually more scripted than offensive. It wasn’t like the time Kanye accepted an MTV Europe award he didn’t win, or refused to accept an award he did win because he felt Outkast deserved it more.

No, it was more of a half-assed display of choreographed ego, just Kanye scoping out the most unlikely character to stand next to and making sure it happened before commercial break. Sure, Kany emay have been upset Beyonce’s video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” lost out to Swift’s beige video for “You Belong with Me”.

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Jonna and Pat from MTV’s Real World Cancun. They had a 3some. (Not with Jordan, on the show!)

If you haven’t seen the second season of Nitro Circus (which premiered last Thursday at 10 p.m. on MTV), you’re missing out on a half hour of reckless stunts and pure adrenaline. Among the group of record-breaking dirtbikers is Jolene Van Vugt, the only Canadian female member.

Very few people know what they want to do with their lives when they’re still a kid. Jolene, or “Nitro Girl,” is one of those people. She was raised around the Motorcross sport and spent most of her time at the tracks. By the age of 11, Jolene asked her father to teach her how to ride. “But I didn’t start to compete till I was 15,” she tells andPOP.

Since the age of 15, Jolene has been traveling across North America, attending competitions in the CMRC, AMA, WMA and the National Series for Women in Canada, which she helped create. “It started four years ago and I was the first to win the event,” Van Vugt says of the National Series. “It’s a series of five races that cover from the east to the west coast and the top Canadian females race.”

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Eight seasons running. A cult in Canadian pop culture. Winners of the Gemini, Teen Choice and Directors Guild of Canada Awards.

And now Degrassi: The Next Generation finally boasts its first red-carpet TV movie.

But known as a “show of the people”, the season 8 finale Paradise City: Degrassi Goes Hollywood premiere last Wednesday night at Toronto’s Bloor Cinema, allowed tons of lucky special-bracelet-wearing fans bask in Degrassi glory. A free-for-all for snagging autographs and pictures from their favorite cast members, and what’s more- the opportunity to enjoy the movie side-by-side with them too.

And the word got out not only to lucky fans. Among a packed-to-the-brim theatre audience was Camp Rock 2 stars Jordan Francis and Matthew “Mdot” Finley, So You Think You Can Dance Canada winner Nico Archambault, MuchMusic VJ Devon Soltendieck and MTV Live’s Nicole Holness.

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