So CNN reports today that "psychic" Uri Geller is mad about a forthcoming ABC TV series about five couples competing to adopt a baby.
I'd be mad too if I had already had that idea. Oh, wait -- there was American Embryo.
The hardest thing about doing April Fool's sites is that so often, reality is just as weird as our imaginations.
Well, cut it out, America. Seriously, people, it’s not funny anymore. Somebody’s going to get hurt, and if this competition results in John Stevens’ nasal, off-pitch crooning getting heavy airplay, that somebody is going to be everyone with one or more functioning eardrums.
After JPL was retired last Wednesday, I had assumed that the voters had decided their little joke had gone on long enough. Then they turned around this week and lined up arguably the group’s three most talented vocalists for the firing squad. Look, I’m sick to death of the baroque, key-roving howls of R&B “divas” too, but does anybody seriously think Jennifer Hudson was the least worthwhile performer among these contestants?
Musical taste is highly subjective, so I’m willing to make some allowances for that. Though she’s not really my cup of tea, I can see how others might enjoy the vocal stylings of vase-with-a-larynx Jasmine Trias. I can even understand how some find some perky appeal in Mouseketeer-for-the-McDonald’s-generation Diana DeGarmo.
But for John Stevens — basically a Bizarro Conan O’Brien with the voice of Frank Sinatra two weeks after they buried him — to outlast Jennifer Hudson makes me wonder if the Idol votes aren’t being tallied up in Broward County.
Hey, I don’t mean to pick on the guy. He seems like a sweet enough young pup, loves his grandparents, wouldn’t hurt a fly and all that. I can even forgive the fact that over the course of the seven weeks’ national prime time exposure he’s been given to make an impression, he has so far displayed less charisma than my hairy left nut; yeah, that’s right, the one that hangs low. And y’know, when given exactly the right song, one that complements an intimate, quiet croon and doesn’t stray outside of Stevens’ limited range, the kid can actually sing pretty okay.
But as soon as his voice wanders outside of that quarter octave it can reproduce, he ends up sounding like a muffled trumpet with a tiny, wounded screech owl trapped inside of it. Not to mention the fact that when Stevens performs, he carries all the dynamic intensity of a telephone pole with some kind of novelty snapping finger attached to it.
It’s even become evident in recent weeks that Stevens actually wants to be whacked. Each show, he looks a little more embarrassed and depressed — at least insofar as an expressionless piece of bleached driftwood can display those emotions. It’s as though he too is convinced that his continued presence on the American Idol stage is a travesty. And yet he persists, while Jennifer Hudson and her powerful, gospel-blasting lungs are kicked to the curb.
The American Idol producers are evidently not all that amused, either. Already irritated by their inadvertent conversion of William Hung into an unlikely star, they seem greatly annoyed by the mockery the voters are making of their little sing-off. They actually sent their lapdog Ryan Seacrest to admonish the audience for giving Hudson the axe, a particularly crass move even by Idol standards, considering the surviving contestants were standing about ten feet from him.
The only explanation I can come up with for Stevens’ continued popularity is that, of the 30-kajillion viewers that watch Idol every week, a goodly chunk of them must be old people. Stevens is clearly the preferred contestant of the Hometown Buffet set; he chooses old songs, sings in an old style, and holds old people’s hands. Then there’s the fact that old people don’t hear too well, and are also prone to forgetting that they already voted several dozen times that evening. Fortunately, if my theory is actually true, I can take some solace in knowing that the size of Stevens’ audience decreases by a little bit each day.
Then again, as my good friend Phil has already pointed out, maybe the order the contestants leave the show doesn’t much matter. After all, Jennifer Hudson will no doubt be signed to a recording contract by the time you read this, presumably a much more lucrative one than the Idol folk would have indentured her to if she had won. And wherever he ends up finally placing in this competition, this time next year you’ll likely be able to hear John Stevens’ silky one-note croon drifting out of the Starlite Ballroom at Foxwoods Indian Casino and Bingo Parlor, to the accompaniment of a hundred elderly widowers yanking feebly at the handles of their slot machines and wetting themselves.
In any event, the way the voting’s gone down in recent weeks makes me and my fellow viewers seem at best terminally tone deaf, and at worst, heinously superficial. I beg of you, America, think carefully before you text the word “vote.” If you don’t, the “hanging Stevens” may soon join Chad in our shared lexicon of American embarrassments.
Because I now live in Los Angeles, which adds considerable drive time to the 15 minute commute between my old apartment and the Oakland Coliseum, I bought the Major League Baseball Extra Innings package. That delivers roughly 60 baseball games to television set each week, ensuring each of the following things will take place sometime during the 2004 season:
* My weight should swell to more than 400 pounds by the All-Star break, after half-a-season's worth of couch-bound immobility;
* My wife will leave sometime in August, and I'll be so enraptured by a meaningless Brewer-Pirate game beaming to me on Fox Sports Pittsburgh, I probably won't even notice until the off-season; and
* The Foxwoods Resort Casino jingle is going to slowly drive me mad.
Foxwoods is an Indian casino located in beautiful Mashantucket, Connecticut -- "within easy driving distance from four of the East Coast's major cities," the casino's Web page happily declares. And the folks at Foxwoods have composed a jingle to convince gambling-starved New Englanders to take the perilous journey down the I-95 to Exit 92. It's a jazzy little number sung by... well, not a Frank Sinatra impersonator exactly -- more like a Frank Sinatra Jr. impersonator, if such a thing is possible.
Take a chance
Make it happen
Pop the cork
Fingers snapping
Spin the wheel
Round and Round we go
Life is good, life is sweet
Grab yourself a front row seat
Let's meet and have a ball
Let's live for the wonder of it all
Oh, it's a catchy little tune. And it becomes catchier when the New England Sports Network broadcasts the Foxwoods commercial -- and I'm just making a rough estimate here -- almost continuously.
NESN, which is your cable home for the Boston Red Sox, airs the Foxwoods commercial and its attendant jingle seemingly between every half inning. It broadcasts it during pitching changes, breaks in the action, whenever Kevin Millar or David Ortiz step up to the plate. When Sox third-base coach Dale Sveum flashes the sign to the batter, I'm assuming he's telling Manny Ramirez or Johnny Damon or whoever's at the plate to "Let's meet and have ball, let's live for the wonder of it all." That or he's flashing the bunt sign.
So exposure to NESN Red Sox coverage courtesy of Major League Baseball Extra Innings has scarred the Foxwoods Resort Casino jingle into my brain. Between that and the Dunkin' Donuts commercial where Curt Schilling touts a visibly unappetizing breakfast sandwich, I'm beginning to gain special insight on why Boston fans walk around so miserable all the time.
So American Idol viewers sent Jon Peter Lewis back to Middle Earth last night. No surprise there. But the interesting thing was watching the reaction of John Stevens, the youngest living crooner in captivity, as Ryan Seacrest handed out the walking papers.
As the other two potential dumpees sweated it out, John Stevens stood there with a look of serenity on his face -- "This will all be over soon," his expression seemed to say. "I'm coming home, Grandma, and soon, it'll be you and me and Pop-Pop singing 'The Best of Perry Como' just like we used to, away from Randy Jackson's cruel, judging eyes." But then, when the boom got lowered and took out Lewis, Stevens looked stricken, weary, perhaps even a bit afraid.
That's perfectly understandable. The past three weeks have not been pleasant ones for the would-be Dean-o of the 21st Century. First, he lived to sing another week at the expense of the delightful Amy Adams, much to the dismay of the live audience. Subsequent performances have only gotten worse, fueling online speculation that he's trying to deliberately tank it for the sweet release of getting voted off.
I mean, what else is a crooned version of "Crocodile Rock," other than a thinly veiled cry for help?
So I worry about next week. I worry that, if John Stevens is trying to purposefully get booted, that he's going to start taking drastic measures -- inserting random swear words in the chorus, coming out pantsless, maybe even pulling a Last Boy Scout and opening fire on Ryan Seacrest mid-verse.
Which is reason enough to keep watching, I figure.
Last night's The Apprentice was as padded as most final episodes of a Mark Burnett reality show are, but it was still good fun so long as your finger's on the TiVo fast-forward button. And the right guy won.
But what last night's Apprentice finale really taught me is that certain settings (right down to the way a setting is lit) can really be defined by what they're used for.
Okay, that was cryptic. Let me try again. Last night's Apprentice finale ended with a live climax in a reconstituted version of the show's Boardroom set, apparently erected on the stage of Saturday Night Live. And it was lit and shot to be a note-perfect replica of the original. But once the winner was announced, the set pulled away and we were all of a sudden in the same spot you find SNL monologues and sketches. It was lit exactly the way you'd light SNL. In fact, several times I found myself waiting for The Donald to say something wacky, put on his cue cards by the SNL writers.
All because of the setting, and the particular atmosphere of the images that come out of that studio at NBC.
Weird. Next time, Central Park instead? Or live from Trump Tower?
At issue are 63 random Simpsons episodes, which researchers studied for any scene involving mental or physical health, medical treatments, substance issues, exercise, sex, body image or nutrition and then graded the characters' behaviors as positive, negative, or neutral.
"When issues such as smoking, drug use, disease risk factors or alcohol consumption came up," the Daily Targum reported, "the great majority of the messages were found to be negative. In addition, beer was the most popular item among characters, representing 39 percent of all foods consumed on the show. Researchers said these trends could subconsciously affect viewers, possibly legitimizing an unhealthy diet."
Of particular interest to researchers was the aforementioned Simpson family patriarch, who generated 17 percent of the verbal references to food and 21 percent of incidents where food was eaten. "A major concern is the inadequate, inaccurate and/or questionable content of health messages embedded in television programs," said head researcher Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, about the dietary habits of the fictional characters who do not actually exist in flesh-and blood form.
The Rutgers researchers did offer a caveat to their study.
"You have to remember The Simpsons is a comedy show," Journalism Research Institute associate director Guy Baehr told the Daily Targum. "There could be a lot of irony or humor involved."
On The Simpsons? No, that seems unlikely.
We can only thank the researchers at Rutgers University for their vigilance and forthrightness -- at last, somebody is thinking of the children. But we must urge the Rutgers researchers to train their penetrating powers of observation on other aspects of animated series featuring nonexistent characters, lest other negative behaviors cloud our minds and corrupt our principles.
These are important life lessons that only research can drill into the heads of our impressionable young people. Failure to learn them can lead to depression, obesity, impotence, feelings of hopelessness, severe injury, and perhaps even death. Children are heavily influenced by what they see on television, and without studies that conclusively prove you can't trust cartoon characters, our kids are likely to grow up fat and stupid, their brains filled with mush and their chins covered with drool. We will raise a generation of gullible idiots, slow-witted and open-mouthed and prone to believing everything anyone tells them.
And the next thing you know, they'll wind up as researchers at Rutgers University.
I had hoped that with all his shows cancelled, the Internet would take a break from slobbering all over Joss Whedon. But it never stops!
Yeah, the guy made some great TV. But not so great that anyone else who does a good show is now "Doing a Whedon." It's not like Whedon invented television.
Actually, that's part of what annoys me: There are people whose first exposure to silly sci-fi was Buffy. So when they see another show doing a plot that Buffy did, they say things like "They stole that from Buffy!" But the whole gimmick behind Buffy, at least for the first few years, was that it was doing absolutely generic horror-movie plots, but putting a spin on them.
I guess it's just that I don't think Whedon "reinvented" anything. He's good with dialogue, but I don't think his characterizations are all that great. And the long-term plotting on his shows is terrible.
Whedon's shows pretend to have a big story arc, but it falls down on close inspection. Take the introduction of Dawn, which seems like it would require a lot of retconning of the previous seasons. And the way vampires were originally evil "because they are half-demon," but after a few years, demons turned out to be just regular guys. A lot of the time, I feel like Whedon is doing "vaguely prophetic" things, like that one dream episode, with no idea of how he's going to tie it together. I never understood the whole Wolfram & Hart angle on Angel, and I really don't think any of the writers did either. This is an area where The X-Files would be a good comparison.
As far as his characterization, this might just be me, but I think the personalities of his characters vary wildly. Xander was sometimes an empathetic observer and sometimes the biggest idiot in the world ("Bitca?"). Willow was a computer nerd who completely forgot about computers for a couple of years so the show could do a weird magic-as-drugs plot. The early Spike has almost nothing in common with today's Spike, except for the accent. And so on.
I realize that some people (although not me) have identified strongly with various Whedon characters. But they tend to be the same people who say things like "Season 7 Giles must have been possessed by an evil entity" and "That's not Buffy. The Buffy I know . . ."
I'd rather see an episode written by Tim Minear or Ben Edlund than an episode written by Joss Whedon. I think Whedon's concepts are clever but, upon closer examination, usually incoherent. He's good at quips, though.
Maybe I'd like Whedon to come up with general concepts, leave the writing and plotting to other people, and then come in to add zingers.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, by Joss Whedon, was great television, if you haven't heard. Smart, funny, dramatic, and very very real. Yaknow, as real as a girl dusting vamps can be.
I was a closeted Buffy fan for years. I even furtively followed Angel as he left Sunnydale for his own spinoff in L.A. The noir style and male protagonist finally brought me out of hiding. I was a Buffy/Angel fan. Joss Whedon was my hero. And that was okay.
The twin Whedon shows took a universe of cliches and silly stereotypes and turned it into something with meaning. The monsters were metaphors for life, the demons were made more human with each new episode.
Most subversively, Joss Whedon had turned me, and many like me, into a fans of the genre. I'm so far gone now, I might even go see "Van Helsing" when it comes out. Lord help me.
And now, with Buffy ended, Angel finishing its last season, and Whedon's stillborn sci-fi western Firefly confined to a box of DVDs and the future promise of the silver screen, I've been feeling a little restless. Will there ever be another? Could there ever be?
Send in the cowboys.
I used to joke that HBO was the Sex and Death Channel. Now, with Sex and the City gone, it's mostly the Death Channel. On HBO I get to watch gangsters in New Jersey kill each other, dust bowl carnies kill each other, and a Southern California mortuary bury them all. Now you can add Deadwood to that list, where you get to watch lawless cowboys kill each other in 1876. There's so much killing, in fact, the Deadwood website keeps a tally.
The series is only four episodes in, but already something has changed. See, I never liked cowboys. Not even a little. Cowboys were the bastion of little boys who liked to beat up other little boys. I never even liked playing cowboy as a kid. I'd probably have preferred to be an Indian, anyway.
Deadwood is threatening to do for cowboys what Buffy did for vampires. In Deadwood, the cowboys are not noble, and not one of them has a white hat and a pointy star. In fact, in the very first episode, we meet our protagonist, Seth Bullock, as he's taking off his sheriff's star and handing it to someone else, with the hanging corpse of a criminal still swinging behind him. His days as a law man are over.
We watch as Seth comes to Deadwood, a town technically outside of the reach of the new United States. As he establishes relationships in the town, we meet the evil overlord Al Swearengen, his henchmen, prostitutes, a morally ambivalent doctor, and more. But the most interesting relationship he forms is with the famous gunslinger, Wild Bill Hickok.
In a town full of mistrust and baser instincts, the relationship between these two former men of justice was a bright point, and just about the only reference you could find to the typical western genre. Wild Bill was a complicated man, weighed down by addictions to booze and cards, but he had a quiet goodness about him. The scenes he shared with our protagonist Seth were notable for what was communicated between them in very few words.
"There's a man behind me who intends to do me harm," Wild Bill says to Seth in the bar in episode 2. And without discussion, Seth has Bill's back when the man makes his move. "He drew first," Seth says, even though his back was turned.
Seth had Bill's back ever since. Untill, of course, last night's episode, when the babbling nincompoop Bill had beaten in poker walked up behind him and fired. Bang. Just like that, Wild Bill is dead.
What kind of a show would spend its first four episodes building up a character, just to gun him down like that? A groundbreaking show. A show that aims to redefine a genre. A Whedon show.
Deadwood has a way to go before it's going to occupy that special place in my heart next to Joss Whedon's shows. But after just four episodes, I can pay it the highest compliment I can think of: It reminds me of Whedon's work. And in a television landscape soon to be without any Whedon shows at all, that's the most I can ask for.
You’ll notice I said “former finalist” and not “actual winner.” Gray didn’t take the Idol title like Kelly Clarkson and Ruben Studdard. She didn’t even fall into the woulda-coulda-if-only-more-folks-would-have-dialed-my-number category enjoyed by Clay Aiken and that creepy kid with the big hair. She came, she saw, she failed to conquer. And yet, that hasn’t stopped Gray from nabbing her own record deal and scoring a handful off acting gigs — yes, gigs on Boston Public and Tru Calling, but at least they’re both paying jobs, even if Boston Public has to pay off its actors with David E. Kelly FunBucks.
My point is that although Tamyra Gray came up short, Idol-wise, that hasn’t stopped her from enjoying the beginning of what may or may not be a lucrative career — a fact she stressed to the caterwauling numbskulls that make up this year’s Idol finalists during her appearance on Wednesday night’s show. And that would seem to diminish the tension and stakes of the Idol competition — at least it does to me.
Sure, the winner gets the record contract and the entourage and the ready-made pop music career. But the finalists get something almost as valuable — exposure. And unless one of the finalists is completely devoid of talent and charisma — not an improbability, actually — they’re making a name for themselves each week in front of tens of millions of viewers, including record producers and industry types who wouldn’t mind getting a little rub from inking an American Idol hopeful.
And that doesn’t seem right to me. I mean, who cares if the cruel fates deny, say, Jon Peter Lewis or Diana DeGarmo a shot at instant stardom if, the second they’re voted off, there’s some gold chain-wearing record exec waiting in the wings to offer them a shot at slightly less instant stardom? Close should only count in horseshoes and hand grenades, not in amateur talent competitions to find out whose caterwauling is the least horrific.
So I propose a simple twist to the American Idol ground rules. Continue to shower the winner with record contracts and appearances on minor award shows and ill-advised feature films costarring that creepy kid with the big hair. But the losers should get bupkis. In fact, if they fail to win the contest, they should be banned from singing for one year. No close-but-no-cigar record contracts, no appearances on Sucking Up Live With Ryan Seacrest, not even a singing gig down at the local karaoke bar on Torch Song Tuesday. Nothing but the sweet sound of silence.
And if that happens, then the real winner is the audience.
Was last night's American Idol the worst, or what? As much as I like the spunk of Jon Peter Lewis and John Stevens, they both sucked. They have interesting voices, but potential and personality can't counteract suckitude.
In contrast, our four African American contestants all kicked ass. On songs written by a little white boy from England. Now that's multiculturalism. And talent showing through.
I now think that George (formerly Old George, formerly Mustache Man) could win. And is headed for second place at the least. He is blossoming right before our eyes.
Tonight on Fox: Can we send home the awful Camile Velasco now? Yes, the judges say she sings like Macy Gray. But so far, I've never heard her sing well, not even one time. She needs to go. Now.
It's not that I'm not sympathetic to people who were big fans of Wonderfalls or Angel or Firefly or Undeclared or Greg the Bunny or whatever show you feel was never given a fair chance. It's just that I don't think people should be taking the cancellations so personally. The network isn't saying that Wonderfalls was a bad show or that you're a bad person for watching it; they're saying that when it replaced Boston Public on Friday, their viewers dropped from 4.9 million to 3.8 million. And when they gave it a shot on Thursday, it finished in fifth place. Yeah, CBS's CSI and NBC's The Apprentice were going to beat it no matter what. But it was also behind UPN's Smackdown and ABC's Extreme Makeover. It only beat the WB's two episodes of the Jamie Kennedy Experiment.
In other words, Wonderfalls was struggling on Fridays, so it was given a shot on Thursday, when it did even worse. I realize it's disappointing, but when a show gets ratings like that, it gets cancelled.
In fact, even without ratings like that, shows get cancelled. Aside from the occasional M*A*S*H or Gunsmoke, almost every show on television gets cancelled shortly after it becomes unprofitable. It's always sad for the fans. Me, I was a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan. And when Comedy Central axed it, I was outraged. When Sci-Fi canned it, I was, again, outraged. But on the other hand, that show lasted ten seasons. That's a long time for a basic cable show with puppets, you know? I had to accept that television networks are not in the business of making shows out of the goodness of their hearts.
One argument you sometimes hear is that networks should "give a good show some time." And it's true, some shows have started off slow and taken time to build an audience. Hardly anyone watched the first season of Seinfeld (when it was called "The Seinfeld Chronicles"). But if I were a network executive, I don't think that argument would fly with me. Hollywood is full of people with ideas for new shows. I can either continue to fund Low-Rated Critically-Popular Series X, or I can give money to Unknown Quantity Series Y. Doesn't it seem like as a business decision, it's at best a coinflip? Because let's face it, no matter how bad a show is, somebody is going to lament its passing. There are still some people angry about the way The Lone Gunmen ended on a cliffhanger.
So here's what I'd like you, the outraged television viewer to do. First, accept that your favorite shows aren't going to last forever. For that matter, if the ratings dip, they might not last out the season. Television is a business, and it doesn't matter how good a show is if it's not perceived as profitable. Second, keep in mind that if you get angry at networks for cancelling your favorite show, that doesn't really mean you should stop watching that network. If you still hold it against Fox that they cut John Doe, and you won't watch UPN until they bring back Jake 2.0, and the loss of Homeboys from Outer Space still makes you cry -- well, all I'm saying is that it's only going to take two or three seasons until you've crossed all the networks off your list. Most new shows don't make it, so if you become 100% emotionally invested starting with the pilot episode, you should prepare yourself for disappointment.
Third, and I can't stress this enough, don't send TeeVee your form letters asking us to raise awareness of a show's plight. The odds are very good that not only do we not care, we're kind of glad it's gone.
