Prime Time
FLOOPERS, BLEEP-UPS, AND POUNDERS: The various blooper specials did so well in the ratings that (what a coincidence!) two networks have simultaneously come up with weekly blooper shows. And both of them (less of a coincidence) are pretty awful.
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Bill Holdship
HARDLY WATCHING
by Richard C. Walls
FLOOPERS, BLEEP-UPS, AND POUNDERS: The various blooper specials did so well in the ratings that (what a coincidence!) two networks have simultaneously come up with weekly blooper shows. And both of them (less of a coincidence) are pretty awful.
NBC's version is an hour-long effort called TV Bloopers And Practical Jokes, co-hosted by Ed McMahon and Dick Clark, while ABC's is the half-hour Foul-Ups, Bleeps And Blunders, co-hosted by Don Rickies and Steve Lawrence. The gist of these shows is the same, 'cause a blooper is a blooper and you either think they're funny or you dbn't. Myself, I love 'em—what could be funnier than watching some blowndry soap opera jerk trip over his shoelaces or some pompous newscaster forget his Own name? A good blooper is a form of revenge.
The NBC show is padded with montages of old and new commercials (bringing couch potatoes closer to their cultural heritage, such as it is) as well as elaborate prafctical jokes played on semi-obscure series folk like Mindy Cohn and whoever that guy is who stars in Knight Rider (a tip of the inane chapeau is due here to practical joke pioneer Allen Funt, who liked to put a sociological gloss on his nastiness by informing us that we Were watching people 'caught in the act of being themselves.*' Which never quite explained the talking mailbox, but no one seemed to mind). The NBC show is mercifully more to the point.
But whatever you think of bloopers, both shows are nightmares of bad editing with shots of a studio audience doubling over in hysterics following some mildly amusing clip being the most frequent stupidity. Both McMahon and Clark are pastmasters of the kind of forced bonhomie featured here and, in fact, McMahon has made a career out of laughing at bad jokes—he's pumped that .hoarse and hollow sound out of his throat so many times that it's starting to sound like a sardonic bark of protest, a stand-in for the viewer's own impatience with these tired gags. Over at ABC, Lawrence is a zero but Rickies, once again, is cruelly wasted. A funny guy when left to his own inventions, his acerbic ad-libbing punctuated with surreal imagery, RickleS knows how to tell the boorish, the self-inflated, and the banal to go fuck themselves in a thousand different off-the-wall ways. He also manages, as during his recent SNL hosting gig, to reduce ethnic humor to its absurd components, to expose it as a litany of paranoid cliches (yeah, I know, whether this more often than not has the desired cathartic effect is debatable—and, as my girlfriend deadpanned during the SNL episode 'You know, he couldn't get away with this if he were Norwegian'). But on this show he's
never funny. Reason enough not to watch.
☆ ☆ ☆
THE FINAL SCHMOCK: I always thought Steve Allen was one of the good guys, even if he has become a bundle of annoying mannerisms (the Dick Cavett syndrome), so it was fairly depressing to see him associated with the syndicated special Don't Ask Me, Ask God, which was produced by the people responsible for the crypto-fascist 'religion' show The 700 Club. And if you think that my description of that series is just a
bit of leftover '60s hyperbole, then watch it for yourself. Once you get past the admittedly heart-tugging pathos-of-conversioh dramas you'll be earnestly informed that the reason those nuns were killed in El Salvador was because they were spying for the leftist guerillas and that the main thing wrong with that country's right-wing death squads is that they're being misrepresented by pinko periodicals like Newsweek. Yoiks! Steve-o-rino, what happened?
☆ ☆ ☆
LAST CALL: NBC's The New
Show, on three times as of this watchjng, looks doomed—early ratings have been dismal. Too bad, it's a good show. Using combined SNL and SCTV talents it is, actually, the funniest show on non-cable prime time TV (faint praise, I know). So where are all you clowns who complain about the dearth of decent programming on commercial TV? Get on the stick! If everybody who valued innovative humor would just write a letter to the powers-that-be at NBC, why then...well...oh, forget it.
