Sunday, June 10, 2007

TV: Creature Crap




Do you remember the kid in high school who was hung up on a musical artist, generally a really bad artist? S/he would go on and on about how deep the lyrics were. S/he would scribble them in spirals during classes and try to foist them off on people as soon as the bell rang. The artist in question could never write a song because songs are lyrics and music. So maybe you don't remember the artist the kid was pimping but you surely remember the annoying kid. Well we've discovered what they grow up to be: members of the Water Cooler Set.




CBS hit a new ratings low and no one saw it coming because the Water Cooler Set was spit polishing crap yet again. The show's called Creature Comforts and if it demonstrated the type of kids the Water Cooler Set was in high school, it also demonstrated that there's more movement in those commercials for HoverRound and Little Rascal than there is in this eye sore.




The whole point of doing a non-live action series was supposed to be providing the giddy rush that those not bound by earthly laws can provide. So we were shocked to tune in and discover that this was like downscale Merchant Ivory, minus the costumes, as everyone sat or lay around while speaking. The "camera" is trained upon claymation animals. The scripts?




There are no scripts. The voices of real life people are used as they babble on about whatever minor topic comes to mind and then, by pairing it with claymation, it's supposed to be not only worth watching but also funny. Reality is Adults Say The Dullest Things repeatedly while the claymation animals remain inert and immobile except for the flapping gums and occasional eye dart.




Reality is also that this "British" series didn't air on BBC, it aired on ITV and if most Americans just asked "What?" that tells you a great deal. It's equally true that, on ITV, each program is ten minutes, not thirty minutes (excepting only their Christmas special). Comedy Central used to burn the British edition off during overnight hours because the show was such a dog.




But with few exceptions, the Water Cooler Set was talking it up as though it was the second coming of The PJs if not The Simpsons. The Idiot Bellafante, always, wins top prize in the American Idiot competition for over reaching to draw comparisons between the program and the film Borat (last we checked, Borat could and did walk). As The Idiot Bellafante babbled on and on, she revealed that she sees herself a snob. We see her more as a TV anarchist.




What Bellafante and her idiot posse among the Water Cooler Set really want is unentertaining TV. We've seen that all year long. They've rushed to praise the badly written Studio Yada Yada, they've gone ga-ga over the return of the hoary sixties device of one camera sitcoms not shot in front of a studio audience. The less entertaining something is, the more they cheer it on. (Possibly, along with being anarchists out to destroy entertainment, they're also not-so-latent masochists?)




The fall and spring TV season was all about the voice over. Don't show the audience what's happening, tell them repeatedly, over and over. With Studio Yada Yada, the voice overs were delivered as speeches -- on the nose, verbose dialogue. Voice overs is really all Creature Comforts is and before the next alarmist series of articles weighs in on Americans' increasing weight gain, one might want to consider how much all these stationary TV programs have contributed to the increasingly sedentary nature of America?




We worry most about the kids who may (mistakenly) watch Creature Comforts. Gone will be the days when they ran down alleys playing Linc, Julie and Pete, hopped on their bikes and pretended they were Starsky & Hutch, or played vampire slayers. They may instead assume that Creature Comforts is the way to go and lay on their sides mouthing really dopey dialogue for an hour and a half before coming indoors claiming to be tired and worn out.




In the last ten months, the Water Cooler Set has repeatedly embarrassed themselves but they have no shame and seem intent on providing groans all summer long judging by their takes on Creature Comforts. While they seem determined to demolish all life left in TV, CBS can't really afford to do that since it depends on viewers to pay the bills and those big bonuses. At the end of last week, CBS announced they were un-cancelling Jericho. Some in the press have seen it as a victory for those viewers showering CBS with peanuts (don't ask) in an attempt to force them to bring the show back. The reality is that a certain one hour program revolving around a vampire is quickly becoming a nightmare. The lead's not filming as well as the suits thought he would and the scripts are belabored. That, more than peanuts, is why Jericho is being brought back. We were told by two friends in programming at CBS that they think the show can reach a wider audience if it focuses more on the "young" characters. (Some of whom are played by actors in or nearing their thirties. But this is, after all, CBS which skews the oldest of any network when it comes to their audience.) On Saturday, we tried hard not to laugh as we were told that CBS thinks it can be the new Roswell. For those who have forgotten, Roswell was a WB series that lasted three seasons and was never a heavy hitter for the net-lette. It also featured a better looking (and younger) cast that could actually act. How, we wondered, does CBS plan to address the beer bloat of one cast member? A diet or a nasty smack habit?




Steering the conversation back to Creature Comforts, we asked exactly what persuaded CBS to air the show in the first place? They did see the episodes before air, right? We were told it was cheap to make (most unscripted shows are) and that the creators were "proven" with American audiences. How so? As evidence by the box office for Wallace & Gromit, we were told. For the record, that animated film made approximately $56 million at the box office in the United States. Disney's Lilo & Stitch, by contrast, raked up $140 million at US theaters. But Chicken Run, we were told, Chicken Run! To which we asked, "Who's running, who's even moving in Creature Comforts?" The only movement involved in Creature Comforts is the audience that's grabbing the remote and switching to another channel.




[Note: A regular reader passed on to Ty that he would appreciate a shout out to Daniel Coyne and The Uncommon Man website. Since the reader was writing about our -- Ava and C.I.'s -- TV reviews, we're including it as a note here to make sure it's not forgotten in the all night writing session. For Bill, there's the shout out.]
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