Have you seen the new version of The Insider? It calls itself “the breaking news with the
opposing view.”
The infotainment show was due for a format change. For five
years, it’s served up the tepid celebrity leftovers from its sister show and
lead-in, Entertainment Tonight.
As of this season, The Insider delivers a series of gossip items, after each of which a panel,
moderated by host Lara Spencer, argues vociferously whether it is true or not.
How zeitgeisty! TV has turned into a nasty debate club. Opinions
are the new facts. It doesn’t matter if you’re right; it’s how adamantly you
insist on your point of view.
This week’s 30 Rock
had a recurring gag about an apocryphal show, Sports Shouting. On a quartered screen, four sports commentators
yell simultaneously at and over one another.
Of course, satire only works if it mirrors reality, and this
30 Rock bit certainly did.
The hot formula on TV is to put people with antithetical
views on camera, and let them go at it. Usually at the top of their lungs. It’s
employed everywhere from MSNBC’s Morning Joe to ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption to The View to Oprah’s Friday
Live show.
The Insider is a
perfect example. Armed only with rumors or paparazzi photos, Spencer, Samantha
Harris, Chris Jacobs, and drop-in panelists such as Niecy Nash and Star Jones
will argue until the cows come home whether Josh Duhamel was unfaithful to
Fergie or whether Jon Gosselin is endangering his kids.
Remember that old Saturday Night Live sketch in which Dan Aykroyd would dismiss the
opinions of his fellow mock newscaster Jane Curtin with “Jane, you
ignorant slut,” and she would respond, “Dan, you pompous ass”?
Who would have imagined how prescient that skit would turn
out to be?
The tube is now a cage match for empty and angry argument.
The operating principle: Whatever you say, I’m against it.
—Nice duds. I love Glee,
but can somebody please explain something to me? If these kids have to go to
extraordinary measures to raise enough money to travel to vocal competitions,
how do they afford all those matching outfits they use for performances?
Hat-to-boot rhinestone cowboy getups don’t come cheap,
pardner.
—The jokes are familiar. It’s been bugging me all season.
Courteney Cox’s sitcom Cougar Town
reminds me of something? But what?
Finally last week, it hit me: It’s Scrubs. Same scabrous sense of humor, same rat-a-tat
rhythm, even some of the same character models.
Welcome to Cougar Town,
the suburban Scrubs.
—Snooze alarm. Gossip Girl is like a bad acting seminar. But Hilary Duff has taken the cake this
season as a young movie star from a Twilight-like film franchise who is just trying to lead a
normal life in an NYU dorm.
How bad is your technique when you can’t even pretend to
wake up in bed convincingly?
—A light read. This week on Desperate Housewives, Susan (Teri Hatcher) was thrown in the slammer. At
the close of the episode, a prison guard wheels by a book cart and Susan plucks
off a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The skinniest edition of Dostoyevsky’s classic I’ve
ever seen. It was about as thick as a driver’s manual.
Maybe it was abridged?
Hey, Susan, if you don’t make bail by tomorrow, you can
probably get through the collected works of Thomas Mann.
David Hiltbrand writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Via
McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
