Ah, feel the warmth of the air. The hot afternoon sun burns long into the evening, as the ice cubes in your lemonade clink sharply against the cool glass tumbler in your hand. All of this can only mean one thing -- the summer television season has decended upon us.
Yes, now that Lost, Desperate Housewives, Scrubs, and The O.C. have entered summer hiatus, a whole slate of new shows have jumped in to take their place. Two in particular debuted on Wednesday night -- Dancing with the Stars and Beauty and the Geek. Of course, it is my duty to watch them both, not for my own enjoyment, but for yours. Yes, I know. It's very noble of me.
Dancing with the Stars combines elements of American Idol, Dirty Dancing, and The Surreal Life to create a reality stew of sorts. The basic premise -- teach a group of "stars" a series of dances over a period of just a few weeks, have them face off against each other in a dance showdown, and have these dances judged by a panel of three "experts" who rate their moves and stage presence, ala Simon Cowell and friends.
The "stars" that the show's title refers to? Julia Roberts? Tom Cruise? Will Smith? Um, no. Try former model Rachel Hunter, the dude who played J. Peterman on Seinfeld, one of the New Kids on the Block, and some chick from General Hospital. I think the show should have been called Dancing with Some Dudes and Chicks You May Have Seen on TV Once or Twice Before, So Maybe One or Two of Them Will Look Vaguely Familiar to You. Ok, so that title is a bit long, but at least it's accurate. The current title is blatant false advertising. It's worse than those "buy real estate with no money down and make millions doing it" infomercials.
The first time I saw promos for this show, I started thinking to myself "Who the hell is this show targetted at? This is the dumbest premise I've ever heard of." Of course, before I could even finish that thought, my mom exclaimed, "Oh good! This show looks like fun, when is it on?" That's when it hit me. My mom is insane. But then I thought a bit more about it and realized that According to Jim and Two and a Half Men are two of the highest rated shows on TV. That makes no logical sense either, but yet it's true. So perhaps my mom is just in that demographic of folks that just crave good ol' fashioned brainless entertainment. If that's the case, more power to Dancing with the Stars, I suppose. My only hope is that they spice it up in episode two by having Joey McIntyre trash talk everyone, prompting J. Peterman to scream, "no one puts Evander Holyfield in the corner," as he lifts Evander high in the air while "I Had the Time of My Life" plays in the background.
The other new summer show is Beauty and the Geek on the WB -- Ashton Kucher's "social experiment" television show. The show pairs 7 geeks (many are full fledged Mensa members) with 7 beauties (mostly blonde ditzes with bubbly personalities) into Can't Buy Me Love-style 2 person teams. The goal of each team, have the "geek" teach the "beauty" about history, spelling, math, and all things intellectual, while they in turn learn how to be cool. The team that makes the greatest change wins $250,000 each.
I expected to hate this show to be honest, I mean it IS an Ashton Kucher production, but it's actually pretty entertaining. Of course, no show like this would be complete without your usual contrived characters -- the 30 year old virgin, the uber-nerd, the ultimate blonde ditz -- but just like Can't Buy Me Love, some of the beauties actually start falling for the geeks that they originally mocked. The geeks and beauties alike start pulling for their teammates to succeed, rather than playing only for the sake of winning the money. It's heart warming in a "Coral hating the Miz and calling him a racist but then making the complete 180 by the end of the show to become his best friend in the next 400 Real World/Road Rules Challenges" kind of way. I'll keep an eye on this show throughout the summer to see if it lives up to the premise, but I would say it's worth watching if you're a reality show junkie like I am.
Overall scores on the Salinger Scale, where a Party of Five is the highest rating -- Dancing with the Stars gets 1 Salinger (and not even a good one like Bailey, I'd only give it a Claudia) for anyone in my general peer group. If you're my mom's age, or perhaps a real big fan of cheesy dancing, it would probably land about 2.5 Salingers. As for Beauty and the Geek, I'd say Charlie, Bailey, Julia, and half an Owen would be invited to the table. A Party of Three and a Half (3.5 Salingers) for all my nerds and hotties. Holla.
3 comments:
I already commented your 360 summarized blog.
But I forgot to mention--have you seen the game show on Comedy Central, called Distraction? I don't get good reception of the channel, but from the few times I watched, it looked pretty darn funny. Just reading the episode synopses on TiVo is amusing. (I was reading Karen's TiVo, because I don't have such luxuries.)
Also if you happen to find a show called Squirrel Wars on PBS, please TiVo it and burn it to dvd. I will pay you money.
Yes, I too, watch too much tv.
you just realized NOW that mom is insane?
Peterman also covers dog shows on Animal Planet every so often. He's the sort of the sportscaster that does not profess to be a renowned expert in the assigned field, but will willingly defer to the color commentator (who usually is). He's sort of like what John Tesh is to female gymanastics. If such an analogy could be made.
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