It's Summer, Time for Trash TV

Image via WikipediaWe already sat through the bad television of the writer's strike, but that doesn't mean that the summer course of garbage still won't be served. Looking to put up long hours of cheap programming for the dwindling summer eyeballs, the usual course of game shows and second tier reality shows.

Yes, I said Second Tier reality shows, coined that just now, all by myself, or from somewhere in my reading that I am unable to conjure. Until I hear different, that's my term. "America's Got Talent" defines second tier reality shows. This truly is the revived Gong Show. So bad, the girlfriend could watch it topless and I'm not going to be there.

Nearly as bad, Last Comic Standing, an at least decent premise as reality shows go, but so poorly handled that it's near unwatchable. They spend more time doing the obligational waiting line shots, something called the comedy booth, and backstage shots than they do with the stand up. And, they cut far too deep too fast, using celebrity judges that usually get it wrong.

In the same category as "America's Got Talent", "So You Think You Can Dance," is so bad I have to leave the immediate area if it is on. For some reason, the g/f can't get enough of the three judge, people backstabbing, formula. I get used up with it pretty quick.

I'm just happy that I have Rescue Me, a few more episodes of Battlestar Galactica, and Cubs Games to watch.

Thank God You're Here - and you don't suck.

Thank God You'reHere - Fill-in programming that doesn't suck

It's once again that time of the television season where we are getting fill-in programming,and luckily it can't all be Deal or No Deal. The first one I've actually checked out is Thank God You're Here.

Thank God You're Here is a mix of What's My Line, and SNL. They write skits, with several actors playing pre-written plots, and drop in an actor who is sworn in before the show as to having seen no script, scene, or costume until they are given them, to wing their own part. Guided Improv, with name actors and celebrities that are either going to make you laugh or stub out what is left of their usually dwindling careers.

They have some near top-shelf names, Jason Alexander for one, and a lot of other character actors and celebrities, mostly B(or C)-list, who you know when you see them. It's hosted by David Alan Grier with Dave Foley as a mock judge ala Drew Carey. He gives lightly weighted comments and picks the best each night to win a token trophy, which I am sure goes up next to the Emmies and Oscars these actors don't have.

To hear the premise, this show sounds like a train wreck, but for the first four episodes it works. Most of these people are really funny, and it shows through. The Malcom in the Middle Dad, Bryan Cranston, was especially good. The skit in the photo on the right, with Harland Williams was one of the best, though I barely recognize the guy. and there have been other standouts too. Even Shannon Elizabeth managed to get some laughs. The supporting cast that they work the skit with is very good and the scenes are wide open for someone to improv through.

I'd love to see this showed ramped up a little bit, say, bring in a spoiler each week, one of the acknowledged pro's at improv, Wayne Brady, Ryan Stiles, or their other cohorts from "What'sMy Line," the change-up could do both sides good.

American Idol: One more Post

Alright, I can't let yesterday's post go without now commenting on what happened last night. I guess this happens every season, but this time it happened while I was close to a keyboard. Last night they kicked off a girl that I liked, ahead of several others that deserved it much more. So, Gina, tough luck, I'd say good luck when you come back to Illinois and continue singing with your band Catfight, but you made it far enough that you will be touring with American Idol and will get a chance to break through and do your own thing. One thing, you ARE a rocker chick, trying to fit into the AI mold is what hurt you, now welcome back to the real world, at least until the tour starts.

American Idol: Yes I Watch It

Who doesn't watch American Idol? Like every other pop phenomenon or fad, there are more than a few that say they refuse to watch such a farce, and three-fourths of them actually don't. Simply, if you are skipping this, you're missing out, a little.

For me, it is almost parallel viewing. As something that is on the television that is usually on while I am reading, writing, watching, my computer, American Idol does fairly well. It never gets so annoying that I change the channel, and that is a win. The very first season, coming on after Seinfeld repeats on Chicago's Fox channel, I found myself long minutes into the show without the urge to actually change the channel. If this is the epitome of laziness, so be it, but I ended up watching the whole damn thing, and have missed only two seasons since.

I even promised one blog that I would write about it for them. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't try to do that, because though it isn't annoying, I don't want to analyze it too much. What is good about American Idol is it's simplicity. It's very often just a karaoke contest, with Simon Cowell saying the things that the country is thinking. Anyone that doesn't admit that Simon is right on most of the time is delusional.

This season, one side plot is the survival of Sanjaya, darling of the teenage set. His bad singing has not overshadowed his appeal to the little girls, and he has outlasted several better singers already. Even the judges have acknowledged his durability, Simon won't criticize him for fear that will feed the flames of the online Vote For the Worst campaign.

In my opinion, Sanjaya highlights what is worst and best about the show. It is not a singing competition, it is a popularity contest. Taylor Hicks winning it last year solidifies that theory. He wasn't the best at all, but the best promoter of himself. At least Taylor could sing. Sanjaya winning this year might completely destroy the show.

Yet I watch. I can partially blame Lisa for this, but I manage to get out of the room when the other reality shows are playing. AI, I can stomach, and even find myself commenting on.

1 vs. 100 - Building a Better Game Show

Since I brought it up, and managed to put down three current game shows in my last post, I want to write something good about one of the current prime-time, network programming down-time game show.

In the landscape of prime-time game shows, 1 vs. 100 is a step or two ahead of the rest of them. First of all, the premise unbelievably has a little more meat to it than the rest. Down to it's bare bones, it is still a quiz show, with it's special quirk being a panel of 100 people from varying walks of life and intellects competing against the contestant. The questions are across the board, from pop culture to science and math, somewhere along the lines of Do You Want to be a Millionaire?, maybe slightly easier.

The pace, while employing many drama heightening and time stretching elements, is not maddeningly slow, they can manage to answer more than one question between commercial breaks. The host, Bob Saget, has the smarm knob turned down and moves things along fairly well.

Maybe the best part of it is the musical chair style of guests,called the "the Mob", that are brought in to fill the 100 seats, replacing each "Mob" member that answered wrong. Notable members of the "Mob" are Jeopardy King Ken Jennings, the man who beat him and the man who bested him in the Jeopardy tournament, Poker queen Annie Duke, Hooter's waitresses (for about three questions), valedictorians, janitors, Mensa members, and a nun. The mob has more than their reputation at interest too, as they get to split the pot if a contestant is wrong and they are right.

They are set up on a tall stand, and their booth goes dark when they answer wrong, forgotten until they are replaced at the end of the wrong, unless Saget singles them out for chiding after a particularly simple miss or parting shot.

The help options are slightly clunky, but at least workable, one is to show what the Mob voted, another to pick out two members of the Mob at random with two different answers and ask them why they voted the way they did, and the other a very similar variant of that same option. The Mob members can't lie about their choice and veer the contestant to the other answer, but they are uniformly vague in their answers.

Another good thing about the show is that it stays at pretty much the same time, once a week, though as I write I see a promo for a special Christmas episode. Hopefully they will not start using it to blitz nightly programming like they do everything else that works just a little bit. This show too would get tiresome if ran more than a couple times a week.

Altogether, it makes for bearable programming to watch while the networks gear up for January and bring us new seasons and episodes of Monk, 24, Sunset Strip, Heroes, the Closer, Rescue Me,American Idol, and etc. etc. etcetera.

My Five Reasons NBC Should Drop 'Identity'

The game show Identity with Penn Gillette as it's host is so bad it makes Show Me the Money, and Deal or No Deal, tolerable. I know this is a down time of the season for the networks, and they are trying to get by with cheap filler programming, but this show is beyond mindless, it's infuriating.

5. Slow pace - This, show, moves, at, a, snails, (let's go to a break before I finish this sentence) pace. And I am not exaggerating, Penn makes Regis look like an auctioneer. I am a Penn and Teller fan, and have seen this guy say more in his thirty second intro on his Showtime series 'Bullshit' than he does in an entire show here. I know they are trying to stretch out time, milk it, but this is insulting.

4. The experts - A cross between the American Idol panel of nitwts and the panel from the match game, the 'experts' available to consult as one of the help options are a joke. They are supposedly an FBI interrogator, a body language expert, and some other important sounding title, offer what the contestant is already doing, a guess.

3. They're Cheap - The stakes of winning a prime-time game show have raised, but nobody told these idiots. You take Deal or No Deal to the limit, it's a million, you can win more than that on Show Me the Money, I am told. I really can't stand that show either. The Price is Right gives away more money than this poor excuse for a Prime-time game show, $500,000 if you win it all, ( but you won't, more about that in number one).

2. The premise - This is Deal or No Deal without the hot models holding the briefcases and the banker on the phone. At some point it is just guessing, half of them are obviously easy and there are always at least two that it is simply a toss up. The wait for the 'stranger' as they are called, to tell if the contestant has guessed wrong is as annoying as Penn's slow paced talk, and their catchlines if correctly chosen are worse than campy. This is simply a guessing game, which moves at a snails pace and doesn't pay off.

1. They reneged! - Yes, they reneged, they welched, they cheated, they broke the only rule that should stand in these cheesy game shows, you pay off when they win, and that is why I think this show should disappear like most of its' predecessors. If someone is going to win, despite the odds stacked against them, let them win.

On the Thursday, December 21 episode, the entire hour was a young woman who went though the motions of the excruciatingly annoying show, and I watching her, to play a perfect game through 10 contestants. She guessed 10 identities correctly! Now, the three helps you have are; Ask the experts - which I've spoken of, Tri-dentity - where the field is narrowed down to three(also almost no help), and Mistaken Identity - A bogey, you get to get one wrong, and you're not out of the money.

Let me state that again, as Penn does many times throughout the show,using up time and pushing us toward that alway important next break, you get to get one wrong. Nice, you say, so if she is down to two people with her 'Mistaken Identity' still intact, she wins, it's simple, even if she misses her first guess, she gets another. Wow,cool, this girl played the game good.

But NO! After the commercial break, they come back on and say, that NO, the helps are no good if she is going for $500,000, that she has to guess straight up and risk everything to win it all. As Penn would say on his other, much better television show, BULLSHIT!!!!!

You can't change the rules at the end of the game. Someone is about to win and this comes up? I couldn't have been more annoyed.I mean, just the show is annoying enough, but there simply wasn't anything else on, and the girl was likeable, and winning. Then they stick it to her like that?

Maybe this was in the rules from the beginning, maybe it does make sense even from an excitement standpoint, but you don't drop it in like that. Somebody dropped the ball on this. He either should have been telling her that she would lose that help in the last round so she could use it to guess on those two that could be either one earlier or let her keep it, she earned it, she saved it.She could have taken the chance on the last two people, the ones that were simply a guess. The identities were a 'CSI Investigator' and 'Organ Donor' and the two people left were two middle aged women. It was a toss up even if the one that turned out to be the 'CSI Investigator' did look as if she idolized Marg Helgenberger.

If properly handled, the girl would have known that she should use her mistaken identity on an earlier round. Then she would have known which was or wasn't the 'CSI Investigator'. However, it was never pointed out that she needed too. Everything else was pointed out, elaborated on, drawn out, but not the simple fact that she needed to use her mistaken identity before she lost it.

That's why Identity is bullshit. For now on, I am going to backlog every program I can think of, or egad, not watch television during the time that Identity is on. Really NBC, if you want to go the cheap route at least use the time doing good civil service trapping sexual predators or exposing government corruption with a known to be cheap news magazine show.