Glendale Life was probably the most awaited reality show of the summer for Glendale’s Armenian community.

Unfortunately, the show received some bad press during the beginning of the summer, postponing the start of the show indefinitely. The show was criticized for not representing the Armenian community in a positive light and showing the characters as just party girls and guys with no responsibilities.

The show airs on US Armenia but does not air on a specific day. They come out with a new episode every two days or so and also put the shows online. I prefer watching it online because the commercials on US Armenia are about eight minutes long. I don’t know how I feel about their frequent episodes, because on the one hand, I get to watch more of Glendale Life, but on the other hand, it is harder for me to catch up if I miss an episode.

The show finally premiered Sept.15, and I was surprisingly disappointed in the lack of plot development throughout the first couple of episodes. Granted, most reality shows have very little plot development, but most of them are much more interesting than Glendale Life.

The show becomes more interesting after the fourth episode. We started to see how the characters are connected and we start to understand their relationships. It could very easily be one of those movies where he know her because of this and she knows him because of that, but without the big plot twist at the end.

Some of the characters switch between dialects which makes their Armenian sound unnatural. Also, none of the characters really speak fluent Armenian or fluent English. One of the girls, Anna, takes time during her confessional to try to figure out how to correctly say a certain Armenian word.

Something else that bothers me is Edgar. He is one of the sweetest characters on the show, but everytime he is in the confessional, the soft, sad music starts to play. The show portrays his life as the greatest struggle known to man because he doesn’t like the jobs he is getting in America. He had a job as a limo driver — he crashes the limo. He has a job as a pool man — he quits because it is too tiring. He explains his struggles in Armenian with so much sadness and sorrow that a non-Armenian speaker would think he truly has the hardest life.

Anna is by far my favorite character. All of her characteristics make for a good reality television star. She’s feisty, opinionated and fights with someone every time she gets the opportunity.

Even though the show is not the highest of quality both in content and in production, it is lovable. The characters are real people that have real lives not ten minutes from us. They work at local business some of us go to every day. Most importantly, we can relate to them. Even a non-Armenian can relate because they are showing what it is like to live in Glendale.