If TV producers and movie makers could somehow send me promos of shows/movies beforehand, I could save them a ton of cash. ABC is now promoting a new show called Romantically Challenged which looks to be an overproduced, banal-humor-laden, safe, generic pile of crap. It will no doubt recycle lockstep stereotypes, trite, canned one-liners, and ridden into the ground like a Tiger mistress storylines. (But, she's not married, she's divorced!) It's all the same. If ABC had just talked to me, I could have told them, "Stop...stop...stop talking...no it's awful."
There is nothing especially bad about RomChan, (I've never seen an episode, I just know it will be bad. Prejudging? yes Correct? yes) it's just the same lowest common denominator horrible safe humor that network television seems to be all about. It's the same in movies. C gets pissed when I watch the lastest rom-com mad-lib preview and just cannot help myself by finishing the plot. (They fall in love despite the circumstances...every time...without fail.) She almost kicked me out of the theater during He's Just Not That Into You which had promise in the beginning and then turned on everything it believed in half way through. (Don't get married Ben Affleck, you won, she agreed, aaahhhh) I couldn't help but start a social commentary with a quarter of the movie still to go. Everyone of those art bastardizations deadens my nerves a little bit more. (She's uptight, he doesn't play by the rules!) Sometimes a writer will really gamble like author/rebel John Hamburg who pitched Along Came Polly as he's uptight and she doesn't play by the rules. Ugh. It's the same everytime people! Stand up for quality! George Clooney gets his heart ripped out in Up In The Air; oscar-nomination.
Why does it continue to happen? Well, of course money. These are pre-packaged, streamlined, efficient cash cows. Insert name actor and actress here. A self-serving entertainment exec will of course substitute original thought for free cash flow. They don't have any incentive not to. It's the same with actors. Just look at Jennifer Ainiston. She keeps making this same slop every year. At least have the decency to use the film as an elaborate ploy to bang your co-star like Gerard Butler did to you. The producers of these shows are guilty of having sedentary brains as well. Charlie Sheen can not wear a bowling shirt and cargo shorts every day of his life! That's lazy character molding. Do they think if he wears jeans people won't perceive the male fantasy ethos they have bestowed on him? No, don't make them think, aaahhhh.
I'm not an literary elitest snob Slate editor, I own the A-Team on DVD. I just want the entertainment industry to stop rehashing the same tired shit they've been recycling over and over. It's insulting. It's mentally insulting to me. Get some new cookie-cutters Hollywood. But, what do I know The Big Bang Theory is still on television?
At least Lost is on tonight.
-K
