As if Facebook didn't take up enough of your time already, it's coming for the rest.
That includes Five Points, a series starring Arlington native Madison Pettis that got renewed this month for a second season. Produced by Kerry Washington (Scandal), the series about an incident at a South Side Chicago high school viewed from five different angles can be watched via the show's Facebook page.
Pettis, like so many other North Texas stars, began her career on Barney and Friends.
"It's true. Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez got their start on there, which is very funny," she said through laughter. "And we also had the same acting coach, Catherine Sullivan, who's amazing and helped raise a lot of us and sent us to LA for pilot seasons and whatnot. So definitely when I see them, we all have that sort of joke that .... "
And then she breaks into the iconic Barney theme song: "I love you. You love me."
But what a lot of people remember her for is playing Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's cute and cuddly daughter in The Game Plan, which was released in theaters when she was just 9. She says she had a lot of fun making the movie about a professional football player who finds out he has a daughter.
And all these years later, she's still having fun at her job, which has included lots of voice acting (The Lion Guard is her most recent) and Disney series Corey in the House, Life With Boys and The Fosters. Except she's flipped the script for Five Points, on which she plays, well, something else. She's Tosh, an overachieving student with what seems like perfect everything.
"I think she feels a lot of pressure from society to be perfect all the time. ... And I think a lot of ... people can really relate to having society put pressure on you to look a certain way and be a certain way so I can definitely relate to her in that way," she said about her character. "She sort of uses those insecurities and projects them onto other people and she's kind of a mean girl a lot of times, which I cannot relate to, but it was fun to play that kind of mean character.
"I've never really played an unlikable character before. So that was fun. It was a big change and I was ready for that challenge."
Facebook is ready for the challenge, too, as it has entered into the increasingly crowded world of online streaming platforms. She's happy to be at the forefront of the platform's movement.
"Social media is a really big part of my career. I'm on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter pretty much every day, reading comments and stuff," she said. (Note: She has more than 3 million followers on Instagram.) "But to have a show built on a social media platform that I'm already a big part of and sort of be able to have my fans click the episode and then immediately comment underneath it ... I think it's a whole sort of new streaming experience. And so far the reaction has been really positive about it. So I'm really excited about being on Facebook Watch."
Facebook Watch isn't just any old video on your timeline; these videos, some as short as 45 seconds are branded, almost as if with a seal of approval. If a video has the logo, which is a monitor with a "play" button on it, it's part of the network.
And that's become an attraction in itself, even for big-name stars. Billboards for Catherine Zeta-Jones in Queen America are almost as ubiquitous as the social network itself.
There are shows funded by Facebook, such as Five Points. And there are others from well-known entities such as The Washington Post, Now This and Tasty.
So, for some giggles, I decided to spend some time eschewing traditional TV in favor of Facebook Watch. Seems easy enough, right? I'm here to tell you, it was too easy.
Here are four more shows worth your time, every time:
Red Table Talk does not disappoint. Jada Pinkett Smith, her daughter, Willow Smith, and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, sit down at a red table and ... talk ... about things. Though the title is a little too on the nose, the show isn't boring: The first episode found Pinkett Smith clearing the air with husband Will Smith's first wife, Sheree Fletcher. You have to love it when a celebrity spills her own tea. It's good enough that it's in its second season.
Zack Morris is Trash is seriously silly. Or is it silly serious? It doesn't matter, really. What matters is that Funny or Die has taken the time to deconstruct the behavior of the protagonist of Saved by the Bell that's played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar (soon-to-premiere The Passage). At the end of almost every episode, you'll find yourself saying, "What were they thinking?" Or better yet, "What was I thinking when I was watching this?" Ah, enlightenment.
No Days Off from Whistle Sports had me cheering from the moment I read the synopsis of my first episode. If you know anyone who needs some inspiration, or just a good story to get away from the bad ones, this series is a magic potion. Examples include a teenage track star making strides into record territory, or a series within the series called "My Hustle," which takes a look at unusual entrepreneurs, such as teenager Allan Maman who was behind the craze of fidget spinners. And then there's the worth focus on adaptive sports.
I'm generally unopposed to any sighting of Trevor Noah. So when his show came across my feed, I was all in even before I clicked play. The show, appropriately called Between the Scenes, gives you just that. Noah is still talking to the audience when TV viewers have to go on a commercial break. Gems. Shiny, happy gems.
