T
TV Muser
Guest
If I were a local TV station that got left out by the merger of UPN and the WB, I'd think twice about how happy I'd be with an affiliation to MyNetworkTV.
Screeners Are In! In short, if you enjoy Kazakh State Television-style production values and Fashion Models, you're going to LOVE MyNetworkTV!
Sent to affiliates just in time for their run next week, Desire and Fashion House are the shows this network feels are the best ones to put forward first, and that my friends is not a good sign.
These two shows have redefined cheap television. Hell, these shows have redefined public access cable shows! At first, I thought I was watching some sort of blooper joke reel until the shows just kept rolling on and on. It started bad and got worse.
* Set design by a JCPenney store near you. Your local mall outlet puts out a better display. In later shows, it looks like Pier One has taken over. Fake plants do not hide the silly fake sets. Wicker should not be a lifestyle choice. In some cases, it is obvious they redressed the same set for multiple location shoots.
* The extras are the actors. Very pretty and... well, they are very pretty. Models That Think They Can Act. Evidently they ran out of money paying Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild, because the supporting cast wouldn't have made the cut at many high school drama productions. Enjoy the Sophia Coppola-style wooden acting, the tennis match eyes as actors recite their lines off teleprompters or cue cards, and the pregnant pauses when bad lines escape their memory. But this is from Fox, so remember they are pretty. This stuff makes One Life to Live look like Shakespeare.
* Like a porn set (and the plot lines alone will remind you of one), the rule of thumb here seems to be - keep rolling no matter what! No soap opera on daytime television would let pass some of the stumbles on later shows where actors screw up their lines and just keep on going. Enjoy the offstage antics as you hear a production assistant drop a folder just off camera and you hear papers drop to the floor, with one becoming visible in the corner of the camera shot. Listen to light fixtures buzz. Most amusing of all, watch actors in one scene deal with a pesky fly or bee that intruded on the set and divebombed the actors (an insect critic I guess). They didn't cut and run.
* And the worst for last - the writing... oh the writing. Take a machismo based telenovela straight out of Latin America, do a quickie translation into English, and set the women's movement back 20 years.
The words "inept," "moronic," "amatuerish," and "cynically exploitive" do not begin to describe these Category 5 disasters. The only thing good to say about them is that they're over as quick as they came - 13 episodes that took about four days to shoot, and at least Fashion House could be described as "campy-bad fun" ...if you were stoned. Or you could just turn the sound off and imagine you are watching an all-pretty people edition of Jerry Springer. The acting there is about on par with what we've got here.
TV stations - relive the glory days of independent status instead. Space:1999 reruns are a better choice.
Screeners Are In! In short, if you enjoy Kazakh State Television-style production values and Fashion Models, you're going to LOVE MyNetworkTV!
Sent to affiliates just in time for their run next week, Desire and Fashion House are the shows this network feels are the best ones to put forward first, and that my friends is not a good sign.
These two shows have redefined cheap television. Hell, these shows have redefined public access cable shows! At first, I thought I was watching some sort of blooper joke reel until the shows just kept rolling on and on. It started bad and got worse.
* Set design by a JCPenney store near you. Your local mall outlet puts out a better display. In later shows, it looks like Pier One has taken over. Fake plants do not hide the silly fake sets. Wicker should not be a lifestyle choice. In some cases, it is obvious they redressed the same set for multiple location shoots.
* The extras are the actors. Very pretty and... well, they are very pretty. Models That Think They Can Act. Evidently they ran out of money paying Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild, because the supporting cast wouldn't have made the cut at many high school drama productions. Enjoy the Sophia Coppola-style wooden acting, the tennis match eyes as actors recite their lines off teleprompters or cue cards, and the pregnant pauses when bad lines escape their memory. But this is from Fox, so remember they are pretty. This stuff makes One Life to Live look like Shakespeare.
* Like a porn set (and the plot lines alone will remind you of one), the rule of thumb here seems to be - keep rolling no matter what! No soap opera on daytime television would let pass some of the stumbles on later shows where actors screw up their lines and just keep on going. Enjoy the offstage antics as you hear a production assistant drop a folder just off camera and you hear papers drop to the floor, with one becoming visible in the corner of the camera shot. Listen to light fixtures buzz. Most amusing of all, watch actors in one scene deal with a pesky fly or bee that intruded on the set and divebombed the actors (an insect critic I guess). They didn't cut and run.
* And the worst for last - the writing... oh the writing. Take a machismo based telenovela straight out of Latin America, do a quickie translation into English, and set the women's movement back 20 years.
The words "inept," "moronic," "amatuerish," and "cynically exploitive" do not begin to describe these Category 5 disasters. The only thing good to say about them is that they're over as quick as they came - 13 episodes that took about four days to shoot, and at least Fashion House could be described as "campy-bad fun" ...if you were stoned. Or you could just turn the sound off and imagine you are watching an all-pretty people edition of Jerry Springer. The acting there is about on par with what we've got here.
TV stations - relive the glory days of independent status instead. Space:1999 reruns are a better choice.
