"It was an Awards Show." - 2016 Teen Choice Awards Recap
My review of the German GP: It was a race
- R.J. O'Connell (@rjoconnell) July 31, 2016
Last week's German GP (if you watch Formula 1 races that is) was "just a race", and somehow the same logic applies to this year's Teen Choice Awards: "it was just an awards show." Yet, I know you're wondering why I compared an F1 race to Teen Choice. Simply said, both have predictable dominators.
Although you just could expect which TV show dominated the PCAs, you can't just unsee all the plot twists in all categories, including the arms race between top movies I explained in the Preview post I wrote weeks back, with at least six titles in the arms race taking wins in their respective categories. In other categories, I'm pretty sure that half of the winners are pretty much expected and some are unexpected, but that's this year's Teen Choice for you.
This year, I only followed TCA via tweets and not via livestream because I haven't had the money to subscribe my other internet subscription. I retweeted all TCA-related tweets as a means of following the award show, while I also let out my "vent" in SpoilerTV's article of the same show. Last year, I didn't follow the show due to my Student Study Service commitment where the place I lived for the whole August of such event has little to no network coverage.
THE RECAP
squad goals #PLL #TCAs pic.twitter.com/8yRAUIpyGy
- ❂ (@fmsxc) August 1, 2016
In the Movies race, Marvel movies dominated the winners list, with Deadpool winning the Choice Action/Adventure Movie and Captain America: Civil War winning the Sci-Fi/Fantasy counterpart, along with Chris Evans for the Movie Actor in the genre. Dylan O'Brien and Shailene Woodley took Maze Runner and Divergent series flags in the Choice Action/Adventure Movie Actor and Actress respectively, with Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger Games fame taking the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Actress counterpart, and again won Choice Movie Actress: Drama for her performance in Joy beating out critically-acclaimed actresses Brie Larson and Alicia Vikander. Miracles from Heaven wins the Choice Drama Movie with Ride Along 2 earned the Comedy counterpart win, as Leonardo DiCaprio of The Revenant won yet another award this year for his Choice Movie Actor: Drama win and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising dominating the actor categories in the Comedy Movie courtesy of Zac Efron and Chloë Grace Moretz. Deadpool won Choice Movie Hissy Fit via Ryan Reynolds, with The Hunger Games taking Choice Movie Scene Stealer (Jena Malone) and Choice Movie Liplock (Jennifer Lawrence/Josh Hutcherson), as Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley took the Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens flag to the victory lane for their Choice Movie Villain and Choice Movie Breakout Star wins respectively, with The Maze Runner's Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Dylan O'Brien named as the Choice Movie Chemistry winner. Finding Dory took Choice Summer Movie and Choice Summer Movie Actress (Ellen DeGeneres) wins, with Central Intelligence's Kevin Hart winning Choice Summer Movie Actor, and Dylan O'Brien claiming the third win in Teen Choice with a Choice #AnTEENcipated Movie Actor win. Last but not least, Suicide Squad scored the rest of #AnTEENcipated Movie categories including the outright one and Movie Actress by Cara Delevingne, who I can call as the second person to beat out Vikander, in Teen Choice at least.
The Television race is pretty much straightforward: Pretty Little Liars edging out SIX WINS, including ALL Choice TV Show: Drama categories (Ian Harding and Ashley Benson won the actor and actress awards), Choice TV Villain (Janel Parrish), Choice TV: Scene Stealer (Sasha Pieterse), and Choice TV: Chemistry (Ashley Benson/Tyler Blackburn), almost winning ALL seven nominations the show was in. Once Upon a Time surprised the Sci-Fi/Fantasy field by winning Choice TV Show: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Choice TV Actress: Sci-Fi/Fantasy (Lana Parrilla), and Choice TV: Liplock (Jennifer Morrison/Colin O'Donoghue), while The Flash's Grant Gustin took the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Actor win. Netflix's Fuller House successfully sweep out Choice TV Show: Comedy and the Actress counterpart (Candace Cameron Bure) as Austin & Ally's Ross Lynch took over the Choice TV Actor: Comedy honors, and Family Guy named as the Choice TV: Animated Show winner. Teen Wolf successfully won all three Choice Summer categories with Dylan O'Brien and Shelley Hennig being the actor and actress winners respectively, and finally Shadowhunters successfully made use of its debut year with wins in Choice TV: Breakout Show and Matthew Daddario in Choice TV: Breakout Star, which I can consider as a continuation of the " Malec Momentum". Unfortunately, The Vampire Diaries was left empty-handed, while it would usually close PLL every Teen Choice.
Winners in the other categories included Justin Bieber, One Direction, Selena Gomez, 5 Seconds of Summer, and Fifth Harmony in Music categories, the late Christina Grimmie in Choice Web Star: Music, Bethany Mota in Choice Web Star: Fashion/Beauty and Cameron Dallas in Social Media King for Web/Digital winners, and lots more. Full list of winners go here.
Last but not least, the spotlight moment also included Justin Timberlake giving a speech about becoming the greatest generation yet, the same moment he accepted the Teen Choice Decade Award. Timberlake's speech also focused on the advice given from the late Muhammad Ali, including resiliency, the importance of being "part of the solution" and to not be deterred by the impossible. You can check this Rolling Stones article for the speech in sound and vision!
MY LOVE, MY ANGER, AND ALL MY SORROW
Time flies. So proud of the cast & crew of @FreeformTV's @PLLTVSeries. Our little show that could. ❤️ 2010 - 2016 pic.twitter.com/JBW1iI1din
- André (@andrecullen) August 1, 2016
In Teen Choice, Freeform's (formerly ABC Family) Pretty Little Liars has never ran out of luck in seven straight years since its debut in 2010, starting from winning Choice Summer TV Show and its actor categories among the domination of vampires, The CW shows, and Gossip Girl in its first year of victories. Since its debut, the show quickly became the rival to other Teen series such as Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries, two of the TV dominators in Teen Choice, fighting for domination in TV categories as if it were a three-way rivalry for a championship title. The domination didn't start until the 2012 awards when it had PLL taking on TVD in the TV categories, and eventually The Hunger Games in general, which sadly put the series behind the YA novel-based movie as they had seven wins while PLL had only five, and in 2013 which saw PLL winning all of seven categories the show represented, the most in the TV categories, and instead fighting against Twilight for the general classifications which ended in the latter having eight out of its nine nominations, one win short to the vampire movie. Cut to 2014 where they were up against Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, continuing to contend to be the overall dominator of Teen Choice, yet ended up falling short from the mentioned movies, and in 2015 where it faced Pitch Perfect 2 which resulted in the TV series' win with six wins against the movie's five. In the end, PLL did dominate the TV categories, yet only dominated Teen Choice twice, including this year, after failed bouts against movie franchises for the total victory.
In other words, Pretty Little Liars in Teen Choice has actually become the Mercedes F1 Team in Audi's clothing in not only TV categories but also recently the whole Teen Choice! It is unknown whether the show will continue to be the dominator of the Teen Choice next year, as there could be another movie title, or even a TV series that will deny their dominance, but for now, they are unstoppable. And you know that the Audi and PLL comparison actually makes sense since both had a social partnership.
The movie race in this year's award show is an interesting one. It was between once-dominating franchises such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, although not as dominating as before, Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, the much-buzzed Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Batman vs Superman representing the DC Universe, and others such as Maze Runner. All of them had an average of two wins except Allegiant, the newer entry for Divergent series, whose actress Shailene Woodley was the only point scorer in the race. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 had the most number of wins, while Captain America: Civil War won the outright Sci-Fi/Fantasy award, with Star Wars, Deadpool, Maze Runner, Suicide Squad, and Finding Dory winning the same amount of awards as the mentioned movie. At the end of the day, the movie race is one of the most expected moments in Teen Choice, in a positive light, as it was all about a race for the most awards.
Meanwhile I'm kinda surprised with The Vampire Diaries, walking off the award show empty-handed this year compared to last year when they had three wins. Some pointed out that TVD is pretty much over, even with the casts no longer have a passion for the series and it is confirmed that season 8 will be its last, and it was also unfortunate that the dedicated Bonnie Bennett/Damon Salvatore shippers on Twitter who wished that Kat Graham and Ian Somerhalder would win the Choice TV Chemistry got their hopes crushed by Ashley Benson and Tyler Blackburn, just like Toyota losing 24 Hours of Le Mans at the last minute this year, and failing to continue their momentum after being the runner-up in Zimbio March Madness, also thanks to the dedicated shippers. I'm not sure that this is strange or not considering, taking their characters into account, Bamon has only appeared in ZMM (therefore I couldn't fully figure out its voting power) and any PLL ships/PLL itself are sometimes dismal in voting competitions, but if there's another factor that might back this, perhaps PLL sees surfboards a better prize than just bragging rights. Whatever it is, this might be an unexpected turn of events or that it's already expected by several TV fans, YMMV. OUAT's and Grant Gustin's Choice Actor wins meanwhile are out-of-the-box, both being the dark horses of the award show.
Meanwhile I don't have any qualms about the winners from the other categories. The Choice Model winner however was the main contributor for my salt, enough to jab me on my face whenever I see it, THE SECOND TIME: Kendall Jenner, one of the two "it" models that make even the most-established models like Sora Choi and Rianne van Rompaey look like tryhards, to the point that the day when some circumstance made Gigi Hadid announced as a "Supermodel" and the old Supermodels "retaliate" to create what would eventually be the civil war between "supermodels" and supermodels thanks to Kendall Jenner and Stephanie Seymour (which ended by this piece of writing by Tyra Banks). I really don't mind her existence in this world but I just can't bear the over-hype of this girl to the point that this model always get an imbalanced amount of spotlight, especially the fact that she comes from the Kardashian family. In the logic-bending fashion world where now success is decided by Instagram likes rather than pure success, which I hate and somehow eradicates the true essence of fashion, it can't be helped that Kendall and Gigi would bound to win anything fashion-related, including this, taking their popularity into account. I'm pretty sure either only Kendall or both her and Gigi dethroned Winnie Harlow with ease even after the good amount of campaigning on Twitter although only a few of times because I tend to try not cluttering my tweets only with PCA stuffs in this case. Rage aside, this doubles as a reminder of how Kendall's masses would look like as there's a way better award agenda that would come later this year: Models.com's Model of the Year awards. But will that mean Kendall would take the win over Gigi? Only time will tell.
Another interesting note behind the Kardashian-Jenners taking loads of awards (actually only four, and that includes their show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians"), maybe, the Kim K vs Taylor Swift-gate happened weeks ago. Long story short, Kanye West, Kim's husband, called Taylor Swift on phone over the approval for his lyrics for "Famous" where the line contains "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that bitch famous," with the "bitch" part hit Taylor much to her disagreement. While Taylor approved the lyrics, Kanye decided to use another version of the lyrics and Taylor wasn't happy as her representative said she was never made aware of the actual line, with the climax being Kim K uploaded the recordings of their phone conversation, spilling everything on her GQ Magazine interview, and even maintained the momentum on her show where the episode was dedicated to swiftly shame the Swift, showing how "snake" she is, while Taylor simply responded with this Instagram post of hers, which also the same post on her Twitter. What followed after was social media siding with the Kardashian, calling Taylor a snake (includes the snake emoji), Selena Gomez joining in (and later Chloë Grace Moretz) only to be lashed out by the social media, Taylor planning to lawsuit them, and recently Justin Bieber siding with the Kardashian. If you ever noticed the "Influencers" list (a mix of my favorite figures in TV, movie and real life), I have Taylor Swift as one of them, and normally I would side with the snake, but for this case I decided to be neutral, because everything in this scandal is actually better when you're neutral. Back to the topic, the "hero effect" on Kardashians post-scandal may have something that affects this result out, because usually they won only one to two awards including last year's two wins (as Jenners, but it's still Kardashians! :v ). That's just my single speculation on how Kardashians doubled their best number of Teen Choice wins, not sure if it's 100% true or not.
WFC standings updates will be updated once SpoilerTV Favorite TV Series Competition ends! Incidentally, as I post this, the competition's nomination phase has just started, while the Character Cup is far from being over, although we only have a final match left this year...
~[R]