Grid Effect

For week or two now I have been suggesting that I would watch and review HBO’s new David Milch drama, John From Cincinnati, a series about a generation of surfers trying to figure out their purpose. Well, I watched the first episode and part of the second, and all I can conclude is HBO felt indebted to Milch for prematurely cancelling Deadwood, a critically acclaimed series that never got much traction in the Nielsen’s. As a result, they let him piece together anything he wanted with the promise to air it, right after the series finale of The Sopranos!

To be honest, the show has promise: solid acting, interesting/original premise, stylistically unlike anything I’ve ever seen. While we usually encourage abnormal television efforts ’round here, this exceeds even our boundaries, and wreaks of a guilt-ridden deal by HBO who wanted to keep Deadwood but had no choice other than to cancel it in its prime. HBO has never been one to concern themselves with mass appeal, they tend to greenlight a series then wait for the audience to come around. But with Sopranos just ending, cancelling Deadwood and Rome, Curb Your Enthusiasm beginning its final season later this year and only one season left of The Wire; it might have been in HBO’s best interest to pick a series with a little more mass appeal.

If I hear John From Cincinnati turns out to be a phenomenal series with season long character arcs that make me question everything I knew about surfers, then I’ll Netflix the DVD’s or watch the series OnDemand. But for the time being I’m on hiatus from HBO drama, still too perplexed about the end of The Sopranos.

In broadcast network news, with reality television sort of teetering on the brink of irrelevancy (save for American Idol and Dancing With The Stars, but are those even reality series?), NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS seem to throw most of their new reality series on during the summer as a test run, then based on their success decide whether or not they deserve a shot at primetime in the fall.

Hell’s Kitchen, though being on for several seasons and experiencing moderate success, FOX has decided to keep it as a summer mainstay. For those who are unfamiliar with the show, Gordon Ramsay, a chef with an attitude takes in a collection of aspiring cooks to mock and humiliate them on national television for the benefit of Rupert Murdoch’s wallet. I had never watched an episode until this past Monday and its undoubtedly the most incredulous reality show I’ve ever seen, which is saying something. Of course, the contestants are so piss poor that Ramsay’s abusive actions are almost warranted.

For instance, the episode I saw had two teams (men vs. women, someone must have lost sleep conjuring up this gimmick) and the women’s team ended up losing based on Ramsay’s decision, I’m assuming because the men had lost a teammate to medical leave and they also got their appetizers out faster, neither team served any entrees. It came down to three women for elimination, team nominates those for the chopping block, then Ramsay swings the axe.

One was unjust because her prior experience is at a Waffle House, and the team turns up their collective nose at that. So Ramsay immediately excluded her from elimination. The other two contestants however, one was thrown out of the kitchen for damn near serving rancid food, the other one tried to serve food out of a trash can before a teammate stumbled onto her actions and put the kaibosh on it. Ramsay never saw her so she wasn’t kicked out of the kitchen until the rest of the team was.

Thing is, the one who served food from the trash can got to stick around. Doesn’t that lower the bar for all reality television? This guy actually said to himself at one point, “well this girl almost served our customers trash, but i’ll give her a pass”. I mean, what’s the Survivor equivalent of that? I suppose their isn’t one because its a democracy as opposed to a tyranny, but in terms of actions it would be like someone eating all the food, urinating on the fire and sabotaging a challenge then someone else being voted off because they are small.

Anyhow, its a disturbing show, one I never intend on watching again. But Ramsay really carries it. Despite the seemingly utter incompetence of the contestants, he curses them out on a regular basis, throws food at them and when he “fires” them, he tells them to “fuck off” or something else completely unnecessary. The one thing I like about this series, as opposed to Dancing With The Stars or Big Brother or The Apprentice, is this show doesn’t pretend to have any dignity. It accepts what it is, and is perfectly comfortable with contributing to the Idiocracy this country is becoming. Congrats.

Watched a half hour or so of On The Lot, Spielberg’s reality series on FOX. Will come back with a post about that later.