America; Fuck Yeah

Today I spent an unbelievable two hours watching prime time tv.  The last time I did that I think Columbo had a made-for-tv movie. Though I am typically a fan of television and even a defender of it in many cases, I find most of the shows in prime time to be too painful to watch; they are either too vapid, or worse, too well calculated.  They know how to get people hooked, and they'll do whatever it takes to get you to tune back in next week.

The reason I sat down to two hours of slick, shiny prime time was to watch the season premiere of America's Got Talent.  

At this point, I feel the need to explain myself.  Jill works with a series of odd characters. One of them, a PE teacher by day, is a extraordinarily talented break dancer who will be a contestant on AGT and has already filmed four episodes.  Coach Mike, as he is known here in New Orleans, spends all of his evenings and weekends performing on the streets in the French Quarter for money, and take my word for it he's quite good.  So tonight a bunch of Jill's coworkers got together to watch him on tv.

Having never seen AGT before, I made a few assumptions.  Using what little I knew about similar shows, I simply filled out the formula like it was a Mad Lib. There would be three judges, probably guy-girl-guy ala American Idol (David Hasslehoff, Sharon Osbourne, and Piers Morgan), a bumbling host (Jerry Springer), and a persistent company sponsor (Apparently Kraft is now selling Mac and Cheese Crackers. What?) 

Another thing I knew to expect, and one of the many reasons I don't watch shows like American Idol, was the constant barrage of destructive and unneeded criticisms from the judges. And this show had no shortage of that.  They dragged poor clowns out in front of thousands of people only to laugh in their face and verbally tear them apart. Now obviously this is a competition and judges are not paid to sugar coat anything, but the way they go about it shows the least amount of respect or tact I have ever seen. And of course the audience is just as bad, thirsty for blood and looking to kill. At times the show reminded me of that old Arnold movie, Running Man, where prisoners where forced to fight to the death on a game show.  

Jill and I discussed this on the drive home- do you think that the terrible acts, the truly bad ones, have any idea they are on the show solely to be made fun of?  Which is worse- that they honestly think they have a chance, then get totally made fun of, or they are told the truth up front, and decide to still go ahead with it, because it's better than nothing? 

Other questions this ridiculous show made me ponder- How can you really judge talent?  The grand prize gets a million dollars and their own show in Vegas. So that leads me to believe that the talent has to work well in a Vegas show format.  You could juggle flaming lawn gnomes, but if you can't do it for more than 30 minutes, does that disqualify you?  Also, who are these people to sit and deride others for lack of talent? I mean, Jesus Christ, it's Hasslehoff! Doesn't it strike anyone else as funny that he's basically America's shitting can, and he's putting others down for being useless and weird?

Anyway, here's the grand finale- after watching the two hour show, from start to finish, we are distressed to discover that Coach Mike has not appeared. What's this? It's a two-parter. Tune in next week for the rest of the episode.  Sons of bitches.

(If you are interested in seeing Coach Mike in action, go to youtube and type in Dragon Master Showcase and some clips should pop up)