First of all, I’d like to give a warm welcome to my newest nephew Jack, who was born this afternoon. Jack helps to even out the numbers as I now have three nieces and three nephews. True story, when I was home over the weekend I saw that my mom had set up on a table in the living room the wedding pictures of all my siblings, which meant that I was noticeably absent. This might be a sign. I might be needing to get my butt in gear pretty soon before I’m out of the will.
(Oh, and I’ll be picking up the Family Guy DVD this week. Expect a review sometime in the future.)
Ok, here is a topic that I’ve been wanting to address for a while, the current state of MTV. Yes, I long for the days of Remote Control, which I remember being on at five. While I’m probably a bit out of line saying that they haven’t come up with anything interesting in the last five years I’m probably not that far off base.
We can start with the fact that they don’t play videos anymore. Actually they do but it is on MTV2 or MTV Hits, which are in the 250s on my cable system. That fact doesn’t really matter in this analysis since MTV is now marketing itself as a lifestyle brand as opposed to a radio station with pictures. I definitely won’t mark against them that they play mainly hip hop since that is what the audience wants and I am not their target market. That said, when you have a video award show and you don’t show any videos, there might be a little bit of a problem.
I have a bigger problem when the first thing to come to mind when discussing interesting shows is past seasons of The Real World. To me, that is the definition of a show that has lost its purpose. It started off as mainly a documentary, giving a pretty realistic (though stylized) view of what it was like to be in your early twenties. The New York cast had jobs. Through London they were basically real people. With Miami they started to cast the show more for conflict, which was interesting and creative. Starting with Las Vegas though the show has become more about people trying to become famous, ensure that they get cast on the Road Rules/Real World challenges, and trying to see how close they can make the show into porn. I mean, that is the next step right? In two seasons they’ll put webcams in the house and it will become porn. That’s not entirely a good thing.
The lifestyle shows aren’t anything to write home about either. Pimp My Ride has its moments and I wouldn’t mind having my car pimped out like that, though I think if I left it out on the street it would get jacked in three minutes. Shows like Laguna Beach are strange to me more because I’ve never lived in California and experienced that surfer, we’re all models/actors mindset. To me, it’s like watching German art films. You know that there are people talking but nothing you see or hear makes any sense. I’ll give MTV credit as the dating shows have always been pretty good, though you really couldn’t touch Singled Out. That is the type of show that I am looking for: it’s funny, hip, has Jenny McCarthy and is actually a decent gameshow.
What I’m really hoping MTV returns to are shows that push boundaries and make you go “What the hell is that?” Jackass did that in a good way. Tom Green, not so much. (Actually, that was really meta comedy and was funny by not being funny in the same way Andy Kaufman was nearly twenty years earlier. However, at the end of the day Andy Kaufman is a genius and Tom Green is the guy who stuck his arm up a cow.) Even shows like Aeon Flux made you wonder just what was going on in the back room.
Wait a minute, I just solved my own question. I now remember the last interesting show that MTV had. It was the Spider Man cartoon a few years back, which had all of this freaky cel shaded animation and Doogie Howser and Lisa Loeb doing the voices. That was different and interesting. I’d like more of that. Oh, and how about some reruns of The Monkees, Monty Python and The Young Ones while you’re at it.
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