Hollywood Gossip and Political Hoopla

Years ago I used to watch a lot of A&E for their murder / forensic shows. Anyone who watched that channel during this particular time no doubt remembers the show they had about all woman roller derbies. I even remember the name of the show offhand; it was Rollergirls. It’s easy to remember because A&E advertised this show like nobodies business. There were five minute trailers advertised nearly every commercial break. The commercial breaks that didn’t feature the trailer aired probably two shorter commercials. It seemed like they’d sometime cut to an extra commercial just to air another short Rollergirls commercial. This went on for months, to the point where I felt like I had already watched three seasons before the first show actually aired. Never have I been so sick of a show that I never even watched one episode of before. It was justice that A&E ended up cancelling Rollergirls after 13 episodes because of low ratings. See kids, advertising doesn’t mean squat if you keep throwing it in people’s faces like you’re swinging a sledgehammer at them over and over again.

I’m reminded of that by this new Frank TV show that’s either started already on TBS or is starting sometime in the near future. The advertising isn’t as obnoxious as it was with Rollergirls but it’s jumped up to the upper echelon on my annoying meter the past month regardless. Frank TV is a sketch comedy show with some guy that was on Mad TV. I don’t know who he is because I haven’t watched Mad TV for years and never got into it as much as I used to be into Saturday Night Live back in the day. All I remember about Mad TV was the blonde, the black woman who appears on VH1 list shows from time to time, and the Stewart character.

Anyway, Frank does impersonations of various people, including Dr Phil and President Bush. Because we don’t have enough Dr Phil and President Bush impersonators in the world. I have no idea if Frank is a generally funny guy, but as soon as I see him dressed up as Dr Phil I groan. I’m not really sure if this is because the idea of multiple Dr Phils in the world make me physically ill despite the fact that one of them is fake or what.

Then there’s his Bush impression, an impression done by some 20,000 other people in the US alone on a daily basis and an impression that Frank seems quite fond of since it appears in nearly every commercial for the show. Isn’t it getting to the point now where people would be embarrassed to even pretend to be George W Bush at this point? Let him do his own comedy, he doesn’t need any help. No one impersonates a comedian. It’s like, and I’m pulling a random comedian’s name out of a hat because I don’t know who’s popular now, but lets use Chris Rock. No one impersonates Chris Rock because he’s an island of funneh all onto himself. Bush brings his own comedy at this point. Any impression could only fail, because the real thing is that much funnier. That’s my theory anyway.

Anyway, I humbly request, nay, demand that you all not watch this show, so that it can be cancelled much like Rollergirls after a few episodes in a cruel twist of irony despite the bombardment of advertisements.

This is an open message to TBS that I know they won’t read because I’m fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things but screw it. I need to vent. If you want to throw an ad on the screen at the very beginning of a TV show, fine. I respect that, you’re a TV station and sometimes you need to advertise your shows with a little banner to intrigue people to tune in. But when someone’s trying to watch said show, and you throw up a %#&@ing banner that’s 1/3 the size of the TV screen, there’s a problem. If you put a normal little banner on the bottom of the screen or preferably in the corner and you make someone dance or move on it while you stick a little time down there, I guarantee you people are going to see it. I know it might be hard to believe but I promise, motion attracts attention. The ad will process through viewer’s brains for a couple seconds as they stop to look and see what that little moving thing is.

See, that’s what you could be doing inside of sticking a giant ass block of orange on the screen, 40% of which is nothing but a solid color some of the time. Think about it for a second. You’re covering up 1/3 of the screen. You’re not even bothering to smush the picture a little, you’re covering whatever’s going on in the screen with this flipping monstrosity. I cannot see what is happening while watching the show. And you want me to tune in for something else? If Family Guy was on another station for two hours I’d consider flipping over but no, I’ve got to sit there and deal with this BS. This orange %#&(ing block. A blind person couldn’t miss this thing. If that thing was a solid I could pick it up and kill someone with one thwack upside the head with it. If it were food I could live off of it for a week. That’s how overly absurd this thing is.

It needs to go. Yesterday.