Friday, December 26, 2014

106 & Park: Last Episode Review


Welcome everyone, to my review of the final episode of 106 & Park.
106 & Park is a music countdown program on BET which aired for 14 years from September 11, 2000, to December 19, 2014. Now when I watched this show back when I was a kid, it was one of the best shows on TV. The music, the hosts, the guests, even the set. Everything that worked in the beginning and would continue for years had made it awesome. I loved watching it for years, even during its Dork Ages, I still watched, because I was a very loyal viewer and the hosts, guests and music kept me watching.

This program seen as the urban TRL (MTV's Total Request Live), playing the top 10 popular hip-hop and R&B music videos in the country and inviting popular musicians, actors, athletes and ect. to the set to promote music, movies, TV shows, spots and ect. All the elements to make the show work worked and made it BET's most watched series for years.

The first hosts are AJ and Free, two unknowns thrust onto the spotlight by BET to host the then new program and became extremely popular for it. They hosted for the first 5 years from 2000-2005. Thanks to this show, they became household names and popular television personalities.
Later on in 2005, after the shocking announcement that the two would leave for personal reasons, 106 was hosted in the interim by Big Tigger, host of another hugely popular BET series Rap City, and Julissa Bermudez. The two would take the reigns for a year from '05 to '06. I thought the two were a really good pairing and enjoyed them a lot. This wasn't seen as a dork year; the pairing kept the show floating along well, and kept it at the top.
But the next year would prove something bigger and take 106 & Park to a whole new level.
In 2006, two new unknowns made their debut on the program and made it hotter, stay relevant and even more popular: Terrence Jenkins and Rocsi Diaz. This era was the one I remember the most. These two (along with the studio audience and music countdown) were the bread and butter of the show. All of these breathed new life to 106, and it still became a hot destination for the music, guests and set. I couldn't think of a better show to watch besides the news on a weekday evening, and Terrence and Rocsi gave me a reason to stay at home and watch.
Then, after 6 years of hosting, Terrence and Rocsi both announce they are leaving 106, as they individually feel that it's the right time to walk away from the show and do other projects. Rocsi later became a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and Terrence became an actor and co-host of the E! News show
After that (and a long-winded search for new co-hosts), rapper Bow Wow and three then-unknowns Pagion, Miss Mykie and Shorty Da Prince took over in October 2012 (and it was clear the show began a change in look and feel, one that I documented in one of my first posts 2 years ago. It was a mixed opinion of mine (because of the segments besides the countdown), but as long as long as the countdown stayed, it was a welcome change.
Then, after everyone else has ruined the new era for me and those who liked it by clearly disliking it (mostly the hosts) (apparently too foolish to notice that things change in the world, including another after this) Paigion, Mykie and Shorty were dismissed as co-hosts on July 3, 2013. How sad.

Throughout the summer, Bow has held it down by himself with many guests joining him in the interim, including Angela Simmons, whom I thought was a great co-host that meshed well with Bow Wow. Too bad this didn't last, as October 1, 2012, Bow (who would later go by his real name of Shad Moss) was joined by a new co-host in Canadian singer Keisha Chante. I really liked her as hostess and also meshed well with Bo--I mean Shad. I know this show has been on longer that it may have should been (because of music video within reach on YouTube and Vevo, and social media) but I believed it would last a few more years.

Unfortunately, it was shorter than that, because after 14 years, BET announced that 106 would end on December 19, and then relocate to a digital platform on the Internet.



At the top, original hosts AJ & Free (along with original DJ Enuff) returned to 106 to host the final show, and already, they haven't missed a beat. They returned to hosting like they never left. These two were fantastic as they've always been, and it's a refreshing sight to see.

Later on, a special tribute to its long-running "Freestyle Friday" segment, which invites freestyle rappers from across the country to show off their creative spitting skills on a live national scale. It was an awesome segment that created popularity, household name status and fame for many unknown freestylers including Jin and Blind Fury. And the two made their return to 106 to remind us how awesome they are...and they proved it. So damn well.

Guests like Keysha Cole, Wale, and appeared in-studio and many more appeared on tape to reminisce their appearances on 106 and send well-wishes to the hosts.

And at the end, AJ & Free welcomed the other past co-hosts to share memories of their duties on the show. It's just awesome.


Well, this was a great show. I loved watching it until the very end, and will miss it so much. Thank you, Stephen Hill and the producers for creating and shepherding this series as long as you did, and BET for airing it along as you have. Because it's a surprise any show of this kind would last this long, especially since music videos have made the popular move to the Internet (see TRL, Soul Train and, even more so, Top of the Pops).
I love you, 106 & Park. And thank you.
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