Respect Authority

I can’t believe it was only six months ago that I wrote my first post on RA about Jersey Shore, when the show was just a few episodes in and the media/pop culture firestorm surrounding it hadn’t yet reached its peak. Oh, how things have changed.

The first episode of the much-anticipated second season premiered on MTV last night, and unless you live under a rock (or are older than 35) you know that the network’s eagerness to get the now-famous cast back on air led them to shoot Season 2 in Miami when it was still snowing buckets on the East Coast.

So far, the geographic change seems at worst harmless, and at best necessary. Since JS Season 1 only ended a few months ago, it would be exceedingly hard to revive the novelty of the show’s first weeks in the same house and at the same bars. Indeed, it’s not such a bad idea to test the legs of the cast—can they be as interesting, or perhaps more interesting, when removed from the very scene that gave the show its name? Answer: yes.

Watching The Situation, Pauly D, Vinny, Ronnie, Sammi, Snooki and JWoww (more on Angelina later) reunite was like meeting up with old friends again, and even though we know many of the cast members have spent the last four months within arms’ length of one-another, it still felt like they were all excited to be re-living the very experience that got them here in the first place. Sort of like how the three months you spend planning the prom (what, you guys didn’t have overanxious female friends in high school?) didn’t manage to undermine the greatness of seeing your peers in evening wear. (Well, that, and the drinking; everyone’s looking forward to the drinking.) Read More ›

So I know I’m several weeks late with the inevitable roundup of summer television, but I like to get a little settled before I pass judgment on hours of programming that I’ll probably continue watching out of sheer boredom after I’ve long since established that it’s making me progressively dumber (see: Rock of Love). I like to catch a few episodes, allow myself to get mildly invested in the characters/contestants/suitors before I decide whether a show is “worth” an hour of my Sunday afternoon, which might otherwise be spent watching foreign films, reading literature or pontificating on the meaning of life. Seriously, I’m a very busy person.

So here’s what I’m watching this summer, and what you should be too, if you know what’s good for you.

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THE BACHELORETTE: I’m a little late to this particular line of shows; all I know is both The Bachelorette and predecessor The Bachelor (shit started in 2002!) are the mainstream equivalents of VH1’s romantic contest-based programming. The only difference is there’s more mush—poetry, hand-holding, prolonged eye contact without resulting sexual contact—and fewer strippers. Bachelorette Ali, who is apparently a cast-off from a past season of The Bachelor (sort of the ABC version of Real World/Road Rules Challenge), seems sufficiently generic; she’s the kind of girl you’d pass in a J. Crew with a small dog in her purse. Her eligible men are equally nondescript, to the point that I’ve watched at least three episodes and couldn’t pair names with faces. Fortunately for ABC, the sheer voyeurism of watching people try to fall in love means it’s hard to fuck this one up.

Verdict: Watch with a hand on the remote. Some scenes—like Ali being serenaded by anyone, anywhere—are too perfectly awkward to miss. Others, like the ENDLESS rose ceremony, are easy to skip.

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TOP CHEF D.C.: Here’s the thing about Top Chef: it’s getting a little…old. The formula is the same every season and even though they switch cities, unless you’re familiar with the culinary inner-workings of Chicago versus New York versus D.C., the guest chefs and restaurant cameos aren’t going to make much of a difference. It doesn’t help that a lot of the challenges are the same (and then again repeated on Top Chef Masters which, let’s be honest, is just a space filler between TC seasons so you don’t start watching something else in that time slot). That said, this season of Top Chef seems to have the requisite cast of characters: the early front-runner, the power-hungry female, the trod-upon foreigner. Add some spices and voila! Decent television.

Verdict: If you’ve watched the last six seasons, you might as well keep on keeping on. But make sure you have food around; after one particularly tantalizing episode I found myself dipping pretzel rods in butter.

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WORK OF ART: In its never-ending quest to find the “top” everything—chef, fashion designer, hair stylist, hair stylist for poodles—Bravo has moved on to perhaps the most subjective of all topics: art. Work of Art throws a bunch of weirdos with artistic inclinations in one room, where they tackle assigned inspirations that run the gamut from portraiture to book covers. To be honest, I had limited hope for this show. I get the Bravo thing, I buy into it, but as someone who’s spent life wishing her technical ability matched her drive to create art, I wasn’t keen on watching people have their work slammed. So far, Bravo has proved me wrong: the ‘assignments’ are broad enough that it’s hard to argue people are being pigeon-holed and the variety in skills is huge; the show includes everything from painters to performance artists. The only weak point: the judges. But to be fair, Tim Gunn set the bar pretty high.

Verdict: If you like Bravo’s other fare, this one is well worth the time. And if you don’t like Bravo’s other fare, why the fuck are you reading my blog?

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YOU’RE CUT OFF: VH1 never ceases to amaze. Just when I think they’ve exhausted the possibilities for trashy spin-off shows, they come up with something totally original (and by original I mean “original”) to hold the line until Ray J and another gaggle of hookers can be rounded up. You’re Cut Off follows a dozen spoiled princesses (think My Super Sweet 16, plus ten years) as they’re thrown in a house together with a life coach who teaches them lessons like “Toilets don’t clean themselves” and “Shoes don’t HAVE to cost $4,000.” It’s predictably entertaining to watch women who count tiaras among their casual-wear try to figure out how to grocery shop, or sweep a floor. Unfortunately the life coach/host isn’t harsh enough to make me feel like the ladies are learning anything so much as biding time until they can return home to their pampered lives, a few thousand dollars richer (what does VH1 pay its minions these days?) and decidedly more famous. I would venture to say that a re-casting of Sharon Osbourne, who whipped even sluttier and trashier girls into shape on Charm School, would have made for a much better show. Assuming Monique is booked.

Verdict: When it comes to the on-camera demonization of 20-somethings who have never had to work or think for themselves, I am decidedly in favor.

Anyone who’s been in a corporate meeting …or at least seen an episode of 30 Rock, knows the importance of synergy. After all, what’s better than a great product if not finding a way to integrate it with other great products in the most prevalent business example of killing two birds with one money-scented stone? This sort of big-business sell-outitude is obvious in things like Taco Bell/Pizza Hut combo restaurants and ABC’s prolonged dispute with Cablevision eliminating my access to Disney for an entire day. But in the TV world, synergy has been woefully underutilized. In other words, the day there’s more than one competition show about hair styling is the day we should start trimming the fat—and what better way than by combining some of our favorite programs? Here are RA’s top ideas for the TV equivalent of Taco Bell/Pizza Hut …minus the gas.

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1. REAL WORLD/JACKASS

Both of these stalwart MTV franchises have been lagging in recent years—on the Real World, MTV vacillates between self-involved intellectual types and balls-to-the-wall party kids, with little gray area. Meanwhile Jackass, once the symbol of our viral video times, has since the beginning of the decade fallen into a murky audience zone. The 20-somethings who followed the show during its heyday are too old to appreciate it anymore, and there’s something inherently creepy about 13-year-olds watching men their father’s age attach things to their balls.

Combo show: Eight strangers picked to live in a house and have their various attempts to injure themselves or one-another taped.

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2. SURVIVOR/LOST

The “plot” of Survivor is ungodly easy to follow—drop desperate losers off on an island and let them duke it out; each week, someone is given the boot. Lost, by contrast, has long since stopped making sense for even its most devoted followers. Throwing these two together would make Survivor fans moderately smarter (as Lost is prone to obscure literary and philosophical references), and Lost fans slightly less confused. After all, what is an island full of fame-seeking morons if not some sort of televised purgatory?

Combo show: Send a few dozen idiots to an obscure island with limited supplies and plentiful mysteries. Stage random assaults via wild animals and smoke monsters. Each week, someone gets kicked off (and put on a plane that will subsequently crash).

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3. REAL HOUSEWIVES/CELEBRITY APPRENTICE

Anyone who’s seen even one episode in the Real Housewives franchise knows housewife in this case is synonymous with “marrying rich so you can start your own line of face cream/cocktails/jewelry/insert other pointless product here.” But what would happen if you actually put the self-absorbed and mildly insane women of RHNY to work for someone like The Donald? Though Sinbad and Bret Michaels have provided no shortage of hilarity so far on this season of Celebrity Apprentice (to say nothing of perennial politician Rod Blagojevich), the two-hour show is quickly wearing thin (at Episode 2, mind you). Some good old-fashioned cat fights would definitely do the trick.

Combo show: Pit two teams of Real Housewives ladies (personally, I vote for New York vs. New Jersey) against one-another in a series of challenges aimed at “raising money for charity” (by which I mean degrading people who think they’re above menial labor).

Alright I know this isn’t meant to be a silo for all manner of viral videos and, to be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of viral videos to begin with—the hit-or-miss aspect offends me. (There’s a reason I watch so much television, where discerning viewers are free to pass judgment on an entire series after just a single episode). That said, I was more than a little excited for the premiere of Funny or Die Presents on HBO, not only because it gives me a little tickle in my tummy to know TV still has some measure of power (FOD is otherwise a fairly popular video Web site, so it says something that they bothered with television at all), but also because I hate watching shit on my laptop.

FOD is unquestionably sophomoric, so there were times I felt disadvantaged by my lack of a 14 to 25-year-old penis, but overall the show had enough gems to make it more than worth it. This is one of them:

To all three readers of Respect Authority, let us extend our deepest apologies. It’s 2010 now, which means a new decade, and a new opportunity to shirk our regular responsibilities in favor of inane blog writing. Consider it my New Year’s resolution. (Well, one of them, third after “Watch less TV” and “Don’t be so hard on yourself if you don’t end up watching less TV.”) And there’s no better way to start off a new year of witty commentary and reality television snark than with a missive defending MTV’s now infamous Jersey Shore.

I know, I know, I’m weeks late in commenting on the work of sheer genius that is Jersey Shore, but it took a few episodes’ worth of contemplation to really nail down what it is about JS that’s so damn appealing. It’s not just the fights, or the inane commentary, or the inability of men on this show not to use the word “fresh” at least once an episode. I mean, it is all of those things (as well as the fact that JS has become so pop-culture relevant that even die-hard haters of reality TV wonder if they’re missing out) but also many more. Here, in three points, is my defense of Jersey Shore.

1. “When it’s time to party, we will party hard.”
One of MTV’s biggest mistakes when it came to every season of The Real World after San Diego was the show’s slow trajectory away from bar fights and towards passive-aggressive work arguments, or utterly boring in-house pranks. Although Real World was always a forum for (ahem) real-world issues—homosexuality, religion, war—those issues were, and still are, best brought up in a loud club, after a lot of alcohol. At least for television purposes. While several of the more recent Real World seasons (Brooklyn and now-airing D.C. being the most flagrant examples) have devolved into mind-numbing self-righteous and too often sober discussions of political and social qualms, I have yet to hear anyone on the Jersey Shore discuss something other than clothes, hair, drinking, clubbing or sex. The vast majority of the show’s footage is of the roommates at bars (to the point that I’ve learned the names of said bars) or on their own roof deck, wooing unsuspecting (or totally suspecting) young ladies into their altogether normal hot tub. This is the stuff of great television.

2. “Watch the lioness, as she contemplates her next victim.”
Though MTV has always been a master of stereotypes—in a truly meta moment, one of the cast members of Real World D.C. correctly predicted that the last arriving housemate would be “the gorgeous black man” and lamented the lack of a “gay guy”—putting a group of the same stereotype in one house and watching them exist together is nothing short of genius. While much of reality television is founded on the notion of different people coming together and interacting, JS joins people that could have very easily become friends anyway. Indeed, to watch the crew interact is akin to some anthropological study: the ease with which they communicate in their unique language, the guido rituals (gym, tanning, laundry, in that order) to which most of them subscribe, the almost immediate tribe-like bond they form with one another. Though plenty of attention has been paid to the negative connotation of “guido” and the show’s supposed affirmation of this stereotype, I personally find the culture more interesting than laughable.

3. “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
This, above all, is the reason I watch Jersey Shore: Despite their questionable fashion choices, limited vocabulary and utter devotion to hooking up, the cast of JS is, for the most part, kind of likeable. The show’s most annoying roommates–the much-maligned Situation, whose desperation when it comes to lady-hunting is downright cringeworthy; and Sammi “Sweetheart,” whose “I’m the sweetest bitch you’ll ever meet” opening-credits line pretty much says it all–are still in my view a rung above even the least annoying people on The Real World. More importantly, they actually seem real. Perhaps by virtue of becoming part of a 20+ year institution, MTV has created something of a monster when it comes to Real World casting: the 20-somethings who ultimately make the cut appear on air with such a sense of self-worth (having made it through umpteen rounds of auditions) that they seem to assume their lives are interesting. By contrast, the Jersey Shore group always seem mildly baffled by their own fame: they’re in it for the sex, free booze and VIP club seating, not to be a part of pop culture history. This is something I can respect.

It should come as no surprise that I’m a fairly big Jersey Shore fan – it’s like the orange-juice concentrate of live-in-a-house-together reality programming, with more hooking up and fighting in one episode than other shows manage in a season. But I think Jersey Shore is a little something extra: it doesn’t create characters by putting otherwise mundane people in a tricked-out house and parading them through overpriced bars and faux careers. Instead, MTV found actual characters, put them in a rather mundane house, and let them handle all the parading. To me, that’s pretty—for lack of a better word—fresh.

The only funny thing Bobby Moynihan has ever really done on SNL:

Also:

Only Spencer Pratt would have another friend named Spencer.

…Occasionally, sometimes…still the best fucking show on television.

In addition to all the rappers, producers and celebrities interviewed for 50 Cent’s episode of Behind the Music: his barber. Which is even more interesting considering I don’t think I’ve ever seen 50 Cent’s hair.

Balloon Boy is ruining reality television.

Just one week ago the world seemed apathetically at ease with what’s easily become the most popular (or at least most predominant) genre of television. Shows like Big Brother and Survivor, which years ago paved the way for reality TV amid much controversy, now seem tame when pitted against even more low-brow fare like Bad Girls Club and Dance Your Ass Off. The barrier to entry has gotten undeniably lower. Shows used to require elaborate set-ups involving obstacle courses, cash prizes and the eating of bugs; these days all you need is a foul mouth, or fourteen children.

So when six-year-old Falcon Heene duped the nation last week, reportedly at the behest of his fame-seeking crazy person of a father, critics were quick to condemn reality TV for perpetuating these kinds of stunts, and bringing about the worst in human nature. In other words, it’s not entirely Papa Heene’s fault. Can he truly be blamed for tricking the authorities, and the viewing public, into believing his son was trapped in a giant UFO-like helium balloon? Well gee golly, certainly not, considering the effect these sorts of lowest-common-denominator programs have had on the human psyche.

It’s precisely this sort of retarded—that’s a scientific choice of words, retarded—thinking that absolves countless people from responsibility because of ideas “society” has put in their heads. Fame, all fifteen minutes of it, existed long before Donald Trump started hiring apprentices, or Jon and Kate had 900 kids. And people have long aspired to stardom; otherwise the entire entertainment industry would be phenomenally boring. Read More ›

So this is the first time since I moved to NYC that I find myself caring about city politics — the mayor, to be specific. It’s a weird feeling, caring, especially without the pop culture backing of something like a presidential election. I mean, there are a LOT of people in this country, most people, who couldn’t give a shit about the mayor of New York, and I generally like to fall in the range of “most people” on things — except U2, Seinfeld and Jell-O. But some budding adult in me decided to watch the mayoral debate last night. I could say I wanted to educate myself, or at the very least be prepared for next-day water cooler gossip, but the truth is I find political debates wildly riveting when I’m high. In some bizarre reverse-intellectual way, I think it’s because they’re the ultimate reality television. …(Someday when I’m older, I’m going to read that sentence again and be embarrassed).

So after an hour of bad lighting, awkward arguments and lots of political gibberish, I took away one thing:

Bill Thompson: “In conclusion, if you don’t vote for me, I will fucking shoot Mike Bloomberg in the head and bury him at Hudson Yards with a gravestone that says ‘Term Limit Reached, Motherfucker.’” *

*Note: Bill Thompson did not say this.

Sometimes local news promos make me kind of maybe want to watch local news. The fact that I caught this during what appears to be a reptilian grimace on the part of Michelle Trachtenberg, well, that’s just coincidence.

Also, Gossip Girl: Incredibly appropriate time to show this headline.