Comedienne's Second TV Show Canceled This Year
'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
TV 101: Could a woman get as fat as Jason Segel and eight other intriguing questions
by Jay Black, posted May 27th 2009 3:02PM
One of the joys of being a blogger is all the comments we receive. Once you weed out the personal threats, the discussions of your stupidity, the prayers to various gods that you get struck by a particularly painful STD, and the calls for you to be fired, you're actually left some solid contributions to the online discussion.With that in mind, I've decided to turn this week's column over to you guys, a collection of commenters that I think I can say without hyperbole is the greatest collection of commenters in the history of the known universe. I've put together nine questions about TV that I'd love for you to answer. Don't feel like you have to answer them all: choose which ones are most interesting to you and then have at it.
I'm anxious to hear your opinions, so let's get to it...
1. Could a woman gain as much weight as Jason Segel and still be successful?
Jason Segel is the break-out star of How I Met Your Mother. Apparently, he's also a stress eater. He's always been a big guy, but lately his weight has gone from "huggable" to "tv blogger" (which I can tell you from personal experience is not a fun weight category to be in: my chest looks like a wax sculpture that someone left out in the hot summer sun).
Despite the fame what comes with appearing in two hit movies (I Love You Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and starring in one of CBS's few good sitcoms, no one has mentioned this sudden increase in size. In fact, I didn't even notice it myself until my wife brought it up. She pointed out that this is probably the biggest year he's ever had as an actor, and it's quite literally the biggest she's ever seen him. "That could never happen for a woman!"
I tried to argue with her for a bit ("There are lots of overweight women in Hollywood! No, I can't name one right now, but I'm sure there are!"), but eventually had to concede that she had a point: if a woman gained as much weight as Jason Segel did this year, things would be quite different for her. Here's what I see happening:
a. Pictures of the newly fat actress appear on a national magazine (quite possibly in a bikini).
b. The actress comes out and makes a statement saying that she's at a healthy weight and can't understand why people are so interested in the fact that she maybe, possibly put on a few pounds. She makes a lot of references to "body dysmorphia" and other things she and her publicist only half remember from 11th grade health class.
c. People begin to advocate in favor of her new, larger look. Daytime TV talk show hosts point out that this is a positive step for young girls everywhere (well, except for Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasslebeck: they use the news as a jumping off point for a screaming match about whether or not Bush was lying about WMDs in Iraq).
d. The actress appears a month later on the cover of Us Magazine, 35 pounds lighter and touting a new diet of seal blubber and bowhead whale skin cooked up for her by celebrity Inuit dietician, Purnaq. All that talk of empowering women disappears along with her weight.
That's the standard cycle for whenever a famous woman accidentally overeats during the holiday season and some paparazzi catches her bending over the wrong way.
Here's my question:
What if the actress decided to keep the weight? What if she ignored all the tabloid discussions of her belly rolls and all the snarky bloggers writing fake obituaries to her hotness? What if she stayed big and that was that? What would happen to her career?
2. Would you watch a "re-imagining" of your favorite sitcom?
This one comes to us via Bill Simmons's podcast, specifically a segment on it called "Three Half Baked Ideas by Kevin Wilds".
Essentially, Wilds' idea was that people are perfectly willing to go to a re-imagining of a movie (Think Ocean's 11 with George Clooney instead of Frank Sinatra), so why not apply the same idea to classic TV shows? Why not pay Vince Vaughn a ton of money to play Sam Malone in a recasting of Cheers set in Chicago? How about a new All in the Family starring Ricky Gervais as Archie Bunker? What would Taxi look like today? (Certainly, there wouldn't be any native English speakers in the cast.)
The biggest argument against this is that people become much more connected to a TV character than a movie character and it's therefore harder to replace them. For instance, when I was a kid, I loved The Last Starfighter more than was probably healthy (it's about an unpopular kid whose ability to play video games makes him a hero in outer space -- if it had included ice cream cake and a pair of naked boobs, it could be argued that it was less a movie than a documentary of what existed in my pre-teen subconscious). But for all my love of the movie, I've probably only seen it through six or seven times -- twelve to fourteen hours total of my life. Compared to a hit TV show, that's nothing. I've spent more time with the cast of Cheers than I have with my own family. Thus, the connection to those characters is a lot stronger.
This doesn't hold true, though, when you consider the number of recastings that have been done over the course of TV history: the two Darrens, the two Beckys, the ever-rotating members of Will Smith's family in The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. People, it seems, are perfectly willing to see a new face in a familiar character's role.
Would that hold true, though, for an entire cast? Would people tune in to see a re-imagined Cheers or would the show be crushed under a tidal wave of "You've raped my childhood!" internet comments?
3. Would you be upset if you found out American Idol was rigged?
On the face of it, this is an easy one: of course you'd be upset, the whole point of American Idol is that America gets to vote. Duh.
But, Americans have come a long way from the Quiz Show days where we'd be shocked and outraged if it turned out producers were pulling strings to keep certain desirable contestants on. It used to be that we assumed that everything on TV was true; now we have a "reality show" genre in which its generally understood that everything we see is made up. Clearly, our capacity to be shocked has been deadened in recent years.
So, if America found out that the early rounds -- say everything up to the last ten contestants -- were manipulated by the producers to get the "right mix" for the AI tour, would the show's ratings really be affected?
There'd be some loss in viewership -- there are always people who get mad at being lied to, even though they must realize they're always being lied to -- but I think the majority of people would continue watching. When you break it down, the show really isn't about America voting, it's about Simon being mean to people. Hell, if the entire show was just people auditioning for Simon, I doubt the ratings would be all that different.
But what do you think?
Lightning Round:
4. Over/Under: 2.5 seasons left before House becomes unwatchable?
5. What are the odds that Lost ends in a way that satisfies everyone?
6. If the cable companies allowed a la carte programming, which channels would immediately die?
7. If Hulu.com was offered as part of your cable package as a premium channel, would you spring for it?
8. Cutest NBC Thursday Night girl: Jenna Fischer, Tina Fey, or Amy Poehler?
9. Most unattractive job prospect: blogger or comedian?
(Jay Black is a blogger and comedian who is best known as the inventor of the Slap Chop, a device designed to remove prostitutes from your tongue. For more information about Jay or to catch one of his live shows, check out his website: www.jayblackcomedy.com)
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